Fonyo no longer in Order of Canada
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/01/2010 (5961 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
VANCOUVER — He finished Terry Fox’s run across Canada and raised millions for cancer research, but in the two decades since then his life has been marked by run-ins with the law.
Now Rideau Hall has revoked Steve Fonyo Jr.’s membership in the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honours.
Fonyo, an amputee like Fox, was awarded the order in 1985 after raising more than $13 million. It was recognition of his 14-month, 8,000-kilometre trek on an artificial leg along the Trans-Canada Highway, completing the epic journey Fox had planned from St. John’s, NL, to Victoria.
Owing to a slew of criminal convictions, however, the 44-year-old was stripped of the award.
The one-time hero, who lost his leg to bone cancer at age 12, battled cocaine addiction and depression.
He pleaded guilty in 1996 in Edmonton to more than a dozen charges ranging from assault with a weapon to fraud and theft.
He was handed an 18-month conditional sentence and two years on probation, and told to pay about $11,000 to two supermarkets where he bounced dozens of cheques.
By 2008 he had wracked up at least seven driving convictions including impaired driving, serving time in jail that year for the last offence.
The Order of Canada can be terminated when a recipient has been convicted of a criminal offence, the person’s conduct departs from recognized standards of public behaviour or they have been sanctioned by a professional organization.
Other Canadians whose Order of Canada has been terminated include former NHL Players’ Association head Alan Eagleson, after he was convicted of fraud, and lawyer T. Sher Singh, whom the Law Society of Upper Canada disbarred after finding him guilty of professional misconduct.
There are calls for others to have their orders revoked, including jailed media baron Conrad Black and disgraced Livent founder Garth Drabinsky.
— The Canadian Press