Man in Motion World Tour
In 1980, fellow British Columbian and Canadian athlete Terry Fox, who had lost a leg to bone cancer, undertook the Marathon of Hope, intending to run across Canada from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island to raise awareness for cancer research. He made it from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Thunder Bay, Ontario, before a cancer recurrence forced him to stop, about half of the way through his journey. Inspired by Terry's courage, Hansen decided to undertake a similar journey for spinal cord injury research. But his planned path was far more ambitious: he planned to circle the world in his wheelchair.
He embarked on his Man in Motion World Tour on 21 March 1985 from Oakridge Mall in Vancouver. Although public attention was low at the beginning of the tour, he soon attracted international media attention as he progressed on a 26-month trek, logging more than 40,000 km through 34 countries on four continents before crossing Canada. He returned to Vancouver's BC Place Stadium to cheering crowds of thousands on 22 May 1987 after raising $26 million for spinal cord research and quality of life initiatives. Like Terry Fox, he was hailed as an international hero.
Today, the wheelchair and many other items associated with the Man In Motion World Tour are preserved by the BC Sports Hall of Fame and Museum. The song "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" was written in his honor by Canadian record producer and composer David Foster and British musician John Parr and performed by Parr for the soundtrack of the film St. Elmo's Fire. It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in September 1985.
Heart of a Dragon is the film based on Hansen's Man in Motion Tour. Over twenty years ago, Michael French flew with a film crew from Vancouver, British Columbia to Beijing and documented Hansen's entrance into Beijing with over 1 million Chinese heralding his arrival as a hero.
Read more about this topic: Rick Hansen
Famous quotes containing the words man, motion, world and/or tour:
“The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“As I walked on the glacis I heard the sound of a bagpipe from the soldiers’ dwellings in the rock, and was further soothed and affected by the sight of a soldier’s cat walking up a cleated plank in a high loophole designed for mus-catry, as serene as Wisdom herself, and with a gracefully waving motion of her tail, as if her ways were ways of pleasantness and all her paths were peace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If all the world could have seen ‘t, the woe had been universal.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)