Out of eight shortlisted competitors, all of whom being critical to the history of the country, Terry Fox was chosen as the new face of the Canadian $5 bill.
This news was announced in the federal government’s 2024 Fall Economic Statement on Monday, December 16th.
Before he died, Fox was based out of Port Coquitlam, and will now be immortalized as the only British Columbian to don a Canadian banknote.
Fox is well known across the country because after he lost part of his right leg due to cancer, he then campaigned to raise national awareness and funding for cancer research by running his Marathon of Hope.
The Marathon of Hope was to be a cross-Canada, 42-km daily run, on his prosthetic leg.
By February 1981, $24.7 million had been raised—or $1 for every Canadian—but his run was cut short after covering 5,373 kilometres.
The cancer had returned, reached his lungs and took his life.
He and his goals live on through annual Terry Fox Runs which are held all over the world in order to raise money for cancer research.
The Marathon of Hope commemorated its 40th anniversary just four years ago in 2020.
On the shortlist for the new $5 bill, Fox was up against the likes of:
- Canada’s first French-Canadian female journalist, Robertine Barry
- Renowned nomadic Inuit artist, Pitseolak Ashoona
- The most highly-decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian history, Binaaswi (Francis Pegahmagabow)
- The first known Chinese-Canadian born in Canada, Won Alexander Cumyow
- One of Canada’s earliest grassroots humanitarians, Lotta Hitschmanova
- Leader of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Isapo-muxika (Crowfoot)
- Mohawk chief, First World War veteran, and political and social activist, Onondeyoh (Frederick Ogilvie Loft)
The design for the Terry Fox $5 bill has not been made public yet, but will be released sometime in 2025.
