William (Bill) Michael Burles: Son. Nephew. Advocate. Friend. Born Sept. 1, 1976, in Lethbridge, Alta; died June 22, 2023, in Yellowknife of acute renal failure, aged 46.
Bill BurlesCourtesy of family
When Bill was born with spina bifida, doctors told his 22-year-old single mother he wouldn’t live past 20. But Bill soon became a medical veteran with the first of many surgeries: skin grafts to cover the base of his spine, then a shunt to drain fluids from his brain. To make it easier for Bill to get his medical care, his mother, Jacquelyn, got a job transfer and moved from Fort Simpson, NWT, to Yellowknife.
Billy, as we called him then, was an outgoing child with an engaging smile and cherubic good looks. As he entered his tweens, he abandoned crutches and leg braces for a wheelchair and quickly learned wheelies and daredevil turns while zipping around with friends.
He spent summers north of Cowley, Alta., in the Porcupine Hills, herding cattle with his granddad and tearing about on an ATV. Alone at the ranch one evening, Bill found a skunk and her kits in the kitchen. With skunks sniffing his wheelchair, he calmly, at a glacial pace, backed out of the room. When he was sure the skunks had left, he shut the door properly and had a good laugh.
An enthusiastic Boy Scout, Bill, at the age of 12, received the Jack Cornwell Decoration from Governor-General Jeanne Sauvé in Ottawa.
In middle school, Bill’s accent and fluency in his French immersion classes convinced a teacher (wrongly) that his mother and her partner, Ben McDonald, were francophone. In school, however, he sometimes neglected to hand in completed assignments. And he wasn’t always keen on being in class: Once, while chatting with a woman who told him she had taught school for 30 years, 10-year-old Bill responded: “That must have been hell.”
As he got older, Bill became gifted at growing peppers – indoors and outdoors, the hotter the better. He even owned a dehydrator that gave him a steady supply for his eye-watering, tongue-scorching chili. He once duped his Aunt Heather into trying a fiery hot pepper. He kept a straight face until flames shot out of her ears and mouth.
In Yellowknife, even when slush, snow or ice made travelling by wheelchair challenging, Bill could be found chatting with people downtown, wearing his leather jacket, trademark caps and tailor-made jeans he designed with a zippered pocket on top of his thigh.
He was a long-time board member of the NWT Disabilities Council (starting at 18), and a complaint he filed with the territory’s Human Rights Tribunal in 2009 forced taxi companies to stop imposing an unfair wheelchair surcharge. He also helped train staff at NWT Air in Yellowknife on how to serve passengers in wheelchairs. The managers of several buildings in Yellowknife also consulted him on access issues.
His advocacy work kept Bill busy, but he struggled to settle into a career. His break came when a company trained him to rough-cut diamonds, but the company restructured shortly before he finished his training, and the skills were no longer needed. More workplace disappointments sapped his confidence and willingness to take chances.
Medical appointments were routine for Bill, but as he aged, health issues disrupted his daily life. Pressure sores landed him in hospital for months in 2010. He was back with early stage kidney failure in 2019. Back home, handling frustration and boredom with alcohol didn’t help his health. During his long hospital stays and, later, dialysis treatments three times a week, he amused himself by chatting with friends and posting puns and Klingon memes on Facebook.
As a devoted Star Trek fan Bill might have warned us to “Brace for impact!” With medical advances coupled with his tenacity, he more than doubled his initial life expectancy. And while his loved ones understood he probably wouldn’t outlive them, their hearts were not braced for the impact of losing this witty, tenacious, 46-year-old, pun-loving, hot pepper-eating, wisecracking, wheelie-popping daredevil.
Heather Burles and Gillian Burles are Bill’s aunts.
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