VANCOUVER - Supporters threw him parades, named him honorary mayor of Regina, and composed a celebratory song in his honour. Sylvester Stallone personally told Steve Fonyo at the time that his one-legged trek across Canada would inspire the actor's fight scene in Rocky IV.

But Fonyo was behind bars this week when it became public that he'd been stripped of his Order of Canada following years of run-ins with the law.

When the governor general presented Fonyo with the order in 1985, his then-girlfriend recalls his reaction as underwhelmed.

"I was there the day he got it and it was such an honour to have seen that, but I'm not sure he realized how big of a deal that was," said Sonja Gosteli.

Yet more than two decades later, a middle-aged man with several criminal convictions on his record and a history of drug use and depression, the amputee runner would hang the framed award on the wall of a mechanic shop where he worked, along with a grainy photo of himself with then prime minister Brian Mulroney, to inspire him to get his life back on course.

Last summer, Fonyo asked friend and ex-employer Satnam Singh for advice after getting a letter notifying him that Rideau Hall was considering stripping him of the award.

"It was something special to him. He said 'What can I do because they want to take it away from me,"' recalled Singh, who owns Trans Canada Auto & Transmission Services in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, B.C.

Fonyo was just shy of 20 in 1985, when he finished his 14-month trek across the country. His journey began in St. John's, Nfld., where crowds of people cheered the 18-year-old on as he limped on an artificial leg across Canada, delivering on a goal set by Terry Fox, whose own run was cut short by a recurrence of cancer.

By the time he arrived in Victoria, triumphant but long overdue, Fonyo had raised more than $13 million for cancer research.

For all his accolades, Fonyo sometimes had a brusque reaction to the attention, which set him at odds with the lasting images of Fox and Rick Hansen, who circled the globe in his wheelchair.

On the day he was invested in the order in Ottawa, he refused to give a Canadian Press reporter an interview, saying he'd been "misquoted enough in my life."

Troubled waters

Fonyo's father died of lung cancer only months after he completed his run, and his family's restaurant in his of hometown Vernon, B.C., was in financial trouble. Eventually, Fonyo began running afoul of the law.

He wracked up dozens of criminal convictions and varying jail sentences for assault, forgery and drunk driving. He battled cocaine addiction and nearly took his own life, according to reports at the time.

"The whole journey wore at him," said Gosteli, who enjoyed a six-month romance with Fonyo after meeting him along his run near Strathmore, Alta.

She attributes his downward spiral, in part, to a degree of expectation he felt he deserved for dipping his prosthetic toe in one ocean and then the other.

"It was a whole sociological shock to him," she said. "You go from being just a guy from a small town to suddenly getting a lot of people who idolize you."

So it was no surprise to her when he was booted from the order.

"I had already known he had missed the boat in the first place. It's just too bad," she said. "He hadn't been the example he should have been to youth in Canada.

"But in the same breath, did he ask for that order?"

Fonyo is currently serving several weeks in jail, after pleading guilty to assault, said friends.

But for all his troubles, Fonyo still has fans. Dozens of people on Facebook and Twitter are calling for the re-instatement of Fonyo's honour.

"You're talking about his past life, and what he got was based on an achievement which was real -- so why take it away?" said Singh.

The Order of Canada can be revoked 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.

Missteps

Friends said in recent years Fonyo had finally seemed to clean up his life, until he got involved with someone who was using drugs. Singh said he was forced to fire him last summer, around the time he learned his order was in jeopardy.

Fonyo's mother Anna, now 77, was indignant about her son's latest misstep.

"So what, he lost it?" she said when reached by phone, and asked for the media to leave him alone.

Yet she said it pains her to enter the room in her home still adorned with newspaper clippings and photos of a son she still loves despite it all, she said.

"But lots of people already, after all those years, they forgot," she said, adding museums have since returned his mementoes. "I talked to some people who do not even know his name, not even recognize him."