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By Black Press
May 20 2007


Rick Hansen wheels around the oval across from Centennial secondary school in Coquitlam in 1987, on the final day of the Man in Motion tour. Thousands packed the grounds to get a glimpse.

The restlessness of a teenager welled inside him. Rick Hansen was an outdoorsman, an adventurer, a pioneer, and the salmon in the waters of Bella Coola were calling. For a Williams Lake kid full of zip, this would be one heck of a way to welcome the summer of 1973.

The trip was fabulous and, to cap it off, Hansen and his buddy Don Alder decided to hitchhike home. A tired driver obliged and the pair piled in the back of the stranger’s pick-up.

Hansen dozed off only to be jolted awake by the truck skidding on washboard road. The truck flipped and Hansen was thrown, back first, toward a steel toolbox that had flown out before him.

Then came the crunch.

He lost consciousness. When he came to a few minutes later, the first thing he thought was luck — he wasn’t dead. But then he felt the searing pain in his back. He couldn’t move.

He reached down toward his legs but they were numb; they felt like jelly. In the hospital, Hansen realized he was now a paraplegic.

He thought his life was over but it was just the beginning of a new journey that would lead Hansen on a landmark two-year tour around the world that ended 20 years ago this month.

The teenager spent two days in a Vancouver hospital waiting for an operation, four months in recovery and three months at a rehabilitation centre before he returned home.

For the first time in his life, he struggled with physical barriers and his own mind was forced to adjust to life in a wheelchair.

“One of the biggest things I learned is you need to deal with change. You need to not lose site of the fact — in spite of the fact that happened to you that you can’t control — the fact that you’re the same person,” he says.

His renaissance came from wheelchair sport, which offered him a place to channel his goals and dreams, and from meeting Stan Strong. Strong was a spinal cord injury survivor from the late 1930s, a time when most people died from such injuries.

“When I was complaining about being in hospital for four months, he laughed at me and said, ‘Rick, I was there for four years.’ When I complained about the steepness of a ramp, he chuckled again and said, ‘At least there’s a ramp, Rick.’”

Strong taught Hansen achieving goals required focus. Focus is the difference between mediocrity and excellence.

So Hansen started wheelchair track and marathon racing.

After becoming the first student with a physical disability to graduate in physical education from the University of B.C., he went on to become a world champion, winning 19 international wheelchair marathons, including three world championships.

Through a sports injury, he met his wife Amanda, a physiotherapist.

“That was the best injury I ever did have because she treated my shoulder and then my heart. I can tell you it was one of those moments in time where fate introduced me to one of the best parts of my life, and one of the most important journeys.”

At the age of 27, Hansen believed it was time he helped change the attitudes of people toward those with disabilities.

The plan was to wheel around the world, raising awareness of accessibility and inclusiveness while raising money for spinal cord injury research.

He left Oakridge Mall in Vancouver on March 21, 1985 and, by the second day, Hansen faced high winds, rain, sleet, snow and an injury. With ice packs on his shoulders inside the motor home that followed him, he thought of quitting.

But with support from his team, he took one more stroke. That lead to another stroke, to another kilometre, to another quarter day, another half day and the day was over.

The 40,000-kilometre journey lasted two years, two months and two days, taking Hansen and his dedicated team through 34 countries, raising $26 million.

Along the way were high points: wheeling across the Golden Gate Bridge, rolling through the tense streets of Moscow, through the conflict zone of Jordan and Israel, and returning to Canada, where then-prime minister Brian Mulroney contributed another $1 million to Hansen’s cause on behalf of Canadians.

He also wheeled across the Great Wall of China — defying a symbol where people with disabilities couldn’t go. He keeps a photo of that moment in his closet.

“Every once in a while, I open the door when the going gets tough, I turn on the light and take a look at that and remind myself there are no walls too big in life that can’t be climbed.”

Along the way, people inspired him, including a boy with a spinal cord injury who broke through a crowd on his makeshift wheelchair of plywood and skateboard wheels.

“He came out into the crowd... with tears of joy. He said to me, ‘This is the first time that anyone around me looked at me with possibility. Thank you, thank you for what you’re doing.’”

When he finally reached B.C., thousands lined the streets of each town he passed through. In Vancouver, tens of thousands filled BC Place to cheer him home.

At the finish line, a sign welcoming him gave the tour new meaning: “The end is just the beginning.”

Today, at 49, Hansen lives in Richmond with his wife Amanda and three daughters: Emma, 17, Alana, 15, and Rebecca, 11. He’s also celebrating the 20th anniversary of the completion of his Man in Motion world tour, not so much by looking back but by looking to the future.

Filled with optimism at the coming of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Hansen believes many boundaries faced by people with disabilities will be broken, including seeing someone with a spinal cord injury climb Mount Everest.

Hansen believes a cure is still possible and he’s buoyed by new leaders supporting people with disabilities, the success of Wheels in Motion fundraising events held annually across the country and the building of ICORD (International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries), a spinal cord research centre that will open in Vancouver next year.

Wheelchairs will be artifacts in museums, he envisions, with advanced propulsion technology set to change a century-old device. “In 20 years, we will find a cure. In 20 years, we will become completely accessible and inclusive.”

Hansen says because of the nature of his injury and the length of time since the accident, he would be one of the last people to benefit from spinal cord research. But he would still love to walk again.

“I’d love to walk. It won’t define me as a human being or define the quality of my life or the meaning of it. It’s not why I focus on spinal cord research. I focus on spinal cord research because I know the pain and the suffering that’s involved.

“If I can help make a difference and prevent the next generation from going through that... then to me that’s the driving motivation of finding a cure.”

When speaking to children, he’s often asked if he would trade his life for a chance to go back — to refuse the ride in that pickup truck.

“When I had my injury, I thought that accident was the worst thing that could happen to me. All these years later, as I look toward the experiences, the lessons in life and the journey that I’ve had, I’ve come to realize I’m one of the luckiest guys on the planet.”