Terry Fox’s former nurse to attend Surrey run after sharing news of his death

Organizers of a Terry Fox Run in Surrey will welcome Alison Sinson Ince as a special guest on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 20. Ince was one of Fox’s nurses at Royal Columbian Hospital during his final days and will attend the annual Terry Fox Foundation charity run at Fraser Heights Village.

Fox died at the New Westminster hospital in June 1981. Ince became his media liaison there and had to tell waiting reporters that the Marathon of Hope hero had died of cancer. In a 2011 interview, she recalled reacting with tears when hospital staff learned Fox would return to Royal Columbian after ending his run at Thunder Bay.

The volume of calls seeking updates on Fox’s condition forced the hospital to establish special phone lines and hire operators so emergency lines could remain open, Ince said. “It felt like we were shepherding the whole country through it,” she recalled.

Now 91 and long retired from nursing, Ince lives near Harold Bishop Elementary in Surrey, where Fox attended school briefly before his family moved to Port Coquitlam. She has spoken for the Cancer Society in Barbados and the Terry Fox Foundation in Canada, and has continued attending Terry Fox Runs after surviving breast cancer diagnosed 15 years ago.

Ince said Fox’s resolve strengthened after he saw how many people, including children, were affected by cancer while receiving chemotherapy at the Cancer Agency in Vancouver following his leg amputation. His Marathon of Hope aimed to run a marathon every day across Canada to raise cancer awareness and research funds, but his cancer returned and the journey that began in Atlantic Canada ended near Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 1980.

Four Surrey locations and two in Delta will host Terry Fox Runs on Sept. 20. The annual fundraiser supports cancer research and honours Fox’s Marathon of Hope, which stopped in September 1980 but is being symbolically continued this year by nearly four million Canadians in 600 communities.