Taim Laham remembers her first Terry Fox Run, she was only two years old and it was on her father's shoulders.
Today, the 16-year-old brunette is a true veteran of the Marathon of Hope and she is already looking forward to her 14th participation come September.
Last year, Laham even tried to get a sense of what Terry's marathon would have felt like with an artificial leg. She tried to walk for 5 minutes on one foot.
"It was difficult, so I switched back to two feet" Laham says, "but I wanted to feel what he felt, I also wanted to revive what he was doing and repeat his actions."
Most Canadians are well aware of Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope, that annual testament to the courage of the 22-year-old cancer patient who, in 1980, attempted to run across Canada as an inspiration to others.
What they may not realize is that Fox's legacy has now spread around the world, to 29 different nations at last count, including such unlikely places as here in Syria, a country we tend to hear about only when news from the Middle East is at its darkest.
Taim Laham is one of the approximately 3,200 Syrians who, last year, put on their running shoes and their T-shirts with the image of the Canadian hero on the front and take to the streets of Damascus.
For an entire morning, they would run the seven-kilometre distance on one of Damascus' busiest highways — set aside for the event — to raise money for cancer research.
