"I have never seen the driver since the day of the accident,” admits Rick Hansen out of the blue. His face registers curiosity and bewilderment – that day in 1973 when he and a friend were thrown from the back of a pick-up truck on their way home from a fishing trip near Bella Coola, B.C., is far in the past but never forgotten. His friend walked away. Mr. Hansen was left a paraplegic at age 15.
The driver never sought him out? Mr. Hansen shakes his head. And he never wanted to find him? “Maybe one day.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Because I hope that he wouldn’t be living with any guilt.” The driver had had a couple of beers and lost control. He too was uninjured. “Life happens for whatever reason,” says Mr. Hansen.
The husband and father of three is seated behind his desk in his Rick Hansen Foundation office in Richmond, B.C., at the edge of the Fraser River. On Sunday, the close of the Paralympics in Vancouver will mark the 25th anniversary of the start of his two-year Man in Motion Tour, during which he wheeled more than 24,000 miles through 34 countries, raising $26-million for spinal cord research and awareness.
The same day, he will announce a global initiative involving a return to some of the places on his tour to “recognize our successes and sign up countries to work together for a cure for spinal-cord injuries.”
He hopes to raise $200-million in two years.
Will he wheel along the Great Wall of China again? “Well, maybe I’ll go down it this time,” he offers with a laugh.
It’s easy to think of Mr. Hansen’s wheelchair as part of his powerful iconography. It’s how we are accustomed to seeing him; how we identify him. (He has said that people often don’t recognize him when he stands or walks on his crutches and leg braces.)
In an interview, he lives up to that iconic image. He is shy, chooses his words carefully, and determined to control his always-positive message – as if he is aware he’s being interviewed as Rick Hansen, the hero, not the man. But over time, he loosens up, revealing himself as funny, thoughtful, insightful, tender.
This year’s Paralympic Winter Games marked unprecedented progress, according to Mr. Hansen, shown here at the opening ceremonies.
The drive to do something, to make a difference, is there. “Still today, I feel my best work is in front of me,” he says, despite his significant achievements, including the Inter- national Collaboration on Repair Discoveries ( ICORD), the largest spinal cord injury research facility in the world, at the University of British Columbia, started with the help of Mr. Hansen’s Foundation. Has he heard that his name is reportedly being floated as a possible Governor-General candidate? He blushes, spluttering, “No. Really?”
But the youthful in-your-face determination is gone, perhaps because he has accomplished so much and maybe because he’s older – now 52.
“You look back and feel overwhelmed by how quickly time goes by,” he says with a sigh. It was on the Man in Motion tour that his relationship with Amanda, then his physiotherapist and girlfriend, solidified. They were married shortly after its completion. Now their daughters are 19, 18 and 15.
Mr. Hansen is not so much a Man in Motion as a Man in Midlife Contemplation.
Of the Paralympics, he expresses only praise.
Isn’t he disappointed that the efforts, including his, to integrate the Paralympics with the Olympics have failed – that they’re still seen as a second class of sports that comes in the wake of the main event when the world’s attention wanes?
“Let me point out the progress,” he says tactfully. “To talk about where we need to go you have to look at where we’ve been,” he says. The evolution in the training and equipment and the level of exposure since he won six medals in the Paralympic Games in 1980 and 1984 have been enormous, he says. At the Winter Olympics in Vancouver there was double-branding, he points out, with sponsors saying they were proudly supporting the Olympics and Paralympics – a first, he says.
