Feature:

Quadriplegic Trailblazer - and Comedian?

Or
Multitasking Mayor Moves Mountains
by Thomas Murray
for
Tim Benjamin
@
ACCESS PRESS

There's a joke going around the city of Vancouver, Canada. It goes: Why would Vancouver
send its worst skier to accept the Olympic flag?
The punchline isn't meant to be so much funny as ironic. And would you believe that it was the
city's mayor himself who actually started it to begin with?
My introduction to disability, Sam Sullivan explains, came as a consequence of an
overestimation of my skiing ability, and a resulting broken neck.
You see, Mr. Sullivan, mayor of Canada's third largest city, has been a quadriplegic since 1979,
with limited mobility in his arms and none in his fingers. And, as is characteristic of his attitude, the
joke is at his own expense. You'll get the same thing if you confuse him for a paraplegic.
My goal is to a paraplegic when I grow up, he quips nonchalantly. But right now I'm a
quadriplegic.
Now age 46, the mayor recently represented Vancouver at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
There, as his self-effacing joke implies, he received the Olympic flag on behalf of his city. He admits
he thought little of his role in the ceremony, which tradition dictated he should wave the flag eight
times. Using a special holder he and a friend built into his wheelchair, Sullivan held the flag high and
waved it eight times by circling left, then right and back again eight times. It's a scene he repeated one
month later when, performing the same duties at the Paralympic Games in Turin, Sullivan seemed to
have gained somewhat of an international following. People who remembered him from the previous
month's ceremony would greet him on the street, calling him by name and asking for his autograph.
I wasn't really aware that so many people knew who I was.
But it comes as no surprise to anyone who knows Sullivan's accomplishments.
Sam Sullivan was elected to the Vancouver city council in 1993 where he held office until the
year 2005, at which point he campaigned for, and won, the city's mayoral office. He was sworn in last
November. Just the year before that he was awarded membership in the Order of Canada, the country's
highest honor, for his tireless efforts within the disabled community. Those efforts include inventing
several assistive devices, including a one-wheeled hiking vehicle called TrailRider, as well as founding
several non-profit groups dedicated, in one form or another, to the betterment of life for people with
disabilities.
If all that sounds a little daunting, Sullivan wasn't always so accomplished. In fact, he admits
that in the years soon after becoming paralyzed: my life spun into a full-blown crisis.
Three years after his accident, government disincentives to give up his welfare benefits and reenter the workforce caused a sort of personal rebellion against his own self-pity. He decided to take up
flying, a brief but illuminating flirtation that would launch his voyage to self-sufficency to an
auspicious start. His defining moment came when the ultralight he and an instructor were piloting lost
lift and began to crumple in on itself. His instinctive reaction was to pull back on the flight stick to
maintain altitude. To his shock, his instructor shoved the stick forward and throttled up, pitching the
aircraft down into what seemed in that moment a reckless dive. Naturally, the instructor's timely
maneuver increased their air speed, leveling the ultralight out and averting disaster.
As he confessed in the Winter 2000 issue of Abilities magazine: I was convinced that pulling
up on the controls would save me when, in fact, just the opposite was true. If I could be that wrong
about something so important, what else was I wrong about in my life?
The experience still serves him as a metaphor for taking responsibility for his disability and
pursuing his own needs.

Flying was the first major goal I had after I began to take control over my life.
But that would only be the start of his challenges. He battled serious depression before earning
his bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Simon Fraser University. During that time,
unable to open his own apartment door or give himself a shower, Sullivan gathered some friends and
some local engineers to address city-wide accessibility issues. It was a momentous step for Sullivan
who in the ensuing years would tackle one project after another. The result, he is proud to say, was that
he created, with the help of many others, several organizations dedicated to improving our quality of
life. His efforts to increase access for the disabled in Vancouver blossomed into the Tetra Society, a
group he and some friends started in a basement. It now has 44 branches in North America and in India.
All told, the Sam Sullivan Disability Foundation now includes six affiliates: the BC Mobility
Opportunities Society, ConnecTra Society, Disabled Independent Gardeners Association, Disabled
Sailing Association, Tetra Society of North America and Vancouver Adapted Music Society.
It might seem like mayor Sullivan can't take himself seriously, but his disarming charm belies
his determination. In a recent television interview with CBC's Rick Mercer, Sullivan showed off his
TrailRider by hiking through the wilds of Ontario's Grenville Park. Earlier in the day he had met with
Canada's Prime Minister, Steven Harper. He pilots the contraption reclining, using what he
affectionately calls Sherpas to pull the sled along the trails and through the brush. Looking like a onewheeled luge, the device carries him anywhere his fellow hikers care to roam. One other person,
presumably the musher, stabilizes Sullivan's ride from the rear. At one point during the interview, when
asked yet another question about politics, Sam joked that you can't get anywhere in politics these days
unless you're quadriplegic.
Coming from the man who once also said, any society in which needs are not rights has no basis to
claim for itself morality, the intentional irony speaks volumes about this man's remarkable will.
Those interested in learning more about mayor Sullivan are encouraged to visit
http://www.samsullivan.ca for more details about this inspiring man.