What to know
- Three shows daily: Classic Championship Wrestling runs at 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. at North Bandshell Park.
- Included with admission: There’s no additional charge to watch the wrestling once you’re inside the CNE.
- Familiar faces: Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, Joey Janela, Gangrel and Luigi Primo are among this year’s scheduled wrestlers.
- Get there early: Rudy Blair says the grandstand seating can fill quickly, with some shows drawing upwards of 1,000 spectators.
Bryan Adams performed his new song, “The Ballad of Terry Fox,” for an audience for the first time on Friday night in Hamilton, during his sold-out show at TD Coliseum. Calling him “one of the greatest Canadians ever,” he immediately saw that the audience agreed.
The song — and the late young man, who has become a symbol of bravery, determination and selflessness — received a minute-long standing ovation afterwards.
Many of the 18,000 people in attendance started chanting “Terry, Terry,” before the “Cuts Like A Knife” singer continued with his two-hour concert.
“The Ballad of Terry Fox,” which was released the day before, is the closing track to Hamilton director Sean Menard’s upcoming documentary, Run Terry Run, about Fox’s inspiring Marathon of Hope to raise money for cancer research and his decades-long legacy.
The film will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 19 and opens nationwide in theatres on Oct. 9.
Written with great care, every line in “The Ballad of Terry Fox” helps tell the complete story, remarkably in just a few verses, not just the biographical details but Fox’s impact and legacy, with an anthemic chorus at its core that refers to him as “our man.” For a songwriter whose catalogue is filled with songs about love, rebellion and youth, this is Adams’ “Streets of Philadelphia,” widely viewed as an emotional Bruce Springsteen masterpiece.
Fox lost his right leg to bone cancer in 1977 at age 18, which motivated him to start his cross-country Marathon of Hope on April 12, 1980, to raise one dollar for every resident of Canada. Wearing a prosthetic leg, Fox ran a full marathon every day for 143 days. He was forced to stop on Sept. 1, 1980, when the cancer spread to his lungs. He died June 28, 1981, at just 22.
While his run raised $24.7 million when he was alive — the population of Canada at the time — the Terry Fox Foundation started by his mother in 1988 has brought in over $1 billion for cancer research.
“When I was 20 years old, and I was playing nightclubs, there was a guy doing his own tour across Canada, and we all knew about it, of course,” Adams said, before playing the song. “He was also a Vancouver boy, and I’ve got a new album coming out this October, and this song is on the record. I’d like to play it for you right now. He’s one of the greatest Canadians ever.”
The music video, directed by Menard, features Adams on acoustic, intercut with footage of Fox’s historic run and people meeting him and cheering him on along the way. In Hamilton, on the screen behind him, he used just footage of Fox with the lyrics overtop.
“The wind was cold and thin / Out on the highway’s edge / A solitary figure / With a solemn pledge / One leg of bone, one leg of steel / A skip and a heavy heel / Brought up in BC and Manitoba / He didn’t fail to make us feel,” Adams sings.
Another verse captures the physical toll: “He carried the nation’s weight for 26 miles / Then he’d go again” and “The road was lined with people / Who came out to see him run / But the lungs grew tired and he got weary / Before he was done.”
The song concludes with lines like “But the fight still carries on” and a famous quote from Fox: “He said, ‘It’s a mission greater than himself,” before ending with: “He ran for everybody / And he ran for me and you.”
Later in Adams’ Hamilton set — after playing another eight songs from his hit-laden catalogue — he said he forgot to mention that it was the first time the band had played the song, outside of rehearsal, and added “one very important detail that it’s part of a film, which is coming out in October. It was directed by a Hamilton boy named Sean Menard. He’s here tonight. He’s made an incredible film, and I want you to go see it, because this is a spectacular tribute to one of Canada’s finest, Terry Fox.”
Proceeds from the Run Terry Run’s theatrical run in Canada go to the Terry Fox Foundation.
“The Ballad of Terry Fox” will also appear on Adams’ forthcoming album, the Canada-focused How’s It Goin’, due in October.
Buy song https://lnk.to/BalladofTerryFox
