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Terry

Brad Cran
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Douglas Coupland’s homage to Terry Fox, Terry (Douglas & McIntyre), is also a homage to Canada circa 1980. Americans reflect on the day that JFK had his brains blown out and we Canadians remember the 143 days that a one-legged kid from Port Coquitlam was running across the country. I remember hopping around on one leg in gym class in grade three, pretending to be Terry Fox and then Terry Rabbit and Terry Gopher and a bunch of other one-legged animals. For us Terry Fox was a grown man and might have been the same age as Bobby Orr. Coupland’s book is like the vase–face illusion: I look at Terry Fox and see the man many years my senior, and then I see a boy fifteen years my junior. Terry is a magical book appearing at just the right time to strike a nostalgic note. Even the picture of the garbage bin Terry gave his mother for Christmas one year will send you right back to the ’80s. Or the backyard barbecue with the stubby beers, or the Marathon of Hope T-shirt Fox wore with those iron-on letters. Terry is a remarkably upbeat book for such a sad story, and that note perfectly suits Coupland’s passion for quirky Canadiana, as well as the stoic personality of the eighteen-year-old who lost his life to cancer.

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