25 years later, Rick Hansen’s dream still in motion

“If you believe in a dream and have the courage to try, great things can be accomplished. Anything is possible.” – Rick Hansen

Rick Hansen had a dream of creating a world that is accessible and inclusive for all, and at the age of 27 he set out to make that dream a reality.

A young Rick Hansen sets out on his Man in Motion World Tour to raise awareness on spinal cord injury.

March 21 marks the 25th anniversary of when Hansen began his Man in Motion World Tour. Over the course of two years on the tour, he wheeled 40,000 kilometres around the world, raising $26 million for spinal cord injury research. More importantly, the tour raised awareness about living with disability.

Following the tour, the Rick Hansen Foundation was established to work toward finding a cure for spinal cord injury, or SCI, and to improve the quality of life for those with SCI and related disabilities.

“Looking back, the greatest impact of the tour was and always will be the human side of the mission, which was to inspire people as to the potential of people with disabilities – to cause people to think differently about what was possible for anyone when barriers are removed, attitudinal or physical,” Hansen said in a quote posted on the foundation’s website.

Hansen's tour left an impact   

Robb Dunfield is living proof of the potential for people with disabilities when given the opportunity to succeed.

Dunfield was paralyzed from the neck down after falling from a third-story balcony when he was 19 years old. Now, 31 years later, he is confined to a wheelchair, ventilator dependent and lives with his wife and twin daughters at home. He creates artwork through mouth painting and works as the senior co-ordinator of the Rick Hansen Ambassador Program.

“The program recruits, supports and co-ordinates speaking opportunities for the ambassadors [people living with disabilities] to share their message and show what a person with a spinal cord injury is capable of achieving if given the opportunity,” Dunfield says.

The foundation supports initiatives such as the ambassador program because of the funding it receives from provincial and federal governments as well as from individual and corporate donations.

The 2010 federal budget allotted $9 million over the next two years for the Rick Hansen Foundation. Erin McMillan, senior specialist of marketing and communications at the foundation, says details of how the funding will be used won’t be released until March 21 at the official launch of the 25th anniversary. At that anniversary, the British Columbia government donated $25 million to the Rick Hansen Institute for additional spinal cord research and the federal government has added an extra $13.5 million.

However, according to the Rick Hansen Foundation website, the majority of money raised is directed toward initiatives such as the annual Wheels in Motion event to support quality of life projects and the Rick Hansen Institute which, separate from the foundation, focuses on translational research for people living with spinal cord injuries.

Funded through the Rick Hansen Foundation, Health Canada and Western Economic Diversification, the institute has provided 955 Quality of Life grants to benefit directly thousands of people living with SCI across Canada. The institute has also funded 41 SCI translational research projects across Canada to offer acute care and treatment, rehabilitation, and community integration for people with SCI.

Walking away from SCI

Mike Harcourt, former B.C. premier, says if it weren’t for the advances in research and technology at the time of his accident in 2002, he would be much more seriously disabled.

Robb Dunfield painted "Visions of Possibilities."

“I was out at my place at Pender Island carrying a couple buckets of water and the deck was wet and cold and slippery and I slipped,” Harcourt said.

He fell six meters down a cliff to the rocks and ocean below leaving him with a spinal cord injury similar to the one that paralyzed Hansen, but Harcourt says he was lucky.

“They were able to call in the auxiliary coast guard on a zodiac, a very fast zodiac to take me around to a dock and then onto an ambulance and then to the local island clinic. So we just had far better training and emergency people,” Harcourt says. “And the doctor at the local community happened to have the steroid that wasn’t available when Robb or Rick had their accidents, and was able to inject it in my neck to bring down the swelling to defer the damage to the spinal cord.”

Harcourt says he underwent a rehabilitation program that stimulated his nerve cells with electric impulses thousands and thousands of times over, until he was able to move his fingers and toes and start to rebuild his muscles.

“We were able to put together quite a good game plan to help me go to rehab and then I decided to up the motivation by telling the media that I was going to be walking out of the hospital – that laid down a marker,” Harcourt says.

And he did it.

Harcourt credits Hansen’s dream for a cure as the reason why he was able to walk away from his spinal cord injury.

As important as the research for SCI is, both Dunfield and Harcourt warn against putting too much emphasis on only finding the cure.

“I guess the big thing I always worry about is when you sometimes look at research too much and put a lot of weight on the cure itself, you minimize people’s contributions that are limited by a spinal cord injury,” Dunfield says. “I know a lot of people that are very happy and creating so much – like Rick – he’s doing an amazing job.”