Commemoration, Veneration, and Inspiration: Constituting the Terry Fox Public

There are few figures in Canada as widely known and loved and remembered as Terry Fox. This article highlights how this contemporary sensibility has been constituted by examining the rhetorical “stickiness” of Terry Fox in public memory as spearheaded by the Terry Fox Foundation. I consciously avoid analysis of Terry Fox monuments and the enfranchisement of Terry Fox within museums. Rather than interrogate these material sites associated with Terry Fox, I seek to understand how more intangible Terry Fox commemoration and ritualized acts operate within popular and public culture as affective practices, mediating forms of national and post-national civic identity. My focus is on Terry Fox Runs and the promotional culture and texts surrounding them. I approach these cultural forms and practices through a lens of rhetorical criticism. The public memory of Terry Fox acts as a medium of connection with a certain time and place but, crucially, does not create an affective bond to the past as much as encourage an attachment with fellow Terry Foxers, civically, somatically, emotionally, and symbolically imbuing individuals with a feeling of purpose by being inspired by Terry Fox’s actions in the past.