CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: Terry Fox S Marathon Of Hope

Paragraph A

In April 1980, Terry Fox, a 21-year-old cancer survivor from British Columbia, dipped his artificial leg into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland, and began running west across Canada. His goal was to raise one dollar from every Canadian for cancer research, a target inspired by his own experience losing part of his right leg to the disease three years earlier. Fox called his run the Marathon of Hope, and he initially expected relatively little public attention, running an average of a marathon's distance nearly every day. He had trained for more than a year beforehand, testing several prosthetic designs to find one that could withstand the daily strain of the run. That boundary is important to the larger account.

Paragraph B

Fox's run drew little national attention during its early weeks, and he struggled at times to secure even basic media coverage in the small communities he passed through. Public interest grew steadily as he crossed into Ontario, where large crowds and growing donations began to reflect the scale of what he was attempting. After 143 days and more than 5,000 kilometres, Fox was forced to stop running just outside Thunder Bay when doctors discovered that his cancer had returned and spread to his lungs. He died the following June, having never been able to complete the run he had planned. The interruption came from illness, not fading public support. This context helps connect the separate observations in the paragraph.

Paragraph C

Although Fox did not finish the run himself, the cause he had started outlived him. The first Terry Fox Run was held in 1981, the year he died, and the Terry Fox Foundation was formally established in 1988 to coordinate fundraising and support cancer research. Unlike many charitable campaigns tied to a single event, the annual Terry Fox Run has continued for more than four decades without interruption, adapting to virtual formats when large gatherings were not possible and gradually expanding to dozens of other countries. By early 2026, fundraising inspired by Fox had passed the one-billion-dollar mark, many times over the modest one-dollar-per-Canadian goal he first set. This framing connects the immediate facts without erasing the distinctions among them.

Paragraph D

Fox has since been commemorated extensively across Canada, including a mountain in British Columbia and a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near where his run was forced to end. A commemorative coin has carried his image, and his name marks schools, roads, and community buildings in many parts of the country, keeping him present in everyday surroundings. Every September, schools across the country continue to hold dedicated fundraising runs in his name, introducing each new generation of students to his story. Through these permanent memorials and the yearly school runs together, his example is renewed each year rather than left to fade after a single occasion. Taken together, these observations define both the pattern and the boundary of the claim.

Paragraph E

Not given in any of the above paragraphs.