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B.C. Place Stadium’s Terry Fox Memorial is going, but the Canadian hero won’t be forgotten.
The 1984-installed, Roman-inspired triumphal arch at the foot of Robson Street will be a casualty of the $563 million B.C. Place Stadium renovation.
“There will be an appropriate recognition of Terry Fox on that plaza and it will be known as the Terry Fox Plaza,” said B.C. Pavilion Corporation chairman David Podmore Thursday. “We’re in discussions. We have to rebuild that plaza itself.”
Fred Fox, Terry’s brother, said he was “surprised”.
“Having monuments and statues wasn’t what Terry was about,” Fox said. “Whether it’s in Vancouver or Thunder Bay, if that’s how people want to honour Terry, the family would be happy to know that.”
The arch includes a larger-than-life etching of amputee Fox and a map of his cross-Canada run for cancer research, which was cut short in Thunder Bay, Ont. on Sept. 1, 1980.
In 1983, opinion polls favoured naming the dome after Fox. Instead, the arch was built and a street west of the stadium was named for Fox, who died of cancer in 1981 at 22.