Bill Vigars was with Terry Fox during the last stretch of the unfinished Marathon of Hope across Canada. An employee of the Canadian Cancer Society, Mr. Vigars travelled alongside Mr. Fox between Quebec City, through his frantic Toronto reception, and his fateful Thunder Bay lapse.
Mr. Vigars remembers the events of those last few days "unfolding like a movie" in his head.
"I just closed the door of the ambulance and told him I'd make his story live forever."
After Mr. Fox succumbed to cancer, Mr. Vigars said, he became angry. "I was lost for a couple of years after that."
But being in Nathan Phillips Square yesterday, 25 years to the day after Mr. Fox's triumphant entry into Toronto, was somewhat surreal, Mr. Vigars said. "Days like this, it's like he's still here."
A quarter of a century ago, more than 10,000 people crowded the square to welcome Mr. Fox. That day in Toronto became the catalyst for the marathon and cancer awareness in Canada, he said.
Nothing to that point had matched the outpouring of support that Toronto gave Mr. Fox.
"The success of the [Marathon of Hope]was totally based on the reception we got in Scarborough and Toronto," he said.
"I think [Toronto]was then for the event, and continues to be, the base upon which Terry's legacy was built."
Mr. Fox had been met by only small handfuls of roadside supporters before hitting Toronto, Mr. Vigars said, adding that the runner began to really believe that his fundraising goals were possible when he saw the sea of supportive faces in Nathan Phillips Square.
Retired CKFM morning show host Don Daynard said during yesterday's commemoration ceremony that it was his co-worker and fellow radio personality, the late Jeremy Brown, who fuelled other media outlets' interest in Mr. Fox.
"He picked up on Terry Fox. . . . And got all of the other media going," Mr. Daynard said. "The reception he got in Ontario is partly Jeremy's responsibility.
"Who knew that it was going to be this big?"
Many who came out to participate in front of city hall yesterday, including Mayor David Miller, are either cancer survivors or have family members who were affected by the disease.
"The amazing thing, I think, about Terry Fox, is the incredible legacy that he built that he probably had no idea he'd be building," Mr. Miller said.
Then, when the mayor began to speak about the loss of his mother to cancer in 2001, his voice shook, and gave out. He was forced to look down, fighting back tears.
A long silence was eventually met by applause from the crowd.
"My mom died Sept. 23, 2001," Mr. Miller said during a media scrum, again fighting emotion. "And the next Terry Fox run I went to after that was pretty difficult. I can't speak about her, without getting emotional.
"I have the chance to communicate what it means to families, because it is such an appalling disease. To see somebody you love, sit there, dying for a year, it's very hard. And every person in that audience has been touched by cancer, and they understand."
After Mr. Fox's death, Isadore Sharp, CEO of Four Seasons Resorts & Hotels, established the Terry Fox Foundation, which has raised more than $360-million.
Marnie North, who came early yesterday and sat in the front row to pay her respects to Mr. Fox, estimates she has raised $50,000 throughout her 19 years of participating in the Terry Fox Run.
She said she was in Nathan Phillips when he came to Toronto and was so in awe that she maintains a scrapbook of Terry Fox-related newspaper clippings.
"The emotion [25 years ago]was indescribable," she said. "He was so young and so handsome."
If Mr. Fox, someone so young, could achieve so much, surely she, a senior, could make the annual 10-kilometre walk, she said.
Every year, she and her sister collect about $2,000 at their seniors home. She's run out of room on her baseball hat for all the lapel pins and buttons earned on her walks. In 1987, Ms. North lost her 17-month-old granddaughter to cancer. In the past year, three other family members, including her husband, have died of the disease.