Ski experience forges whole new sense of independence

BY JOHN DECOSTE

jdecoste@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

Participation in sport has helped give a Kings County native with a neurological disability a whole new sense of independence.

Linda Scott, a Canard native and 1986 Acadia graduate who works now as a dietician at the Diabetes Management Centre in Dartmouth, suffers from a slowly progressive neurological disorder that has required her to use a walker since 1997.

When she returned home to Nova Scotia that year from Newfoundland, where she had been working, Linda was interested in getting involved in sport.

She inquired into disabled and adaptive sport, but wasn’t able to find a whole lot of information. She has since found that much of the information she sought is now available online at www.nswheelchairsport.com.

Eventually, the Recreation Department of the N.S. Rehabilitation Hospital in Halifax was able to provide her with a list of sports available to individuals with a disability.

She chose skiing, and visited Ski Martock (which was on her way home to the Valley) where she met Mike McLaren, the director of the ski school there and also a CADS (Canadian Association for Disabled Skiing) instructor.

She and McLaren “worked for years making a walker on snow that allowed me to ski standing up,” but unfortunately, “it didn’t allow me much ability to control my direction on the hill.”

A breakthrough for Linda occurred about six years ago when sit-skis became available in Nova Scotia. The then-head of CADS in Nova Scotia, Andres Knircha, secured corporate donations to purchase two sit-skis for each ski hill in the province.

The sit-skis, she recalls, “allowed me more control over where I went on the hill, but you can still tip over fairly easily and you need to be able to control your direction in order to control your speed.”

The first two or three years she got out skiing “four or five times (a season), usually for a morning or an afternoon. I made some progress by the end of the season, but found I had to relearn a lot the next year.”

Asked to coordinate CADS

In 2003, Linda took part in an event at Ski Martock that was also attended by some of the national disabled development team. She was asked to coordinate CADS for Nova Scotia. “I said yes,” she says, “but I really didn’t know what I was getting into.”

Part of her job was to sit on the national CADS board, which “gave me the opportunity to go out West skiing in 2006 and 2007 for a week at the National Family Ski Festival.”

She learned a lot, but again, “by the time I got home the ski season was over and there was no time to practice what I had learned.”

Earlier this year, one of the CADS instructors, Jean-Paul (J.P.) Deveau, offered to take Linda out skiing, and also offered accomodation at his family’s cottage at Wentworth.

“I assumed this would be an occasional day skiing. What I didn’t know is that J.P. likes a challenge.” The two practiced together daily, with Linda using the sit-ski and Deveau, an experienced skier, operating a set of tethers to help her maintain control.

After about three weeks, Linda had improved to the point where she could manage almost all the runs at Wentworth and Martock, “though one of our goals, to make it down the hill by myself, untethered, remained elusive.”

Skied six runs independently

At that point, the ski season ended in Nova Scotia. Deveau suggested they take a trip to Crabbe Mountain near Fredericton where there was still lots of snow.

At first, they started out with Linda still tethered, but one day, Deveau “tricked” her and allowed her to ski down one of the beginner hills on her own. She quickly became confident enough in her abilities to progress on to intermediate hills.

Deveau recalls, “on the last afternoon of Linda’s 2007-2008 season, she skied six runs independently for the first time in her life.

“Later that evening, she told me she had never been able to participate in any sport with able-bodied people in her whole life. For the first time, she felt she could participate in a sport just like anybody else. It’s one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.”

Speaking from her perspective, Linda, who has also participated in wheelchair curling, said, “one of the nice things about skiing is the freedom and the speed that gravity helps generate.”

She doesn’t expect she will ever be able to do things like use a chairlift like able-bodied skiers, but the extent to which she is able to participate in skiing “is really exhilarating.

“For people with a disability,” she says, “going quickly is often a luxury. Most things – getting up, getting dressed, getting to work, getting home, getting in bed, doing most anything – require a little more time, but once you are ready to ski, you can keep up with most anyone on the hill. It’s a great equalizer.”