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New Terry Fox statue to be unveiled Monday |
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Written by Citizen staff
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008 |
City of Prince George employees left to right Parm Bhatal Matt Bender and David Dalgleish work at placing pedestals for the Terry Fox statue at Community Foundation park recently. (Citizen file photo)
The event will begin at 11 a.m., beginning with a few words from dignitaries followed by some birthday cake.
The original statue was vandalized last summer. The replacement will be put on a metre-high pedestal and will be lit up and surrounded by a small garden and a concrete ring to make it more difficult to reach.
"When we originally did it, we had thought about all this, but at that time we thought it would be nice for people to be able to go up to the statue," said the city's community services co-ordinator, Doug Hofstede. "It's a life-size statue of how he really was and that was something we thought it was kind of special. But with the vandalism we thought we should do a few things, like the lighting, the planting, the raising of the statue, to deter future vandalism and it makes it more aesthetically pleasing."
Not all the bills have come in yet, but the project should cost about $25,000. Each of Pine Centre Mall, Spruceland Mall and Honda North donated $5,000 to the cause, while city council allocated $5,000 and a further $5,000 came from individual donations.
The replacement is made out of the same materials as the original, fibreglass and bronze. Both were sculpted by artist Nathan Scott of Sidney, who also sculpted the Bridget Moran statue downtown on Third Avenue.
The original was placed in September 2005 at the start-finish line for the old 27-kilometre “Boston to Prince George Marathon” which Fox ran in 1979 as a test for his cross-country Marathon of Hope the following spring.
Beginning in Newfoundland, he had intended to run 7,600 kilometres from coast to coast but he had to stop just outside Thunder Bay, Ontario when his cancer appeared in his lungs, after covering 5,373 kilometres. He died 10 months later at age 22.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 24 July 2008 )
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