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The Current Transcript for September 21, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

TINA MARTINO: On the 3rd of January I found out that my son was not a schoolteacher. I found out that he was fighting for the YPG and that he was killed and that ISIS has his body.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Nazzareno Tassone was 24-years-old killed in an ISIS ambush while fighting with Kurdish forces in Syria. He had concocted a story for his mother about a teaching job in Iraq. Instead he joined dozens of other Canadians and hundreds of other foreigners eager to fight ISIS through Kurdish armies in Syria or Iraq. Richard Raycraft had the same plan but something stopped him. Instead he decided to explore why other young men are pulled into a war to which they have no connection. In half an hour he shares what he discovered. Also today, Rick Hansen came to prominence powering his wheelchair through the equivalent of two marathons a day through 34 countries across four continents over two years. His Man in Motion tour raised millions in the name of disability rights. Three decades later he sees a new urgency, to adapt our cities and buildings to the disabling conditions of a growing aging population.

SOUNDCLIP

RICK HANSEN: Aging baby boomers are having many disabling conditions and over the next 20 years they’ll be like nine million Canadians. It’ll affect everybody so it's becoming an economic and cultural imperative.

AMT: As part of our project adaptation Rick Hansen joins me in an hour.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: school bell and children talking]

AMT: But we began with concerns about how we’re adapting to the needs of people at the other end of the age equation. The education of children with special needs in school systems that champion inclusivity but too often cannot fund it or deliver it. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Education system failing kids with special needs, say parents

Guests: Jennifer Clowes, Chantelle Morvay-Adams, Guy Mercier

SOUNDCLIP

MOTHER: I like to see them to know how to handle it. How to handle his outbursts, how to handle his meltdowns. And I'm finding that they're not, they're not trained enough to do it. I want him to succeed in life. I want him to go to possibly to college. And the way it is right now he won't be able to.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well that's a mother from Hamilton, Ontario and she's talking about her 16-year-old son who has autism. Her hopes and wishes for her son are shared by parents everywhere. But she says she's finding she cannot get the support he needs to succeed at his public school. And that appears to be an increasingly common experience as we hear more stories of parents whose special needs children are being left behind and worse. This school year started with a high profile case in Toronto. A mother says her eight-year-old son who has learning disabilities and behavioural issues was taken to a hospital alone in the back of a police car. He was placed in restraints and injected with a sedative. She was told it was because he was acting out on the first day of school and ran away. Teachers are frustrated as well. A Toronto area teachers union launched a campaign this month asking for more classroom support for special needs students. It's all a window into some of the challenges faced by inclusion, having special needs kids in regular classrooms. As the number of children diagnosed with autism and other special needs rises, the system seems to be struggling to keep up. Today we're talking to parents of children with special needs who say inclusive classrooms in public schools are not up to the job. Jennifer Clowes is the mother of two sons with learning disabilities and ADHD who are also both gifted. She is in our Toronto studio. Guy Mercier is the father of a son with autism. He's in our Winnipeg studio and Chantelle Morvay-Adams is the mother of a special needs son. She is in Mission, BC. Hello everyone welcome.

MANY VOICES: Good morning.

AMT: Jennifer Clowes, let's start with you. Can you tell me about your sons?

JENNIFER CLOWES: Sure. My boys are 12 and 15. They were, I don't like to use the word, I don't like to use the word identified, but they were identified as gifted with learning disabilities and ADHD, both about eight years ago. And we went through private testing because at that time their disabilities were not strong enough to be picked up by the Toronto District School Board. So we paid the money and we had the testing done and we had struggles with school work, we had troubles with attendance and we had struggles with attention. And when the results came back that they were gifted as well we were a bit surprised, because all we saw is this attention challenge at school.

AMT: And so you decided to send your youngest to private school?

JENNIFER CLOWES: Yes. That just happened a few weeks ago. We have had both of the boys in regular classrooms for the last number of years. The best situation for them was regular classroom with pull out with the resource teachers. They both entered the gifted program after a while because we had hoped that the special-ed teachers that were teaching the gifted program would also understand their second exceptionality, which was their learning disabilities and understand ADHD a little bit better than a regular classroom teacher would. And we've found with Ryan, my youngest one that school just was not able to support his degree of dyslexia. So we've taken him out and put him in a specific school for dyslexic kids.

AMT: So he is gifted but he is gifted with severe dyslexia.

JENNIFER CLOWES: Yes. That’s right.

AMT: Am I right? OK. And so you've put him in a private school this September?

JENNIFER CLOWES: Yeah.

AMT: OK. And it's specialized? They know how to deal with this?

JENNIFER CLOWES: It's specific for kids with dyslexia and they focus on really bright children. So there are not children in there who have other types of needs as well. So their focus is really on kids like Ryan.

AMT: OK. Well we'll ask more. But let's go to the Guy Mercier, Guy Mercier, sorry Guy.

GUY MERCIER: Yup. That’s OK.

AMT: What about your son? What is his diagnosis?

GUY MERCIER: He was diagnosed at three and a half with autism spectrum disorder. And we had, he's a great kid great personality, doesn't fit some of the moulds. He loves to be hugged, loves to have attention, very good at, you know, math, science, things that are very specific and have a lot of formulas. But has some deficits on the other side of reading comprehension and social skills.

AMT: And where is he in school now?

GUY MERCIER: He is in grade ten now at a private school.

AMT: And did you consider public school?

GUY MERCIER: We considered public school right when we started school. The difficulty we had is that the division where he would have gone didn't believe in ABA, or applied behavioural analysis, which is the program he was coming with and wouldn't accept it being in the classroom. And then they also could not explain to me what they were going to do to cover recess and school time, which is the down time for class.

AMT: And is this a financial burden for you?

GUY MERCIER: It is. It's one that we've made the decision, my wife and I, to do and it's causes, you know, I always say my retirement age is 92 or dead. So it is difficult but it's the only way that we felt we could get him the best education possible.

AMT: Chantelle Morvay-Adams, tell me about your son.

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: So well, he's nine-years-old this month, he will be 10 next month. We started our journey about four and a half years ago for a diagnosis because we were seeing that he displayed different characteristics than other children his age would. And about right up until last year we finally got our final diagnosis. He has five different diagnoses now, but he's quite the firework. He's smart, funny, a real outside the box thinker, and that all adds up to you know being really fabulous in my opinion. But it's been really really tough in the school system. We didn't have a diagnosis in kindergarten and he was almost kicked out of kindergarten, which I didn't think possible. But I guess you can. And so we changed schools and that school was extremely well known for really focusing on children with special needs. So we had support there but no actual EA with him.

AMT: And that's an educational assistant.

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: Exactly. Exactly.

AMT: OK.

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: They work directly with your child to implement the IEP with the teacher. But he never got that. And so it was always a bit of a struggle but we knew he was really smart and we're like well you know, I know he can do this work, like we need to get him more support. So finally last year we started a new school in a new town. We had to buy out here in Mission because it's cheaper. And so we started a new school and it was pretty rough. Wike we had, they had a very at the time a wait and see approach and I think a lot of schools have that. I'm been hearing that from a lot of friends. Oh let's just wait and see. You know, let's wait and see how they do. It’s like no, we need a plan for these children coming into our schools. We need to have professionals setting up these plans for them to make it easier transition. So we had complete school refusal last year at about January to June and a gradual entry for those months.

AMT: So school refusal meaning he wouldn't go?

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: He wouldn't go.

AMT: Uh huh. Why not?

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: Well for a multitude of reasons. You know, it was really hard for him to get friends. And so, you know, it might be considered inclusive, you know but unfortunately it's really hard. They need coaches to help them make friends and to be social with their classmates and things like that so. And I think that's a huge mental health part of it. And then there was also, you know, just maybe not the right fit with the teacher, we're just getting to know him. And so finally we came up with a very good plan by the end of the year and he really ended the year off really well. They actually bookended his day with foosball, so now he's like a total foosball champion. And so this year he started off well. They did a little gradual entry but he has the same EA that he shares, it’s a shared EA, which is not the most optimum condition in my opinion, but it is what it is for now. And he likes her and the teacher’s very nice. And he knows his classmates and he actually has friends now.

AMT: And this is the public system right now?

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: Exactly. Yup.

AMT: OK. Jenn Clowes, your son, your youngest has a dual diagnosis, he's gifted with a learning disability. You've called him an inconvenient student. What do you mean by that?

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: So I haven't read the book myself but I'm on a million different Facebook groups for families with needs like my kids. And I've seen a post come up a number of times on Facebook about this book that's just recently come out called The Inconvenient Student. And I don't want to read it because I know exactly who they're talking about. My kids are incredible. They're creative and resourceful. But the feeling that we've had in the last couple of years has been challenging. And when you repeatedly hear things from educators like Ryan is his own worst enemy, a kid with a learning disability is not his own worst enemy. The learning dis, it's not even a disability, I hate that word. I think it's a learning difference. The way his brain works is what makes him who he is. If you look at Steven Spielberg or, you know, any of the famous people with dyslexia or any kind of quote disability, those processing differences are what make them who they are. And so teachers have a hard time with them. Intellectually they understand what gifted and learning disabled means but having it inside a classroom is a completely different story. And I just feel like that I want to buy that book for every educator that my kids have had.

AMT: You think part of the problem is not only the resources then, but it's the understanding the training of teachers to deal with a range of children.

JENNIFER CLOWES: Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know how it is elsewhere but in Ontario, teachers in order to be a special educated, sorry a special educator, they need to only have one level of additional qualifications to become a special-ed teacher. And it's absolutely not enough. It's just an overview. And that would be covering every kind of disability. It's behavioural, it's learning disabilities, it's physical disabilities, only one level. And I'm sorry but there's no way you can cover everything with just one class.

AMT: And the private school, how affordable is the private school?

JENNIFER CLOWES: It's not super affordable. [chuckles] We're paying 18,000 dollars this year which I hear is on the lower end.

AMT: You also paid for tutors in the past.

JENNIFER CLOWES: We have yeah. We have probably spent over 20,000 dollars in the last two years for tutors for both of the boys. So it's not inexpensive.

AMT: And Guy, your son is in an inclusive classroom in a private school. Do you see great improvement in how the training is and all of that?

GUY MERCIER: No, what I see with the private school in our case is that we have the ability to partner with them. So you have a little bit more flexibility about the EA and the EA’s training, so you can make suggestions. In our case we bring somebody in and pay for them to train the EAs on the ABA portion of his day. And also...

AMT: [interposing] Wait a minute, you personally bring someone in and pay for them to train?

GUY MERCIER: That's correct. Yes.

AMT: What does that cost?

GUY MERCIER: Every time that our expert comes in it's about 250 to 300 dollars depending on the length of the day and the travel time. And then if the school changes EAs, like last year we had four EAs that means that four times that person comes in, plus two follow ups after Christmas. So you have a little bit more flexibility. It still doesn't mean that it's going to be perfect because you have a lot of moving pieces there, you have the EA, the teacher, the resource person, the vice principal and the principal. And if any of those pieces decides that for some reason they don't want to follow that or they don't feel it's working or they're going to change something, which we have had that happen in the past where we came in one day and we're doing long division and multiplication with our son at home and all of a sudden they've dumbed it down to try and get away from a piece of his behaviour that the teacher doesn't like in the class. And they're doing menu math at school and we haven't been notified either by verbally or in written format, you kind of lose your mind and then have to start all over again with the lobbying to get back to where you need it to be. And it's just frustrating that way. Everything's a fight, from day one to the day end of school. Everything's a fight.

AMT: So why are we seeing these failures in the system? Where the cause of this? Jennifer, what do you think?

JENNIFER CLOWES: I think as you pointed out. I think education for the educators is really a big thing. I think that new teachers coming in need an expanded curriculum I guess. I think that resources from the Ministry of Education are paramount. If so many times we've heard we don't have the resources for that with these big bug eyes in the meetings. And the other thing I think is a really big paradigm shift. I think people think they know what these disabilities are, they have this idea in their mind of what they are. Autism is not rain man. Giftedness is not this genius in the classroom. My gifted kids are not geniuses in the classroom. They're really really bright in certain areas but they are not high achievers in the classroom. You know, we've had teachers say you're in the gifted program why are you failing my class then? And that’s not helpful for anybody. These kids are trying as hard as they can and they just need to be supported by people who really understand them.

AMT: Chantelle, what do you think?

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: I completely agree. I'm glad she touched on the giftedness side of things. A lot of my friends have gifted children and I think maybe even my kids sort of on that side as well. They look at him and they're like well, you know, if he just wanted to do the work. If he just wanted to do it. I’m like he has five different diagnoses. I mean really. It's the support at school there’s still, and I know this might be a little touchy but I think a lot of people still have a lot of biases towards people with special needs. So education is key, information out there. I myself have started an inclusion subcommittee at my school to help support all our children that are different, our diversity, things like that. I'm also on a Facebook page as well. We have over a thousand members in BC that have issues with their schools and that need support, that need help advocating for their children. It's hugely important and professionals that work with our children need to be trained, properly trained. And I think that should be like pretty much everybody that works in the school system would really benefit from having not just a voluntary class but a class that you have to take that is about our children. Because you can't help them if you don't know them. So.

AMT: So it's not solely the number of students per class, it's not how many educational assistants there are, it's the training that goes along with that.

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: Training is key.

AMT: And you just don't see it. Guy, Guy, sorry I keep calling you Guy.

GUY MERCIER: That’s OK.

AMT: You're also the president of a parent group for kids with autism. What's the main source of frustration around public schools that you hear from the other families?

GUY MERCIER: The main source of frustration is kind of what everybody's talked about, it's support. We don't put all the emphasis on the teachers to be able to do everything because they can't. But it's the support around that. So there's limited training for the EAs and limited training for the resource teachers and there needs to be some sort of format that helps these kids with their behaviour and their diagnosis so they can get the education that they deserve because that's the biggest thing. Like my son doesn't have a lot of behaviour issues at all, but him just sitting in the classroom quietly isn't helping him to learn anything. So there needs to be more support on that side of it and training and experts to say to the teacher this is the way you deal with this student based on their diagnosis and this is the plan to follow. And then have people follow the plan for a reasonable period of time to see if it's going to work.

AMT: Am I right in understanding that the two of you who have your kids in private school, but all three of you would prefer that you could use the public school system and your kids could get what they need in the public school system?

MANY VOICES: Absolutely. Yes, definitely.

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: Our children have the right to an equitable access to quality education. And that means the public school system.

JENNIFER CLOWES: And we pay for it already right?

AMT: [chuckles]

JENNIFER CLOWES: Through our taxes.

CHANTELLE MORVAY-ADAMS: Exactly.

JENNIFER CLOWES: We don't get that money back.

AMT: So what has to change? Is it individual schools, individual school boards? Does there need to be something bigger, provincial federal that looks at this?

GUY MERCIER: Well the difficulty is this is not a federal issue because it falls under education, which is provincial.

AMT: But it's a country wide issue.

GUY MERCIER: Yeah, well but being a funding issue it falls under the provinces so I'm not sure that the federal government is willing to do anything there. But from a provincial point of view, there needs to be an overall look at the structure of how it works. Like why do you have a situation where in Manitoba you could get in grade five you could get a different education if you're in Brandon or in Winnipeg or northern Manitoba simply because of the philosophy of the division or the philosophy of an individual principal in a school. Like there needs to be more structure around it so that there's less decisions that they can make to impact the what's happening with my son in the classroom.

AMT: And Jennifer what do you want to see?

JENNIFER CLOWES: I think educators need to push up. When they're struggling with their students they need to be brave enough to push up to their superiors to ask for help. I've got this kid with x y z, I've tried this and it's not working, what support do I need? And if they can't get it from their superior they need to go up and then the next person needs to go up and the next person needs to go up. Yeah, the people at the top need to hear this. It can't just be the parents, like we are all that parent, and our kids are all that kid. We don't want to be there. We don't want to be there.

AMT: We have to leave it there. Thank you all of you for sharing your stories and your views on this. Thank you. It's good to hear your voices.

MANY VOICES: Thank you.

AMT: I've been speaking with Jennifer Clowes, mother of two sons with learning disabilities and ADHD, who are also both gifted. She's in Toronto. Guy Mercier is the father of a son with autism. He's in Winnipeg. And Chantelle Morvay-Adams’ son he’s a special needs child. We reached her in Mission, BC. Well we want your opinion on this. What do you think? Is the public school system able to meet the needs of kids with special needs in your jurisdiction or not? Let us know, find us on Facebook. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, send us an email from our web site cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. Stay with us the CBC News is next and then…

SOUNDCLIP

When I got back home my mind was made up. I would drop out of graduate school spend all of my savings and go to Syria to fight.

AMT: What motivates young men and women to fight in another country. That's next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Fighting ISIS: Why Canadians join Kurdish forces in Syria

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come...

SOUNDCLIP

RICK HANSEN: Nowhere in the definition of an athlete does it say that you use your legs in order to be one. I decided that what I would do is wheel around the world to change attitudes about the perception of people with disabilities, to try to create an accessible and inclusive world for everyone.

AMT: Thirty years since the Man in Motion world tour, Rick Hansen is still moving and spreading a message of adaptation. He joins me in about half an hour. But first called to war...

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: gun shots]

AMT: Well sounds of the war in Syria up close and personal. Those were Kurdish soldiers firing from a rooftop. And the video was shot by someone who traveled halfway across the world to fight alongside them. Nazzareno Tassone, Canadian, 24-years-old killed in battle within weeks of taking that video late last year. In May his body was escorted down the stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway in Eastern Ontario now called the Highway of Heroes. But he was not a typical soldier. He was one of the hundreds of foreign fighters, at least 35 Canadians, who have voluntarily joined the Kurds in their fight against the Islamic State. So what draws them there to fight in a battle in which they have no direct connection to fight a fight that they don't have to fight? Freelance journalist Richard Raycraft is exploring those questions through the eyes of two Canadian mothers whose sons died fighting that war. Here is his documentary.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Tina Martino lives in Niagara Falls. Her home is easy to spot. On the lawn are two large photographs of her son Nazzareno Tassone surrounded by candles and flowers.

[Sound: dog barking and door knock]

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: In one photo he stares straight ahead. The symbol of the people's protection units or YPG on the top left. In the other he's dressed fully in army fatigues sporting a boyish grin.

[Music]

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Two years ago I came very close to making the same decision to join the YPG. Like me, Nazzareno did not tell his family about his plans. Last June Nazzareno told his mom he was going to Iraq to teach English. She never suspected otherwise. Then a friend of Nazzareno’s showed up at her door. He had news.

TINA MARTINO: On the 3rd of January I found out two things. I found out that my son was not a school teacher. I found out that he was fighting for the YPG and that he was killed. And that ISIS has his body.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Tina's a dealer at a Niagara Falls casino but she didn't go to work for six months after learning of her son's death.

TINA MARTINO: I was destroyed. I was heartbroken. I couldn't believe my everything was gone.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Nazzareno grew up here in Niagara Falls with his two sisters. His parents were divorced so they lived part time with each parent.

TINA MARTINO: He was my spoiled rotten brat that I couldn't help it, there was just something about Nazz listening to him that I wanted to give him what he wanted. I like, he just he excited me by what he, what he dreamed.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: His dream was to travel the world. Even as a child he talked about teaching English in Japan. But by the time he graduated from high school he had a different plan.

TINA MARTINO: The army. Soon as he turned 17-years-old. That's what he said he was going to do. He joined the Canadian army. I don't know what happened.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: 17-years-old. That's exactly how old I was when I enlisted in the Army Reserve. It was my first job. I served for three years but I never went overseas. I never saw real combat. In spite of his passion Nazzareno never made it to boot camp.

TINA MARTINO: I think there was more of a passion about guns. And he wanted to be freely to be able to use them and he'd like the uniform he like the, he spoke about it I want to say hundreds of times. I was scared. I didn't want him there. I just wanted him to live a normal life with a family and a job and, you know, just work through and go on vacations.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Nazzareno washed out of the recruiting process three times. Twice with the Canadian military and once with the American military. Tina says he never told her why that kept happening. She didn't ask. Instead Nazz bounced between a variety of jobs. He worked for Brink’s security for a bit, then he moved to Edmonton to work for CN Rail, then as a parking enforcement officer. So when he called his mom last year to tell her about a teaching job in Iraq she was relieved, even though it wasn't the safest place.

TINA MARTINO: I was overwhelmed but I smiled with pride that he was finally going to get to do what he wanted to do. And because I'm not, don't listen to the news a lot, I did anything for him to help him get there with his passport and making sure he was financially good to go. He reassured me that he would be on the outskirts and that he would be in a safe part.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: The last time Tina saw her son was in June. He was flying from Edmonton to the Middle East and had a layover in Toronto.

TINA MARTINO: It was a hard moment. It was, you know, meeting him at that time and knowing that Nazz was going there. It was emotional. It was, it was, we cried, we laughed. And a funny thing happened, Nazz told me that he had to tell me something and I said and what is it son? He says Mom I have to tell you but I don't want to tell you. And I was like what is it? He goes, [sighs] he goes I smoke. And I was like oh Nazz. He goes Mom I want to go, I have to have a smoke before I get on the airplane. So I have to tell you that I do that.

[Music]

NAZZARENO TASSONE: Frontline in Syria, another update. So we were downstairs. There it is, there it is, there it is.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: In September Nazz sent a video to friends. He's in Syria dressed in army fatigues. He briefly points the camera at a squad mate who's holding an assault rifle. It looks like he's on patroller guard duty. The sun is low in the sky.

NAZZARENO TASSONE: Woo.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: An unlit cigarette flitters in his mouth as he points to a jet aircraft overhead. He flashes a boyish smile before the camera cuts out. But Tina didn't see this video. By the time she learned the real reason her son had traveled to the Middle East he was already dead.

TINA MARTINO: The Kurdish community and an officer came to my house to give me this information. And I honestly thought they were coming to tell me that my son had joined ISIS, that he had joined an army, that I didn't even know of the YPG, even existed until they came to my house.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: What do you know about what happened once he got to the Middle East now? What actually happened when he got over there?

TINA MARTINO: Almost right away he had joined the YPG and went through three weeks of training. And...

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Nazz started in the YPG is a regular foot soldier. He was training to become a sniper but before training was complete he jumped on an opportunity to go the frontlines near Raqqa. He was sent to sweep a village when his unit was caught in an ISIS ambush. What happened next is not entirely clear. But Nazzareno Tassone was killed in combat along with six other fighters.

TINA MARTINO: The final facts from the autopsy report here in Ontario is that my son died from either a bomb or a sharp blunt object to the head killed him.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: His body remained in ISIS held territory for over half a year. It was only returned to Canada a few months ago when Kurdish forces were able to beat ISIS back into Raqqa in advance. It was in the outskirts of the Islamic State's capital that the Kurds found his body.

[Music]

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Why are we seeing young Canadians travel to Iraq and Syria to fight with the Kurds?

GUILLAUME CORNEAU: I don't think there's one reason or one motivation. Motivations are manifold.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Guillaume Corneau is a graduate student at Laval University and a former soldier in the Canadian military. He's conducting research on the estimated 400 foreign fighters within the Kurdish forces.

GUILLAUME CORNEAU: Through my research I've seen maybe three main profiles without oversimplifying this. But the first one is what I called the military escapist profile. Those are almost all former military guys. Some have dreamt of being in the military but didn't. Those are more motivated by the fact that the Islamic State is threatening Canada and the West as a whole. It's a way to get involved in some kind of a legal war. The second profile is more what I call humanitarian. So those are volunteers who are not going over there really to fight. They are more on the medical side or the humanitarian side. And the third profile is what I call the political or the ideological profile. There are more left wing or far left militants so anarchists, communists, socialists are going over there with a more revolutionary vision or motivations.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Guillaume says a fighter might be motivated by some combination of these profiles. But he says there's another similarity between those who choose to fight.

GUILLAUME CORNEAU: What I see is they all have been through some personal grievances. They have something in their lives that are opening them or making them available to a new cause, a new belief. You will see some personal grievances like ex-military, former military who are having hard times to adapt to their civilian life.

[Music]

TINA MARTINO: These are coins from everywhere he was on his journey to get there. Turkey.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Tina shows me a box filled with Nazz’s belongings from his time in Syria.

TINA MARTINO: We don’t really know what this is.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: In April the Canadian embassy in Iraqi Kurdistan sent her his backpack. It contained his field kit, rocks he had collected, even a package of Skittles. She shows me three journals Nazz wrote in. It means a lot to hold them. I feel their contents may tell me his motivations for joining a militia on the other side of the world. He wrote about a devastating breakup with his girlfriend just before he left. He said he traveled to Syria to get away from her. He wrote about his apathy to the YPG socialist ideology. He says he's there to stack bodies not be brainwashed. Like Nazz, I have no connection to the Kurdish people or Kurdistan. Nazz was of Italian and French background. I'm about as white Anglo-Saxon Protestant as it gets. But we both have a desire to fight in a civil war in the Middle East. I want to understand why. I asked Tina which of Guillaume Courneau’s profile she thinks her son fits. She tells me he joined the YPG to be a soldier. She's firm that there was no other reason.

TINA MARTINO: I wish that I could have taken that away from him. I wish that feeling that he had, the power that he had when he had a gun in his hand. I never allow those in my house. I didn't want him to do that and he did. And is it because, you know, the child doing something that his parents doesn't want him to? You know, did he make that choice because we said no? I don't know.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: What would you have thought if he had said to you, actually I'm going to Syria to fight with a militia against ISIS or the Islamic State? What would you have said to him?

TINA MARTINO: After I squeezed him, I think I would have had some pretty loud words with him on his choices and me helping him with that choice that he had done.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Because you had helped him financially and get his passport together and all those things. But then all of a sudden he tells you he's going to fight. You wouldn't have supported that.

TINA MARTINO: Not at all. He certainly knows his mother because there's not a chance that I would have helped him out in any way. I would have tried to talk him out of doing everything else but to do that.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: So he knew that he had to lie to you to make this happen?

TINA MARTINO: Yes.

[Music]

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: It was on a quiet weekday night two years ago in London, Ontario the first time I visited the recruitment website of the YPG. I was a graduate student in journalism at Western University at the time. The website was filled with pictures of men and women in army fatigues holding rifles. The site looked like it was from the nineties, coloured black orange and grey. As I scrolled through I got more and more excited. There were details about learning the Kurdish language, about how to get to Northern Syria, about training to fight ISIS. Most importantly there was an email. If I send an encrypted message to it, the YPG will make the arrangements to get me into Syria. I went for a long walk, whispering to myself like a crazy person. This is kind of crazy. I could get killed. Worse, I could end up on the bad end of an ISIS propaganda video. On the other hand I haven't had this much energy in months. And the YPG say they want volunteers with military training and combat experience. I have the former but not the latter. That's something that's always bothered me, but maybe this is my chance. When I got back home my mind was made up. I would drop out of graduate school spend all of my savings and go to Syria to fight. I never told friends and family and had no intention to. I spent the next few days drafting the email to the YPG. But then I thought of my mom and I never sent it.

NAZZARENO TASSONE: So I just want to do a little weather update. Let's see what the weather is doing out here. Oh. That's right. It's [expletive] a sandstorm.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Nazzareno Tassone was secretive about his intentions to join the YPG. But the other Canadian who died fighting with them made his reasons very explicit. John Robert Gallagher was killed in November 2015. He wrote an essay about his reasons to join that fight and asked his mother Valerie Carter to post it to Facebook when he got to the Middle East.

VALERIE CARTER: Why the war in Kurdistan matters.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Valerie reads it to me.

VALERIE CARTER: I'm prepared to give my life in the cause of averting the disaster we are stumbling towards as a civilization. A free Kurdistan would be good enough cause for any internationalist. But we are fortunate enough to be able to risk our necks for something more important and more righteous than any we've faced in generations.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Unlike Tina, Valerie knew her son was joining the YPG and she supported it.

VALERIE CARTER: So I’ll just, I’ll open this up. These are his medals from the Canadian military.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Valerie shows me her son's medals at her home near Chatham, Ontario. She tells me John Robert had an interest in philosophy and ethics. He liked to debate politics and right. He had a dry sense of humor. Most of all he had strong ethical convictions, a sense of duty and a need to distinguish between right and wrong.

VALERIE CARTER: I know that for example when he was writing a letter to accompany his application to York University, he was explaining that he had not proceeded to university directly out of high school because he felt it was very important to join the military as a reaction to what had happened on September 11.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: John Roberts served in the Canadian Army for three years out of high school. His military service included a tour in Bosnia as a peacekeeper. But when he found out that his unit wouldn't deploy to Afghanistan John Robert left the military.

VALERIE CARTER: He only just got to Australia when of course he found out that his buddies, his group was going to Afghanistan and it was deeply disappointing to him. He really felt, he was very unhappy about it. He was upset because those were people that he knew who were going to Afghanistan and he would definitely have stayed in the army had he known that opportunity would have been there.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: John Robert eventually went to graduate school but Valerie says he never really settled in anywhere. Nothing felt like his calling. It was a difficult time. Valerie’s husband John Robert’s stepfather died just as John Robert was starting graduate school.

VALERIE CARTER: It was at that time that he was really kind of at loose ends, not, feeling frustrated. And I think that I really feel strongly that when someone is very talented and has so, has ambition and ideas and so much to give that they get frustrated when they're denied that opportunity. And so he was not doing very much.

ANDERSON COOPER: The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS, has rapidly morphed...

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: And at this time John Robert is reading about the rise of the Islamic State their forces rampaged through Syria and Iraq, posts videos of beheadings, commit genocide against religious minorities and declare a global caliphate. Canada and the West bomb ISIS from the air.

[Sounds: bombs and tanks]

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: But the most effective troops on the ground in Syria and Iraq are the Kurdish forces. He got in contact with the Peshmerga, the Kurdish forces in Iraq. He told his mother.

VALERIE CARTER: He knew everything there was to know right? He always had his facts. And he was always opinionated. [chuckles] And my response was on an emotional level, like I don't want anything to happen to my baby that's. Whereas his was an intellectual argument about why it was important to go and why he wanted to go. He did say at one point, you know mom there are more important things than living a quiet life.

[Music]

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: John Robert arrived in Iraq to fight with the Peshmerga but he was frustrated with the lack of action. So he went to Syria to join the YPG with a unit of other international fighters. One night the YPG gave them a mission.

VALERIE CARTER: They wanted them to clear a village, but they didn't need all of them.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: John Robert volunteered to go. He was stationed on the main road of a village when a suspected ISIS fighter approached his position. John Robert’s comrades shot the soldier. As the ISIS soldier was going down, he was able to get some rounds off of his gun. One of which hit John Robert. His last words to his friends were that I'm sorry, was I'm sorry. And I think that he might have felt that he had let them down, that he, that maybe he hadn't done his job.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: He made a decision. We're a year and a half out, something like that now. What do you think about his decision?

VALERIE CARTER: I do feel that if my husband hadn't died, if John Robert had completed his master's degree in the year that he had intended, if he had gone out to UVic and commenced his PhD studies, that his life would have taken a different direction. I think he made the right decision for himself at the time. I do. I support his decision. In the interviews of him in either Iraq or Syria, in one of the interviews he actually, he's asked what would you say to your family right now? A journalist asking him. And he said well, I would say to my family you know that I love you but I am right where I am supposed to be.

[Music]

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: John Robert Gallagher's body came home to Canada within two weeks. Tina Martino waited seven months to bury her son Nazzareno. While Valerie is at peace with John Robert’s decision to join the YPG, Tina still struggles with Nazzareno’s choice. I still don't know what to make of the fact that I even wanted to fight in a war. I thought telling the story of two Canadians who died fighting in it might help me understand whether I did the right thing. But their mothers, the ones who gave them life, have completely different thoughts on the decision that took their son's life away. I never told my own mother about my plans. I knew my mom wouldn't want me to go. I kept it a secret from her. Until now.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: Can you just say your name and who you are in relation to me.

CHERYL RAYCRAFT: My name is Cheryl Raycraft. I am the mother of Richard Raycraft.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: I mean, this is a lot to take in. I didn't, wasn't thinking about revealing this to you as part of the documentary, it was going to be more like you'd hear this out of the radio speakers and it's like oh hey mom, this is what I was thinking about doing. Do you have any questions for me about anything?

CHERYL RAYCRAFT: Well, I wasn't aware that you were thinking about that kind of action. I think I'm glad you didn't explore that. So I guess I’d need a bit of time to reflect on why you felt that you needed to do that. So perhaps you could tell me.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: When I left the military, I got a lot of comments from other people that I wasn't really expecting. Like they would say things like you were in the military and you didn't even go overseas? Like what a waste. Like why did you even join the military? Now, they weren't familiar obviously with the fact that most people in the Army Reserves don't go overseas but because of that I sort of had a chip on my shoulder a little bit. I was like I need to prove myself right? And so when the war started in Syria and I was seeing the Kurds fight ISIS, I thought I could do this. I could participate and I could prove myself.

CHERYL RAYCRAFT: I think that that choice would have been fairly extreme. In my mind you would of, it would have meant to me that you were trying to find yourself as opposed to you were passionate about a cause. And so if that had happened I think I would have tried to discourage you from doing it.

RICHARD RAYCRAFT: You know, I think in particular even though we're trying to break down these stereotypes that can sometimes be dangerous, there is even when you get a little bit older this feeling of like I need to be a man and I need to prove myself and I need to prove my manliness. And I think that's really almost what it was. And obviously I did my research. You know, I'm curious and I saw all these people who were fighting for a homeland and they were doing it in an ethical way. And they weren't killing refugees they were taking refugees in. And I was very inspired by that. And I think there is almost sort of a call to be part of something that is more than yourself.

CHERYL RAYCRAFT: Well I just want to say that we're very proud of you Richard. For the mothers who have lost children in authorized or unauthorized war, my heart goes out to them.

[Music]

AMT: We've been listening to a documentary from Richard Raycraft, produced through the CBC's Doc Project Mentorship Program. His mentor was The Current’s documentary editor Josh Bloch. Coming up in our next half hour, Rick Hansen. Thirty years after his epic Man in Motion marathon, he still sees a long road ahead for society to adapt to everyone's different abilities. Listen for him. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music: Extro]

30 years after Man in Motion tour, Rick Hansen still fighting for accessibility

Guest: Rick Hanse

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti this is The Current.

[Music: Adaptation Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: crowd cheering]

NEWS REPORTER: The euphoric finish at last. A yellow ribbon at the spot in a Vancouver shopping mall where Rick Hansen began and ended his global journey. 40,000 kilometres and 26 months later a triumphant Hansen is home.

RICK HANSEN: I want to thank you for believing in the potential of disabled persons. Because we all have hopes and dreams.

AMT: Well, believe it or not that was 30 years ago and you heard the CBC's reporter at the time Jane Chalmers reporting for The National, May 22nd 1987. It was the final day of Rick Hansen's remarkable journey around the world, The Man in Motion world tour. He was a world class athlete giving it his all in the fight for accessibility. And on this 30th anniversary he still is. More than ever Rick Hansen believes society needs to adapt to the needs of people with disabilities because every year that includes more of us. And also because it's the right thing to do. Today Rick Hansen is with me in our Toronto studio as part of our season long project Adaptation. Hello.

RICK HANSEN: Hi Anna Maria, it's great to be here thank you.

AMT: Well it's nice to have you with us and I'm just wondering, what do you think when you hear yourself three decades ago?

RICK HANSEN: Wow. I first think boy you were young. And then I think back and I go, you know, good for you. Like, I mean you actually hung in there and you were able to finish and finish with integrity and how did you manage to inspire all those people to join you? And I'm just so grateful that that happened. That there were so many champions who came in to help me turn that dream into a reality.

AMT: How much money did you raise?

RICK HANSEN: We generated 26 million dollars. And it's interesting when we were about ready to leave on the tour, it was so frustrating just to literally be able to actually take that first stroke out of Oakridge mall. And we thought, man it was so hard to just start this. Why would we just settle for trying to raise a million dollars? Let's set a big crazy goal like 10 million dollars and see what happens. And of course we ended up generating 26 million dollars. And the awareness was the primary purpose and asking people to think and change lives and remove barriers. But you know, the money was important as well. And it was fantastic.

AMT: You weren't always in a wheelchair what happened?

RICK HANSEN: Yeah, I was 15-years-old. You know, I was an all-star athlete in my little hometown in Williams Lake, British Columbia. Had dreams of maybe one day representing Canada at the Olympic Games. And then I was hitchhiking home from a fishing trip and I got a ride in the back of a pickup truck and the driver went around a corner and he lost control and threw me against a big steel toolbox and broke my back and damaged my spinal cord. And then the doctors told me I'd never walk again.

AMT: And what did you do to adapt to that reality at the time?

RICK HANSEN: You know, it was a huge dark period for me and I didn't have much hope. I didn't see possibility because I didn't know anyone with a disability. And so for me it was like taking this this dark canvas of despair and painting it with little pricks of light to be able to create texture and colour and possibility. And that could only come to personal contact with role models. People who had been there before me, who didn't stop, who carved a life for themselves. And if I could know them and see them and then think about my life differently and adapt and make choices, that I could actually still go forward and still be the athlete I wanted to and realize nowhere in the definition of an athlete does it say you have to use your legs in order to be one. That Paralympic sport existed. That gave me new hope and helped me pick up the pieces and keep going.

AMT: So you found a mentor?

RICK HANSEN: I found a mentor, a special mentor, a fellow named Stan Strong. He was one of the first surviving people with spinal cord injury, injured in the thirties. And when I complained about being in the hospital for four months, he was there for four years. And he didn't have any rehab centres and he really didn't have anything. And yet he lived with this incredible optimism, he saw in the pain and suffering he saw beauty, he saw love. He, you know, he saw ability and he ended up reaching out to the next generation of kids like me to say come on, you know, you don't have to stop here. And he was a mentor. He was a manager for our wheelchair basketball team and of course then he inspired me to go and make a difference by recruiting Terry Fox after he lost his leg to cancer and having him join our team. And so he inspired two young Canadians in his selfless service and his optimism about potential. And what an amazing Canadian Stan Strong is.

AMT: It's good to know his story. So you were already competing athletically internationally before the Man in Motion tour.

RICK HANSEN: That's correct. I went on to specialize in wheelchair track and marathoning. Went to Paralympic Games World Championships. And as a matter of fact that became in many ways a lot of my inspiration. They say you have to see challenges or injustice to be inspired to do something about it. And traveling the world representing my country I faced so many barriers. I didn't just face my own attitudinal barrier, but others of me and my colleagues and friends. And then the physical barriers everywhere we went. I mean, getting into an airplane, you know, going to a hotel, trying to get into a taxi, getting up curb cuts. I mean, storage in restaurants...

AMT: Or looking for the curb cut.

RICK HANSEN: Yeah.

AMT: Not being a curb cut. Right?

RICK HANSEN: And so all of these things were so prevalent. And I just thought, you know, I can do something about this. You know, I can take my talents as an athlete as a marathoner and pick up a challenge like wheeling around the world and demonstrating the potential and hopefully creating some kind of movement. And that was my inspiration to do the Man in Motion tour.

AMT: And you mentioned Terry Fox because you knew each other, you were friends. What role did his Marathon of Hope play in that as well?

RICK HANSEN: It was not as huge because as a friend, you know, Terry was inspired first of all by an amputee who did a marathon in the Boston or New York Marathon. And he thought oh my gosh that guy can do a marathon and so I can do a marathon. And then eventually he thought about his Marathon of Hope to help cure cancer. And I watched Terry of course I, you know, I was there as a friend. And then I was there as a Canadian cheerleader and supporter. And then we were all devastated when he was forced to stop his journey. And, you know, as time went on I had this dream of wheeling around the world as an adventure and as a challenge, you know, as a young kid, but never really ever thought about how it might connect with actually a purpose. Until I was talking to folks about Terry and realizing that a takeaway that wasn't part of Terry’s journey was that they were actually seeing him and his ability and they were translating that to how they viewed other people with disabilities. So indirectly he was actually creating awareness about the potential of people with disabilities because, you know, who would think that a guy on one leg could hop across the country. And so it really helped me to galvanize my purpose and use my talent to be able to actually go after a dream but with purpose and really have it try to make a difference.

AMT: And it's worth saying I remember there used to be a public service ad on TV that said sometimes the greatest disability is those who are able bodied who refuse to see what we are able to do, kind of thing.

RICK HANSEN: Correct. Yeah. And of course it's all about attitude and awareness and perception. And so and I think what happens too is if you see people who happen to have an attitude that disability is like a death sentence or something to be pitied or nothing but limitation or if they see the wheelchair as a symbol of disability or the cane or the hearing device, then or the walker, then what happens is that you handicap yourself. And of course, you know, as aging boomers come into this field of having to deal with disabilities it's really vital that they don't have those old stereotypes that might have been relevant 30 or 40 years ago. In today's new world, you know, hey we all as Michael J. Fox would say, we all have a bag of hammers and let's normalize disability and get on with, you know, ability.

AMT: You know, it's really worth remembering 30 years ago I was a young reporter when Terry Fox started and then you started and I remember that at the very beginning people were saying well who are these guys? First who is that guy and who were you? Because like, you and Terry Fox really pioneered that idea of doing extreme athletic endeavours in the name of a cause and raising money, like we see more cases of it now. But 30 years ago nobody was doing that.

RICK HANSEN: That's true. And of course then what happened is people then moved into other examples of extreme, you know, activities. You know, they're climbing Kilimanjaro, Mt. Everest. You know, going the poles and all kinds of amazing athletic accomplishments but with purpose. And then they're also normalizing and creating like annualized Terry Fox runs or Run for the Cures or you know for MS or diabetes. And it's fantastic to see and I think it's creating a sense that we can all get in motion in our own way big or small and add collective impact to help make a difference and build a civil society.

AMT: Well at one point in your book I think, you even make the point that, you know, I mean that was a huge endeavour, it was a leap of faith, and you couldn't help wondering if you were foolish to even be doing this.

RICK HANSEN: True. Yeah. You know, I had the aching the aching shoulder from an old dislocation, an accident I had training, you know, I had doubts about our logistical capacity. The weather was changing and I was not going to receive tailwinds on the first few weeks, it was going to be strong headwinds and it was cold, raining was starting to happen. It started to rain. And yeah I was thinking, yeah, what have you got yourself into here? And the first day you know, literally after wheeling 113 kilometres coming in at nine o'clock at night into a cold motel room and just being chilled to the bone. It was pretty devastating.

AMT: So take us through some of these days. How many kilometres in a day? How would that day get structured?

RICK HANSEN: Yeah. They would get structured in in three different sections. You know, we were wheeling about 27 miles you know, each wheeling segment or close to 40 something kilometres. Like a full marathon, then a break for two hours then another marathon a break for two hours and then another marathon. So that's how we structured a day. And then we wheeled three days of wheeling with various events along the way. And then one day of rest. But that would be full you know, activities in communities and schools and planning and preparation both, you know, backwards to the home office through, you know, messenger pigeons and you know. Like no, but literally it was phone calls, landlines.

AMT: That's right. No email, no smart phone.

RICK HANSEN: State of the art, telexes were state of the art messages. And now we have smartphones and GPS.

AMT: That's right, it was the start so it's 32 years ago.

RICK HANSEN: [laughs]

AMT: How did you keep your arm and your shoulder muscles, like your whole body, how did your body like keep doing that every day?

RICK HANSEN: Well of course the athletic involvement was and demands were significant. And you know, I was going to self-destruct if we didn't bring a physiotherapist on full time. And as a matter of fact we planned to have sporadic physio during the tour and after the third day I was in serious trouble with the winds and the weather. And I had injuries and I picked up the phone and I called Amanda, who was my physio back in Vancouver, and we had been dating before I left and it wasn't in the plans that she'd be on the road with me. And I asked her I said, you know, can you come out cause I'm in trouble. And she talked to her bosses and got some relief and spent two weeks on the road helping me actually summit the Siskiyou Mountains between Oregon and California. It was such a pivot moment to get to the top of that mountain, you know, and without her there I probably wouldn't have made it. And then I asked her to come back and stay on the road with us full time, and fortunately she went back and made arrangements and did. And not only was it a pivot point for the tour and for my ability to complete the journey but obviously for our relationship. And we ended up getting engaged and getting married and having kids and now grandkids. And so wow. What an amazing unexpected benefit of something that I was doing to help others.

AMT: Mm. More than one proposal on the road.

RICK HANSEN: [laughs]

AMT: One was get me through this. And the other one was about marriage. That's lovely. So how many countries did you go through?

RICK HANSEN: 34 countries, four continents. It was two years two months and two days on the road, and about 17 million strokes of the wheelchair.

AMT: That's a lot. And do you have like, I want to ask about the most memorable moment. But there can't just be one. When you think about those days what comes to the fore?

RICK HANSEN: Well you know, one of the greatest highlights was wheeling through China. And, you know, we had applied to go into the Soviet Union and we were turned down to wheel but we came in to do a ceremonial event in Moscow. And East Germany said no and, you know, they thought we were a security risk. And so we fully expected to be turned down in China and to our shock, surprise, and great joy they said yes. And I didn't really realize why until I arrived and it turned out that a former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was friends with the Chairman of China Deng Xiaoping, and his son Deng Pufang had a spinal cord injury and he was not doing very well. And they brought him to Canada to have lifesaving medical treatments in Ottawa. And he received Canadian blood and he experienced our medical and our rehabilitation program and listened to emerging rights for people with disabilities and he vowed to come back to China to be a champion for change. And not long after that this kid from Canada, you know, asked if he could come to China as part of his world tour and of course he was so excited. And, you know, and it was a perfect time for China to introduce this to the people of the country because he was trying to start this evolution and big transformation. And we were blown away by the hospitality, the warmth, the enthusiasm, and then of course the amazing moment to be able to go and get to one of the highest points on the Great Wall of China as a symbol of breaking down barriers and no wall’s too big that can’t be climbed in life.

AMT: Were the days when you just like, you'd wake up in the morning and think I can't do this today.

RICK HANSEN: You know, the biggest darkest period for me was coming back to the United States on the last leg of our tour after our triumphant tour through China and Asia. And I was expecting the culminating journey through North America to just be bigger than life. And it was as if nothing had happened in over a year since I left, you know, in the first phase. And we just hadn't been able to get the message out and I was devastated. And I was going to quit by the time we got close to Washington. I said to Amanda I'm done, this is, I can't see myself continuing and going to all that effort just to say I wheeled around the world if nobody in Canada is going to even get involved as well. And she said you know, Rick you can't see around the corner, you know, but you got to have hope because Canadians are going to get involved and you can’t abandon your dream now. Just hang in there a little longer. And so she kind of talked me into not quitting. And I don't know something really amazing happened in the States. So I got an interview just, I don't know how we did it, but we got an interview with Bryant Gumbel on The Today Show and it was an August long weekend Monday morning in Canada. And it turned out that, you know, the founder of McDonald's candidate George Cohon was at home listening and watching that interview and he was listening very intently. And he was so inspired by the story and he hadn't heard it before. And he picks up the phone and he was who is this guy? And he says well we've got to get behind him. And so he mobilized his whole organization and many other business leaders and I'm sure other people like George were also listening and watching. And that was like a pivot point. And, you know, if I had of quit when I wanted to, I would have never seen that moment happen and I would have always been wondering. And I'm just, I'm so grateful that Amanda talked me into believing and having faith and hanging in there and so grateful for people like George Cohon and others who saw the message in that moment and got involved and welcomed me home back to Newfoundland and started this crescendo back across the country.

AMT: It’s a wonderful story. And there’s also something else that helped with the inspirational stuff. And then I'm going to do a little musical interlude here, you know this one's coming. This is some of John Parr with St. Elmo's Fire, also called Man in Motion.

[Music: John Parr]

AMT: OK. Rick Hansen.

RICK HANSEN: Well, John Parr, David Foster, I'm so grateful for both of them. Who would have known, you know, when we were thinking about this wild idea of getting a theme song to kind of represent the spirit of our tour, that a guy named Terry David Mulligan would introduce me to David Foster at a time when they're trying to come up with the soundtrack, you know, anthem to the movie St. Elmo's Fire and they’re stuck. And they put this little promotional video on and within 20 minutes all the lyrics poured out of their heads and that became the number one hit all around the world. St. Elmo's Fire, Man in Motion.

AMT: Yeah. I mean it's so specific to you. You know, going to be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels. You broke the boy in me, you won't break the man.

RICK HANSEN: Yeah.

AMT: Did you ever get tired of hearing that song or was that like just the best thing for you?

RICK HANSEN: The only time I got tired of it was when our hosts in Portugal, they were so excited, you know, this had been a number one hit song and they had this motor home van in front of us leading the way and they had a loudspeaker that was blaring the song constantly for like 10 hours a day. And by the end of the week I was like come on, like can we change the tune?

AMT: And so now 30 years since the end of that tour. How have things changed for Canadians living with a disability?

RICK HANSEN: There's been a lot that's changed. You know, the first thing that's changed is I think our expectations in Canada have shifted dramatically, our attitudes about disability. From just a charitable concern, you know, something again to be you know worried about or you know to be pitied or to be, you know, nurtured if someone has a disability which is always important. But this move to a human rights, you know, imperative. And that's really huge, you know, opinion polls back this up that majority, a large majority of Canadians are really clear that the Canada we want is an accessible and inclusive Canada where there's no barriers to participation and inclusion for people with disabilities. And that's powerful and it's embedded in our Constitution. But, you know, the words were easy in 1982 when we brought it home. It wasn't real, you know during the beginning of my tour. But you know, 30 years later it is real and it's part of our culture and I'm really inspired by that. You know, we see people with disabilities demonstrating that it's really more about ability. We see them as leaders in business, leaders in education, leaders in the political world. The current Minister of Disability federally Minister Kent Hehr, he's a quadriplegic. But you know, I don't see his disability, guy’s talented, competent. He's passionate about making a difference. He got elected by his constituency. And these are big threshold shifts and, you know, that's paving the way to create more of a spotlight on the reality that, you know, that people with disabilities have potential and they're not just people to be accommodated through human rights. They can contribute. And that's that's really awesome to see.

AMT: And the Rick Hansen foundation works, you work with cities and developers and institutions do you not? To try to make these issues very concrete in public spaces and...

RICK HANSEN: Absolutely. And of course as we see the progression now, the other big thing that's changed is aging baby boomers are having many disabling conditions and over the next 20 years. Right now there is over a billion people in the planet living with a disability according to the World Health Organization and that's one in seven people. That'll be like one in five by 2035. In Canada it will be like 9 million Canadians, it'll affect everybody. So it's also now becoming an economic and cultural imperative that we actually need inclusion. So people with disabilities can contribute and so...

AMT: Are we doing enough on that front then? It's like are we thinking about this enough in our governments?

RICK HANSEN: No, Canadians aren't. And we need a wakeup call. And why is it that disability doesn't become and accessibility and inclusion top of mind? Because it's fragmented by body part and clinical diagnosis and it doesn't really, we don't really think about it terms of how big it is. Secondly, our attitudes continue to have to be shifted because employers still don't see people with disabilities with amazing abilities to contribute to a vibrant workforce and that's easy to accommodate not difficult. And we need to actually see our built environment. You know, the places that we live work play and learn. They have become completely inclusive. And we've got to move from a potpourri of random responses to accessibility to a professionalized accredited lens in the entire development chain from architects to engineers to city planners to advocates. All using the same viewpoint and standards for looking at a building and seeing if it's minimally accessible meeting code or if it's going to gold levels of accessibility.

AMT: You are still in motion. You want these changes and these adaptations to keep on going.

RICK HANSEN: Who'd a thought. You know, it was, it's not just the Man in Motion tour, it's a lifelong journey to create a global movement. And it's not one man in motion, it's many in motion. And my dream is to inspire people to get involved, to join me and many others to remove these barriers and get there faster.

AMT: That 15-year-old boy had no idea. Did he?

RICK HANSEN: No clue. You know, I would have sold my soul back then for the use of my legs and thought my life was over. Really. And looking back I'd never trade my life for the use of my legs. I'm one of the luckiest guys on the planet.

AMT: You are an inspiration Rick Hansen. Thank you.

RICK HANSEN: Thank you Anna Maria. It’s an honour to talk to you.

AMT: Rick Hansen. Founder and CEO of the Rick Hansen Foundation. You can read about his epic marathon in a new book called Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion World Tour 30 Years Later: A Celebration of Courage Strength and the Power of Community.

[Music: John Parr]

AMT: We will post some pictures of the Man in Motion tour on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. That’s our program for today. We’re going to leave you with more of St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion). I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

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September 21, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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