DAWSON CITY – By long tradition the staff and students of the Robert Service School spend part of a Friday in early September doing a Run for Terry along the river trail beside the waterfront.

During the earlier part of the week groups of eager students canvassed the town soliciting donations to fund the run/walk event.

Some had spectacular success this year. Janice Rose reported that her daughter, Macy, had managed to collect $1,050 in pledges the day before the event.

This year, everyone gathered at the school entrance for a huge group photo before marching down to the big rocks beside the old CIBC building, led by students carrying the big Terry Fox banner.

Once there, some of the older students were paired up with younger ones and they got ready to walk and run south on the trail.

It was essential to keep moving that morning as it appeared that the mass exhalations of CO2 by a couple of hundred humans was a rallying cry for every “noseeum” in the downtown core to make a beeline for Fifth Avenue and then follow the crowd – assisted by the RCMP – down to Front Street.

It became a community event as a group of mothers with their babies in strollers joined the group after vice-principal Helen McCullough sounded the horn to start moving, while the Klondike Spirit paddlewheeler sounded a greeting from the river.

In total, the school’s run raised $4,245 for cancer research.