The first time I went to Stanley Park was probably in 1976, when I had just come down from Williams Lake, B.C., to go to the University of British Columbia. I’d decided to do some training, and one of my friends said, “Let’s go to Stanley Park,” and off we went. We wheeled around it, and it was like I had gone to the other side of the moon; it was quite a long journey for me at the time because I’d just come out of the rehabilitation centre and was starting to learn about my endurance and how far I could go. I thought, “Well, if I did that, I could go even farther.”
When I was an aspiring Paralympian in the late 1970s and 1980s, I lived in a little apartment in Kitsilano and was always trying to get down to the water, which I’ve always been drawn to. When parts of the seawall started to become accessible, Stanley Park became my training ground because I could go completely around it.
Even though the park is in a big city, when you get out on the seawall, you feel like you’re a part of the natural beauty of the ocean ecosystem. When you move around to Siwash Rock, you really get that sense of the West Coast, with the waves crashing in off the rocks. Sometimes at high tide and with strong winds, the water can blow up and over the wall and onto the trail, and you have to time it so you can pass before the next wave crashes across. If you’re lucky, you can see a seal or even a killer whale or a humpback whale.
The park is a place that made me realize that the world is accessible and inclusive, that I can have a life that’s full, that I don’t need to be cured in order to be whole, be included or be a part of something special. It’s truly inspiring.