Kingsville’s Terry Fox run raised nearly $10,000 Sunday for cancer research, according to organizer Marilyn Farnworth.

Terry Fox runs across Canada marked their 40th anniversary this year by going virtual — the first time in the charity’s history it was not an in-person event.

Farnworth said that in Kingsville, donors and participants raised $9,660.

“This is an example of what can be done when a community rallies together for a common cause,” Farnworth said in a news release.

Locally, the MFit team of Farnworth and her husband Adrian, Michelle Kraus, Beth Anne Meloche, and Marie Taylor raised $6,290 in pledges. Emily Bezaire collected $700 in support of her father, who is undergoing radiation treatment for cancer.

Donations can still be made at www.terryfox.ca/terryfoxrun/kingsville.

Last year’s in-person run, with 199 participants, raised more than $10,000 locally. Farnworth said participants in this year’s virtual event could run, walk, bike, swim, urban pole or do any other activity to support the cause. The slogan for the event was One Day. Your Way!

 “It’s ironic that due to a pandemic we were forced, like Terry, to set out on our own or in a small group of family and friends to walk, run, bike or do an activity of our choice,” Farnworth said.

Farnworth said it was her 40th year participating in the Terry Fox run “and I still get emotional thinking of Terry and his legacy. The characteristics that Terry displayed in his Marathon of Hope, including determination, day-to-day commitments, focus, tolerance to pain and loneliness are similar to what we endure in our daily struggles to fight COVID-19.”

By September 1980, Fox had travelled halfway across Canada, running 5,373 km with a prosthetic leg, averaging 42 km per day. He was forced to stop his run in Thunder Bay, Ont., after learning that his metastatic sarcoma cancer had returned and had spread to his lungs. He died on June 28, 1981.

Farnworth said Terry Fox remains the “face of cancer research” in Canada and around the world.

“To date, an incredible $800 million has been raised, with tremendous results,” Farnworth said. “The five-year cancer survival rate has increased from 25 to 63 per cent and there has been a decrease in cancer mortality rates of 17 per cent for women and 35 per cent for men.”

In 2019, 437 researchers and 47 research projects were funded, Farnworth said.

She said it’s proof that annual donations to the Terry Fox run “have made an enormous difference in the lives of cancer patients and their families.”