It wasn’t a violent crash, but at the moment of impact I felt a “twang”—as if some internal rubber band had snapped off its hooks. I had the sudden, sickening feeling that something overwhelming had happened. I ran a quick body check and then tried to flex my leg muscles. Nothing. When I reached down to touch them, there was no sensation. Then it hit me. I had broken my back. I was paralyzed.
Less than a hundred feet away, my friends awaited my call that everything was okay. But first I needed to grasp what had happened. My thoughts for the next thirty seconds were planted indelibly in my brain. I’ve broken my back. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. I don’t think I can handle this. I don’t think I want to live. There was a short pause, and then I found myself insisting, No! I still have my mind. I need to see this as a challenge. The issue here is not my broken back; it’s my attitude. How I handle this is up to me.
It was the most dramatic turning point of my life. In the space of a few seconds I had to make the transition from a world that celebrated physical activity to being in a wheelchair. Only then did I finally yell for help.
My new home following the accident was an electric circle bed in Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital. “You’d better get used to it,” the staff informed me. “You’re likely to be here for a couple of months.”
While in the hospital, I asked myself the same questions repeatedly: Who am I? Could this still be me? From Mr. Jock to this, all because one connection had been broken? It seemed impossible. I had always known intellectually that I was equal parts body, mind and spirit. Now I began to feel that belief in my heart as well. If the most important part of my essence was spiritual, I realized that in the greater scheme of things, my broken back was secondary.
One day, I was totally immersed in these thoughts and looking for an affirmation of some kind. My answer came that evening. As I prepared for bed, I was startled to see my big toe move slightly—an unquestionable miracle! The next morning my therapist was awestruck to discover I had weak movement in every major muscle group of my lower body. We hugged and cried together out of sheer joy!
I had been told I would never move my lower body again, and yet I had. “A significant, spontaneous improvement in the lower extremities,” was noted on my file. It seemed to me the word “miracle” was easier to spell.
The gift of healing continued, and within a few days, by supporting myself with parallel bars, I could stand. After four months of therapy, I could walk short distances using canes. By now I was in the rehabilitation wing. Two weeks after arriving, my old hang-gliding buddy Bob came to visit on a lovely, warm Saturday morning in October.
“We’re going out to the parking lot to get some air,” I told the nurse as I wheeled down the hall. I didn’t tell her about the sign on my door, “Gone Flying.” Our supposed “parking lot” was really a three hundred-foot grass strip behind a farmer’s barn. There, resplendent with its rainbow-coloured wings, was Bob’s gift of magic—his single-seat, ultralight plane, fully gassed and ready to fly.
Was I afraid? Yes, absolutely. This was not a flight to be rushed. But after several high-speed taxi runs to reorient myself, I felt ready. With heart-pounding anticipation, I pulled back on the throttle and took off. I was in the air. I was flying!
I flew that day. And flew and flew. As I buzzed the field and saw my empty wheelchair below, I was overcome by this serendipitous moment. Even if I couldn’t walk, I could still fly! In that moment, I knew I would again find meaning and excitement in my life. I was ecstatic! I could fly! I would fly!
Two-and-one-half hours later, utterly euphoric, I headed back to the hospital. It had been the most memorable flight of my life. The sight of my empty wheelchair brought with it a leap of hope. Things could only get easier from now on.
My romance with flight continued. Within eight months of my accident, I was teaching eager students to fly in a new, two-seat ultralight. By the following summer, I had opened my own flight school. One day, an idea suddenly came to mind. Why not fly one of these machines across Canada? If you can go twelve miles, why not 5,000? And so the dream was born. Soon it became a clear conviction, not just a crazy idea—I knew I had to do it.
I decided to make the flight a fund-raising venture for the Canadian Paraplegic Association and tie it into Expo ’86, the World’s Fair in Vancouver.
“Forget it Carl,” was the message from conventional pilots I spoke to. “This has never been done before with an ultralight.” Not stated, but sometimes implied were the words “. . . let alone by someone in a wheelchair.” And then there was the money. I calculated the cost would be over $100,000, and now I had to find the funds. But when Air Canada committed itself as a major sponsor, and Expo ’86 endorsed my flight, I knew it was going to happen.
The planning was so endless, at one point I became overwhelmed and began to doubt myself. Why am I taking this chance? What if the experts are right and this just isn’t possible? It was then I had to forgo my programmed need for security and make the deliberate decision to take a risk. Without that decision, the dream might have died at this point.
The big day finally arrived. Just outside Halifax Harbour, my ultralight bobbed gently in the Atlantic Ocean. I taxied out to open sea, took a deep breath and shoved the throttle full forward. Moments later I was airborne! At three hundred feet I banked right, gave a final wave—a dip of the wings—and then headed west to Vancouver, five-thousand long miles away.
With a ground team travelling with me, I had to land every couple of hours to refuel. My memorable journey included moments of great euphoria and incidents of near disaster. Once, my engine failed at two hundred feet, resulting in a forced landing on the Trans-Canada Highway in northern Ontario. Often, it was fear that occupied the second seat of my craft. Had I chosen to remain focused on my fear, however, there were many places that the flight might have ended. Instead, I chose to keep my thoughts on my goal—Vancouver and Expo ’86—and carry on. The media followed us on our journey, and CTV produced a one-hour documentary for Canadian television. In the end, my flight raised more than $100,000 for the Canadian Paraplegic Association.
If there was a moment of pure joy on this flight, it happened in August in the middle of the Rockies. At five-thousand feet I suddenly encountered a thermal, a column of warm air rising upward. My reactions were instinctive, and I was soon spiralling up higher and higher until I had passed eleven-thousand feet. Then magic happened. Off to my left, a bald eagle, less than one hundred feet away, drifted past my wing in effortless flight, silent as a shadow. For one brief moment, he turned toward me and our eyes locked. Time was suspended as this master of flight and I shared an almost sacred encounter. The spell broke just as quickly when the eagle dipped a wing, veered gracefully and disappeared. I flew on alone, overcome with a sense of wonderment and oneness with the sky.
August 28, 1986. It had been fifty-eight days and five-thousand miles, and now there were just thirty more miles to go. My heart was full with emotion as the Pacific Ocean slid into view.
“Gift of Wings, give us a smile on your left,” my headset suddenly crackled. I jumped, startled by this intrusion. Off my left wing tip hung a huge helicopter with a photographer perched in its open door. A television news crew was filming this last chapter of my journey. We flew in formation over the city toward the coast, where I circled over the pavilions of Expo. I was suddenly tempted to turn and head back to the mountains. I wanted to keep flying. I had gently in the ocean waves—this time the Pacific Ocean. I had done it! A coast-to-coast flight in an ultralight aircraft. I had been given my Gift of Wings!
Carl Hiebert
Waterloo, Ontario
Ultra light aircraft photo by Alan Ralston from Gift of Wings: An Aerial Celebration of Canada by Carl Hiebert. Reprinted by permission of Alan Ralston. ©1981 Alan Ralston.
David’s Run
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.
Walter Elliot
It was t
he day of the big cross-country run. Students from seven different elementary schools in and around the small town of 100-Mile House, British Columbia, were warming up and walking the route through thick evergreen forest. In the five years I had been teaching at Horse Lake Elementary School, I had come to respect the tough pioneer spirit of the local people. Named for its location 100 miles from Lillooet, (mile zero on the old Cariboo Gold Rush Trail), and dotted with active cattle ranches, 100-Mile House sometimes seemed like a place out of time, with its horses, cowboys and cattle drives. At an elevation of 930 metres, 100-Mile House is a community in which spring comes late, snow comes early and winter sports are a local passion.
It was now late May and the ground had only just dried enough from the melting snow to hold the race. I looked around and finally spotted David, standing by himself off to the side by a fence. He was small for ten years old, with freckles and unruly red hair. But his usual big toothy grin was absent today. I walked over and asked him why he wasn’t with the other children. The only response he gave me was he had decided not to run.
What was wrong? He had worked so hard for this event!
I quickly searched the crowd for the school’s physical education teacher and asked him what had happened. “I was worried the other kids would laugh at him,” he explained uncomfortably. “I thought there might be a fight if our kids tried to defend him. I gave him the choice to run or not, and let him decide.”
I bit back my frustration. I knew the coach meant well and sincerely thought he was doing the right thing. After being assured David could run if he wanted, I turned to find him coming towards me, his small body rocking from side to side as he swung his feet forward, awkwardly walking on his toes.
David’s cerebral palsy prevented him from walking or running like other children, but at school his peers thought of him as a regular kid. He always participated to the best of his ability in whatever they were doing. Which is why none of the children thought it unusual that David had decided to join the cross-country team. It just took him longer, that’s all. David had not missed a single practice, and although he always finished his run long after the other children—he did always finish. He had stubbornly run a total of twenty-three kilometres in practice runs to prepare for that day’s two-and-a-half-kilometre (1.5-mile) run, and he had asked me to come and watch. As a special education teacher at the school, I was familiar with the challenges David faced and was proud of his dogged determination.
We sat down together on some steps, but David wouldn’t look at me. I quietly said, “David, if you don’t want to run today, no one is going to make you. But if you’re not running because you’re afraid someone is going to laugh, that’s not a good enough reason. There will always be someone who will laugh and say mean things. There are people like that, and that’s just the way it is. The real question is whether you are going to let those few people stop you from doing something you really want to do. Are you going to let them get in your way? If you really want to run, David, then you run!”
I held my breath as David took this in. Then he looked at the field and said with a fierce but quiet determination, “I’m gonna run.”
I stood on the sidelines with the excited crowd as David moved up to the starting line. The starter’s gun sounded, and David lurched forward with the other children. But he had only gone a few metres before he tripped and fell flat on the ground. My heart sank. As I started to shout encouragement, other voices around me took up the call. “Come on David, you can do it!” I knew without even looking that these voices were not just those of his schoolmates. They came from parents, teachers and kids from other schools, who quickly understood the courage it took David to attempt this run.
David picked himself up and started again. All the other runners had disappeared over the hill. But it didn’t matter. This was David’s run. He had worked for it, and he wouldn’t give up! As long as he was in sight, David heard people calling his name.
I waited anxiously by the finish line as the first runners completed the two-and-a-half kilometres of forest trails. Soon all of the other runners had come in and another race had begun. Still no David! I started to feel sick. Had I done the wrong thing? He hadn’t checked out the trail with the other runners. Could he have become lost? Finally, a small figure emerged from the forest. With heels kicking out to the side and his body rocking with the rhythm of his run, David plodded toward the home stretch. He raised his arms in triumph as he crossed the finish line to wild cheers and applause.
Then, when David’s coach slapped him on the back and said proudly, “Good job, David!” he caught my eye, flashed me a toothy grin and said, “That was easy!”
At the end of the year, the track coach asked the class to nominate one of their classmates for the athletic award for their grade. Without hesitation the whole class voted for David, saying that no one had worked harder for that award than he.
It was an amazing moment at our year-end assembly. The auditorium resounded with cheering and applause when David came forward and received his award for outstanding athletic achievement—from his beaming coach.
Linda Chamberlayne
Kelowna, British Columbia
The Making of a Miracle
To the immigrant who comes on dreams and bears the mirror that reflects us all. Keep faith— this place is capable of miracles.
Lindalee Tracey
A Scattering of Seeds
It had been five long years without our little daughter. How can I explain the desperate feeling? The situation seemed hopeless. We’d been in Canada for five years and had just received our fourth rejection letter from the Hungarian government. There was no explanation—as usual—just a short statement: “Your request cannot be fulfilled at this time.”
In 1945, while fighting in Hungary against the invading Soviet forces, I was captured and forced to spend the next six years in a Soviet camp doing hard labour. My wife and I had been married only two months when I was captured, so we weren’t reunited until April 1951. After my release, I was forced into exile as a state farm worker. Although she did not have to, my wife went with me voluntarily. Our beautiful baby daughter was born on August 15, 1952, while we were in exile.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, my exile ended. My wife had a residency permit back in Budapest, Hungary, but as a former deportee, this status was denied to me. So I lived illegally with her in Budapest—where I worked as a bricklayer— in constant fear of being found out and arrested. In order to protect our beloved daughter, we sent her to live with my parents in a town close to the eastern border.
I was a strong supporter of the Hungarian freedom fighters, and in 1956, when they were subdued by the Soviets after a spontaneous uprising, we were suddenly forced to flee. First we headed for my parents’ home to get our daughter, but our attempts to reach her failed. The Danube River flowed between Budapest and the town where my parents lived, and all the bridges that would have allowed us to cross the river were guarded as a result of the uprising. Budapest was now under siege, and we were in great personal danger. Despite our terrible despair over leaving our daughter behind, we had to leave.
With the help of some very good people, we made our escape from Hungary to Austria and eventually to Canada and to freedom. We settled in Winnipeg and started a new life. Our beautiful little daughter was only three years old when we came to Canada and began the process of applying for her to come join us in Winnipeg. Little did we know how many years it would take.
When we received our fourth rejection from the Hungarian government, I feared for my wife’s emotional health. First she had waited six years for me to return from captivity; she had now been waiting another five years for our daughter to return to us. How much could one person endure? The most frustrating part of it was that with each rejection we were required to wait another six months before making another application.
Another six months! I couldn’t bear waiting one moment longer. We had become Canadian citizens and were so very
grateful for that, but the seemingly simple matter of reuniting our family remained out of our reach.
One day my wife said to me, “I’m going to pray for the intervention of St. Jude. He is the patron saint of hopeless causes.”
“Fine with me,” I replied. But I had lost faith in such supernatural intervention long ago. At that time, I was working in the basement of a downtown building in the evening as a sculptor. Day after day, after finishing my regular job, I went to work for a church supplies company for a few extra dollars. The bonus was, I was allowed to use the facilities for some of my own work—and sculpture is an art form that really requires a work space. In the church basement I was surrounded by dusty plaster figures of various saints. My job was to finish them and prepare them for painting. Hollow lifeless figures, I thought to myself. Ridiculous to expect any help from them.
But what did I have to lose? Why not take a chance? One evening I made a sudden decision. I dropped my work pail and went to the heap of wood where I often chose pieces for my own carvings. There I found a nice block of basswood that seemed to offer itself up for the task I was planning.
I began to envision the features of St. Jude. I had to see him first in my imagination. In a sudden flash, I saw a bearded face full of dignity and hope. That’s it! I thought. I put my chisel to the wood and started carving like I’d never carved before. The hours slipped away. Usually I arrived home at eight every evening, but on this occasion it was well past ten when I finally entered our little attic apartment.
Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul Page 11