Athlete and companion to the Order of Canada, Rick Hansen, was in Prince Rupert on Saturday to help give exposure to efforts in the city to increases accessibility for people with disabilities. Hansen lost the use of his legs in a car accident when he was 15-years-old, but went on to become a world-famous public figure with his Man in Motion tour in 1985, where he travelled all the way across the globe in his wheelchair; a trip that took 26 months to complete and raised over 25-million dollars for spinal cord injury research.
“ All these years later I can say that I would absolutely never, ever trade my life for the use of my legs. I fell that this is one of the most important lessons: it isn’t about your legs, it’s not about the things that happen to you that you can’t control . . . its about going through that misery and being able to see the beauty on the other side,” Hansen told a crowd at fundraising dinner on Saturday night.
Hansen now runs the Rick Hansen fund, which provides grants for accessibility projects such as the wheelchair-accessible playground at Pineridge Elementary School. Hansen went to visit the school on Friday afternoon to see the playground and say talk to the students, who had been watching videos about Hansen and his tour just hours before.
“It was great to see them (the students), when I went up to see the playground the first thing I noticed was just how seamless it was to get around. As a father of three daughters, I know it’s not just about kids with disabilities getting to play with their buddies who may not have a disability in an inclusive way, it is also about teachers, parents or supporters who can now be there with them,” says Hansen.
Hansen wasn’t in town to promote his own fund however; the Prince Rupert Regional Community Foundation invited him up to the city, which are planning an accessibility project of their own.
“There are two projects that are being looked at very seriously. One is the access to aircraft at the airport, because right now quite the ordeal to get people who are in wheelchairs off and on airplanes. So we’re looking at the feasibility of getting a really good, solid ramp or covered structure.”
“The other one we’re looking at as an alternative is at the pool . . . People who come to the pool in wheelchairs need to be able to get out of theirs and into another one designed for the pool, so we’re looking at a lift that will be able to accommodate that,” says the director of the foundation, Doug Kydd.
On Saturday night, the foundation held a fundraising dinner where corporate sponsors pledged tens of thousands of dollars to the foundation and Hansen gave the keynote speech at the end of the night.
“We are all difference-makers,” he said at the end of his speech.