Scott Radley: Steve Fonyo was terribly flawed, but pretending he never happened is wrong

Does a story about a young Canadian teen who got cancer, lost a leg, decided to run across the country for charity and raised millions and millions of dollars ring any bells?

It does?

So you know about Steve Fonyo, then.

Kidding. Though this isn't a funny piece. It's desperately sad.

Fonyo was 56 when he died on the weekend. Which might mean absolutely nothing to you because you don't recognize his name. Talking to a bunch of people over the past few days, there are clearly many in that boat. If you're under 30 there's basically no chance you've ever heard of him. Maybe even under 40.

The man hasn't been fully wiped from the Canadian landscape but it's close. Even those old enough to remember his achievements might take a moment or two to search their cranial database to put a name to a story.

That's too bad. His big achievement was amazing.

Four years after Terry Fox died in June 1981, the guy who lived in Hamilton for several months that same summer set out on his Journey For Lives. With the same goal, raising money for cancer research.

You may think he was just trying to grab his 15 minutes of fame. Many do. I don't. Not now.

Years ago, I spent a week with him for a feature I was writing about him. After hours and hours of conversations, I came to believe he legitimately had good intentions. Sure, he might've enjoyed the spotlight but he was naive enough not to understand how bright it was going to be and how impossible it was going to be to follow in the footsteps of a figure who was revered from coast to coast.

The run didn't sound like much fun in the retelling. Yet Fonyo stuck with it and did what he said he would. He dipped his toe in the Atlantic Ocean and then dipped his toe in the Pacific Ocean months later. Along the way he raised $14 million to help people like himself and Fox. It was an astonishing feat.

If you're new to this tale, you're probably asking yourself why you don't know about him.

Mainly because what came next was ugly. Fonyo got himself into all kinds of trouble with alcohol and drugs. He was convicted of a bunch of crimes including assault and fraud and impaired driving. Not just once or twice, either. He spent time in jail. He was stabbed at least once and there were other incidents, too. No question, his life became a full-on, five-alarm mess.

He became impossible to admire. He wasn't merely a flawed hero. He was a disaster, leaping from one crisis to the next. The country even took away his Order of Canada.

It's all understandable in one sense. Why he was allowed to fade from polite conversation, that is. We like happy endings. This was not that. And we expect much, much better from our heroes.

Yet at a time we're supposed to be more enlightened about addiction and possibly mental health problems, the near-complete purge of Fonyo from the public narrative somehow seems unfair. Especially when you wonder if this would've happened to him had he not faced the pressures of fame and expectations he was obviously ill-equipped to handle. All in the pursuit of raising money for charity.

We can't know. But it's a fair question to ask.

Treating him like a saint would be wrong. He clearly wasn't one. Posthumously returning his Order of Canada? Some want that, though not sure it changes anything at this point. Overlooking his bad decisions or excusing his behaviours would be misguided. He has to own those even in death.

But surely now that he's gone, we can find a way to give the man his due for the good he did and the magnificent feat he completed. Even if it's complicated. Seeing the Canadian Cancer Society fire off a compassionate tweet on Tuesday mourning his passing was a good start.

We don't have to build statues, mint coins or hold an annual Steve Fonyo Run. Terry Fox has those areas pretty well covered. But it doesn't seem too much to acknowledge and celebrate that once upon a time, a second guy with one leg ran across the country and helped a lot of people. Maybe even tell his story now and then when the discussion turns to Fox and Rick Hansen.

Rather than pretending he never existed.

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com