Michael J. Fox once worried that telling the world he had Parkinson’s disease could change the way people looked at him.
“Would they laugh if they knew I was sick?” he recalled wondering.
More than two decades later, Fox stood inside Rideau Hall in Ottawa as Canada recognized him not just for the career that made him famous, but for everything he chose to do after Parkinson’s changed his life.
On October 2, Fox was formally invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest rank in the Order. The official citation from the Governor General of Canada praised his global advocacy, his honesty about living with Parkinson’s and the work of his foundation.
For Fox, it was also a deeply personal Canadian moment.
Born in Edmonton and raised in Canada before his acting career took him south, Fox spoke after the ceremony about how much his home country shaped him.
“It’s so many things,” he said of what Canada means to him. “But mostly it’s just growing up in Canada, loving this country, loving what it stands for.”
The diagnosis he kept secret
Fox was only 29 when he was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s disease in 1991.
For years, he kept the diagnosis private.
Part of that came from uncertainty about what the disease would mean for his career. He later admitted that he worried audiences might no longer respond to him the same way if they knew what he was dealing with.
He finally made his diagnosis public in 1998.
Instead of disappearing from public life, Fox gradually turned the thing he once feared people knowing about into one of the biggest causes of his life.
In 2000, he launched the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Since then, the organization has funded more than $3 billion in Parkinson’s research worldwide, making it one of the most influential forces in Parkinson’s research and advocacy.
That work became a central part of the reason Canada elevated him to the highest level of the Order.
Fox had first been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010 and was formally invested the following year. In 2026, he was promoted to Companion, a promotion within the Order recognizing continued extraordinary achievement and service.
“You stood up for me”
Fox has never tried to make living with Parkinson’s sound easy.
He has spoken openly about tremors, balance problems and the increasing physical challenges he has faced over the years.
But he has also talked about something he did not expect when he first made his diagnosis public: support.
While accepting the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the Emmy Awards shortly before his Order of Canada ceremony, Fox reflected on those early fears.
He said he had worried that revealing his diagnosis might damage his relationship with audiences.
Instead, they stayed with him.
“All of you are so uplifting and just made me feel like I could keep doing this,” Fox said. “I hadn’t lost what I do, and it couldn’t take it away from me. And it’s because you stood up for me.”
That support helped change the direction of his life.
Fox eventually realized that the fame he had earned through acting could do something beyond selling movie tickets or attracting television viewers.
His name could bring attention to Parkinson’s research.
“My name could attract attention to help us achieve our goals faster,” Fox told People. “But I also have this disease. I know the issues, and I share my community’s sense of urgency.” People.com
A different kind of legacy
There’s something fitting about seeing Michael J. Fox honored decades after Back to the Future made him one of the defining movie stars of the 1980s.
The ceremony itself even nodded to that history.
Governor General Louise Arbour spoke about the courage, imagination and determination needed to keep moving forward before delivering a line made especially for Fox:
“Back to the future has always been a much better idea than forward to the past.”
But the reason Fox was standing there went far beyond the films and television shows that made him famous.
Canada was honoring what he did after life stopped following the script.
He took a diagnosis he once feared could change the way people saw him and turned his visibility into a force for research, fundraising and awareness.
More than 25 years after making his Parkinson’s diagnosis public, his foundation has helped put billions of dollars behind the search for better treatments and, ultimately, a cure. Michael J. Fox Foundation
Michael J. Fox became famous because people loved watching him act.
But the honor he received in Ottawa recognized something different.
He once wondered whether people would laugh if they knew he was sick.
Instead, they listened.
