Me, Maggie Smith, and Terry Fox

As a young man, I stood at the improbable intersection of these two incredible people, almost 40 years ago. I came away forever changed.

In the heart of Southern Ontario sits the idyllic little town of Stratford. Since 1953 it has been home to the world renown Stratford Festival. I grew up on farm just a few miles outside of Stratford. After submitting my application through the local Canada Employment office, I was delighted to be offered the opportunity to work at the Festival for a few summers while I completed my university degree and went on to college. For the first 2 summers, I laboured in the theatre gardens under the supervision of a very colourful, somewhat crusty yet funny British head gardener. It was his recommendation to theatre management that allowed me to spend the remaining 3 summers in the publicity department.

In those pre-digital days, publicity was largely manual labour. Our department had walls of filing cabinets chock full of photographs, biographies, and background articles to be handed out to the press corps. My primary job was to keep everything in order. Once in a great while, when the full-time staff members were too busy, I got to speak with a reporter, theatre critic or conduct a tour of the theatre. Most importantly, it was a chance to be in the same room with some very accomplished, incredibly famous, creative people. It was something I cherished. Worlds away from the farm.

During those heady years, the Festival was seeking to enhance its international reputation. To that end, they hired a young Robin Phillips as artistic director to succeed Jean Gascon. His job was to ensure that all productions under his watch lived up to those lofty aspirations. Robin Phillips was a true master of stage craft, widely known in theatrical circles for inspiring career defining performances in productions that could make an audience hold its breath. Because of that, many well-known stars welcomed the chance to work with him. For a few summers, the Festival featured Maggie Smith as its headline performer. She was a big a star in those days, decades before Harry Potter, The Lady in the Van and Downton Abbey. She was in Stratford after her second Oscar win for ‘California Suite’ in 1979. Her first was for ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ in 1970. Naturally, our publicity department was inundated with requests to interview her. She was publicity shy and did not care to do interviews. Our job then, was to shield her from all those extraneous outside demands. Because my role was so junior, I barely spoke to her. When we did speak, I am quite certain I was incoherent at best. She probably caught me staring at her from time to time in the Green Room. On many days, she stood at the counter waiting to purchase her lunch, just like the rest of us. It is not very often you get to see a two-time Oscar winner in person. I was star struck. My manners arrived later in life.

One day our Director of Public Relations came into the office looking rather upset. Normally, he was a man of endearing charm, crisp intelligence, and endless patience. He was the epitome of a calm in a storm. Seeing him in such a state was concerning to all of us. Once he had collected his thoughts, we gathered around so he could brief us. He had just learned that Terry Fox and the Marathon of Hope was scheduled to arrive in Stratford in a few days. To our astonishment, someone from the Terry Fox organization had contacted Maggie Smith, presumably through her agent. They asked if she would appear at a ceremony at Stratford City Hall to welcome Terry Fox to the city. Surprisingly, she agreed to do it.

As a publicity department, we should have known of this arrangement well ahead of time. Once word of the event got out, we would be flooded with requests for information, comment, and interviews. If a reporter called to ask and we knew nothing about something this big, our credibility as a department was shattered. Plus, many financial benefactors sitting on the Festival board of directors also needed to know what was going on. Our department was about to get it from all sides. It was my first publicity ‘crisis’, and I loved it.

As a young man, finding my way through this wonderful chaotic world was an adventure I could not have imagined growing up on the farm. That spring and early summer, I became deeply intrigued by Terry Fox, and the Marathon of Hope. As I followed his progress, I could see the support for him building exponentially as he made his way toward Ontario from Eastern Canada. After witnessing the dismay and distress in the publicity department, I needed to see him for myself. I chose to do it away from the ceremony and fawning crowds downtown. On the appointed day, I positioned myself at a street corner near the edge of town where I knew the procession would pass by on the way out of town toward Kitchener. The crowds were much thinner there. It was the perfect place to take in everything, unfiltered.

As I stood alone in nervous expectation, I could see the procession down the street slowly making its way to me. As processions go it was very modest. I remember a couple of cars, a handful of runners and a camper van. It was not very grand. Then I caught a glimpse of Terry Fox himself. With each jump-step, skip and landing I could see the pain the marathon had etched on his face. As he got closer, I could feel it. In his eyes I could see his will, his determination. He seemed to transcend the noise and commotion around him. Focused on each painful step, he looked unstoppable. I stood dumfounded. Staring at him.

The magnitude of what I was witnessing was out of reach at the time. Each second was flooded with images that saturated my consciousness. I tried to filter them critically. But I was undone by my emotions which swirled around like waves crashing to shore, each one erasing the previous. I had no context for this. At the end of a play you stand and applaud. When a goal is scored you stand and cheer. What do you do when you see history being written by an ordinary person? I think you stand and stare blankly.

It took me many months and years to deconstruct it. Like so many things that grew to become big and important, you really cannot recognize it at first. As I look back, the whole thing represented just a few days. Seeing him in person lasted only a few minutes, barely the blink of an eye in the span of a lifetime. He was just a regular guy after all. He set out to accomplish something extraordinary, something superhuman. I got to witness it unfold, in person.

Throughout Canadian history, the list of iconic individuals is a short one. Nevertheless, Terry Fox was able to break the powerful shackles of that convention. The whole idea of a cross country marathon in a geography as vast as Canada was completely over-the-top. Let alone do it on one prosthetic leg. Then, to have the nerve to ask someone like Maggie Smith to endorse the whole outlandish venture was beyond bold. I saw the upset it wrought in my own publicity department. Today we would probably call it ‘disruption’. Like every disruption it shook us out of our complacency. It gave Canadians something to believe in and someone to care about unreservedly. The entire country held its breath at every step and collectively sighed with grief when he was forced to abandon his journey near Thunder Bay. But his vision inspired many others to attempt the same thing. The disruption he began continues. Still audacious. Still bold. Now woven into the fabric of Canada.

For me, it all began innocently enough when Terry Fox’s ‘people’ connected with Maggie Smith’s ‘people’. You could not imagine a more improbable meeting. As I reflect on its meaning decades later, I realize that people are just people. Reputations fueled by hype are what make them seem larger than life.

Despite being bombarded by many opinions to the contrary, I learned that setting an impossible goal without achieving it is not a failure after all. Real failure is to never try. I still hold this to be true no matter who you are or what you do, because I vividly remember the day an Oscar winner met an Icon almost 40 years ago. This humble farm boy from Southern Ontario would never be the same.