Cancer sucks.

It sucks life out of its victims: the men, women, youth, and children who fight the disease to their last, laboured breath. It sucks hope and happiness from the loved ones left behind, the friends and family members who have to muster the will to collect the remnants of their shattered lives and move forward.

Cancer doesn't care. It doesn't care whom it attacks - the elderly, the frail, teenagers in peak health before the disease washes through their bodies like a tsunami- it attacks good people, in some cases bad people.

Cancer targets babies and toddlers too young to comprehend that it is about to sweep their young lives out from under them.

It killed Terry Fox, who ran for cancer research, close to 42 kilometres a day through Canada's Atlantic provinces, Quebec, and Ontario in 1980 before the disease spread into his lungs.

It's killed millions worldwide. Maybe cancer stole the life of someone you know, someone you love.

Cancer patients and those close to them have support.

Scientists, researchers, and oncologists, and hospice workers: they're the ones searching for a cure, helping victims in the throes of the disease, and finally helping them find a little bit of comfort, a little bit of peace, as they live out their last days.

Cancer has lots of enemies. Nearly 300 of its adversaries banded together in Langley City Sunday morning. At the same time, 125 more were in Walnut Grove. Through the combined efforts of the Langleys' two Terry Fox Runs, roughly $14,000 will go to cancer research.

As Terry Fox demonstrated 32 years ago, every step counts in the hope of one day making this sinister disease history, once and for all.