When Terry Fox dipped his prosthetic leg in the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland, on April 12, 1980, barely anyone noticed. His plan sounded impossible: run across Canada on one leg to raise money for cancer research. For weeks, he ran through the Maritime provinces in near-anonymity, averaging 42 kilometres a day on a leg that blistered and bled where it met the prosthetic socket. But word spread. By the time he crossed into Ontario, towns were turning out to cheer. Police escorts appeared. The donations, initially a trickle, became a flood. Fox had hoped to raise one dollar for every Canadian, 24 million dollars in all. He would eventually inspire over one billion dollars in cancer research funding worldwide, though he would not live to see it.

The stretch of Highway 17 east of Thunder Bay is boreal Ontario at its most unforgiving: rock cuts through the Canadian Shield, black spruce crowding the roadside, and Lake Superior's cold presence just out of sight. Fox had been coughing for days, struggling to maintain his pace. On August 31, 1980, the pain became unbearable. He told his friend Doug Alward to drive him to a hospital. Doctors confirmed what Fox already suspected: the osteosarcoma had spread to his lungs. He flew home to British Columbia, and on June 28, 1981, Terry Fox died. He was 22 years old. The exact spot where he stopped running is marked by a roadside sign four kilometres east of where the monument now stands.

Sculptor Manfred Pirwitz captured Fox in mid-run, his prosthetic leg forward, his face set with the determination that defined his journey. The nine-foot figure stands atop a 45-tonne granite base embedded with amethyst, a mineral native to the Thunder Bay region. Governor General Edward Schreyer dedicated the monument on June 26, 1982, just two days before the first anniversary of Fox's death. Originally positioned directly alongside Highway 17, the statue was relocated in the early 1990s when the highway was widened, moved to a dedicated rest area with a panoramic lookout over Thunder Bay and the surrounding boreal landscape. An information centre was added during the relocation, transforming a simple roadside marker into a proper memorial park.

The monument has become one of Ontario's most visited roadside stops. In 1997, a quadriplegic named Dave Shannon paused at the statue during his own cross-Canada trek for disability awareness. In 2000, Fox's family gathered here to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Marathon of Hope. During the 2010 Olympic torch relay, a cancer survivor named Kailie Kernaghan-Keast carried the flame past the monument on the leg east of Thunder Bay. Every September, the annual Terry Fox Run takes place in communities across Canada and in over 30 countries, raising money for the research Fox dreamed of funding. The monument endures as the physical anchor of that legacy, a place where travellers pull off the highway, read the inscriptions, and look out over the same landscape Fox saw on the last day he ran.