I was thinking about living people as icons, but yeah, Terry Fox would be the all time heavyweight champion.
Can’t believe I forgot Robert Bateman, though. (Honorable mention goes to to Tricia Romance.)
No, it’s happened before. I was once on a bus from Calgary to Edmonton, when we were stopped by a crash in a winter storm that closed the road (IIRC, at Nisku, near Edmonton Airport). The bus wasn’t involved, and RCMP were on-scene, but we still sat for a few hours before being diverted up an on-ramp, and backroading it the rest of the way to Edmonton.
Speaking of Terry Fox, I caught part of a motivational speaker’s show last weekend talking about him - he was using Terry as an example of how you don’t necessarily have to do what you set out to do to be successful. He said something about how Terry didn’t make it anywhere close to his goal of running across Canada, but the year after he had to stop due to the cancer coming back, his run raised well over his original fundraising goal, and since then, The Terry Fox Runs around the world have raised amazing amounts of funds for cancer research.
I think I’d add Gordon Lightfoot, Jay Baruchel (Loves Canada and isn’t afraid to show it), Curtis Hargrove (link), Yann Martel, and Paul Franklin to that list..
Never heard of Paul Franklin; I had to look him up. Now Paul HENDERSON, on the other hand…
If we’re mixing in more sports icons, we have to include Larry Walker and Steve Nash, both Canadians that did the undoable, by winning MVP awards for American-dominated sports.
Look, don’t get me wrong, Terry Fox has a place in our hearts that will probably never, ever be replaced. The thought of his commitment and courage literally brings tears to my eyes. If you can watch his documentary and not tear up then you are Vulcan.
Hélène Campbell, although she hasn’t tried to run across the country, and although she has mounted her campaign through social media mostly, deserves a lot of credit for raising the awareness of organ donors. She didn’t have to do anything, but she has, and it’s worked tremendously, and she deserves much recognition.
I’m sorry, Leaffan, but I’ve never heard of Hélène Campbell. Terry Fox is still well in the lead in terms of popular recognition, i think.
Hélene Campbell probably beats Terry Fox for recognition in the US, for what that is worth.
From the Stats Canada twitter feed Mar. 20th -
Only 82%? 
I really tried to be patient with Tbay Tel. My grandfather worked for them starting as a linesman right after WWII until he retired as some manager in the early 1980s. Local pride, city owned telphone company that runs a profit, blah blah blah. But they suck and I hate them and they could never ever get high speed to work in my house. They rewired everything and it never worked. We went with Shaw after that for phone and internet. We got Roger’s phones because we did not want to deal with Tbay tel. Then Rogers sold 807 to Tbay Tel. They are still being dinks about our contract which we bought out when we moved across Canada.
Did I mention they suck and and I hate them?
Both Joey Votto and Justin Morneau, Canadians, have also won an MVP Award in Major League Baseball, which suggests Walker’s accomplishment was not quite that un-doable.
We cannot forget Fergie Jenkins. Maybe not an MVP in baseball, but he was an All-Star a few times, he was a Cy Young award winner, and he is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Not too bad, I’d suggest, for a guy from Chatham, Ontario.
No, not at all. It makes perfect sense.
I would suggest that in both of the items you cited, negligence was the cause. Speeding, being unaware of who has the legal right to cross the street (did the garbage truck run a red or blow a stop sign?). In any event, the death of a child legally crossing the street is a tragedy; undoubtedly, the garbage truck driver was most likely negligent somehow.
But, Rick, you should know that the traffic laws regarding pedestrians here in Alberta are a complete 180 to what you know (and I recall) in Ontario. In Ontario, at an unregulated intersection, pedestrians wait until it is safe to cross the street. Traffic keeps on going. But here in Alberta, at an unregulated intersection, pedestrians don’t have to wait–they simply step off the curb, and traffic is supposed to screech to a halt.
Rick, you’re familiar with the extremely well-marked crosswalks in the GTA, where pedestrians either push a button to activate overhead signals (and wait for traffic to stop) or simply point while standing at the curb (again, waiting for traffic to stop). But there are few overhead signals here, and no culture of pointing to cross. And unlike Toronto, every–and I mean every–unregulated Alberta intersection is considered a crosswalk, and pedestrians do not have to point. They simply have to step off the curb and walk.
I can understand Cat’s frustration, and I’ve seen more than one rear-ender caused by somebody slamming on their brakes because a pedestrian is nearing an intersection, and may, possibly, decide to cross the street, though we really don’t know. I can also understand her frustration with playground zones since, as she quite correctly states, playground zones are 30 km/h until 11:00 pm or later at certain times of the year (low speed limits in playground zones exist until one hour after sunset in Calgary; and in summer, the sun sets at 10:00 pm or so). Who lets their kids play in the playground until 11:00 pm?
Anyway, what all this means is that kids here are told that, as pedestrians, they are the boss. They don’t have to watch for traffic; traffic will watch for them. Again, this is a complete 180 to what I learned as a kid who walked to school in Toronto–we looked both ways, we pointed at crosswalks; and at uncontrolled intersections, we waited until it was safe to cross. Elmer the Safety Elephant was our mascot. But there is no Elmer here, and no culture of pedestrians being responsible for their own safety. The entire onus for any accident is on the driver; the pedestrian–child or adult–is blameless, no matter how boneheaded, or how engaged they are with a personal electronic device they are when stepping off the curb at an unregulated intersection. It makes driving a car in an Alberta city possibly more challenging than I ever found it to be in Toronto.
Regardless, Rick, I think both you and Cat are on the same page. Neither one of you wants to see pedestrians, children or adults, injured by a car. I’d suggest that Albertan children get the same kind of traffic safety training that you and I got in Ontario, Rick; which means that as pedestrians, we watch for cars; and as drivers, we watch for pedestrians. Seems simple enough to you and me, but IME, the vast majority of Albertan pedestrians have yet to learn their part.
“Culture of pointing to cross?” I’m dying with laughter here. There’s no such thing in Toronto, or anywhere else in Ontario I’ve lived. Never heard of it, never seen it done.
No? As a child in downtown Toronto, we pointed to cross at marked crosswalks. I did it often enough, as did my friends and schoolmates. Signs at the crosswalks told us to.
Am I that old? 
I should fill in a few blanks. At a marked crosswalk (the overhead sign, and the double white lines indicating the crosswalk), you stood on the curb, and pointed, using your arm, across the street. This indicated that you wanted to cross; and traffic, seeing you point, would stop.
Really, Rick, you never saw these? (No snark, but they were common as dirt in the residential areas where I lived in Toronto as a child.)
The crosswalks? Sure. They’re everywhere.
People pointing? No, that never happens. The practice, if it ever existed, is long dead now. What would the point (ha) be anyway? It’s not as if drivers are looking. People get run over even after pressing the button at the light-up crosswalks.
That’s how I recall it having been in Toronto. Don’t know what goes on there these days.
The practice existed, and drivers stopped. I cannot find a cite (the internet is wonderful, but just try finding an image of a 1960s Toronto crosswalk complete with signs telling pedestrians what to do). So you will have to go on my word. I trust that you will not doubt that. 
At any rate, as I recall, Rick, you are younger than I am, so perhaps such things had been done away with by the time you were crossing streets by yourself. Again, no snark; just a fact. Such things existed in my childhood; I will grant that they may not have existed in yours.
The point (pun fully intended) is this: by pointing, a pedestrian indicated that he or she wanted to cross the street. There was no ambiguity, as we have in Alberta; pointing indicated that the Toronto pedestrian wanted to go from one side of the street to the other.
I swear I saw someone doing that point thing once. IIRC it was in one of the suburbs west of Toronto.