Annual Courage 2003

Recipients:

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Robb Dunfield, Physical Rehabilitation

Photo credit: Nick Procaylo/The Province

Robb Dunfield, 43, of Cloverdale is the 2003 Courage to Come Back Award recipient in the Physical Rehabilitation category. Robb, 19 and an accomplished athlete, incurred massive spinal cord injuries in a 1978 fall which left him a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic. He can move his neck muscles and nothing else.

At first angry at his fate, stuck in an institution, he began to mature, first learning basic functions, then learning mouth-painting and skills as a public speaker and organizing the first independent group home for quadriplegics.

He married Sarah Andermatt in 1992. In 1997, against long odds, Sarah and Robb had twins, Emma and Sophia, now bright and boisterous pre-schoolers. Robb has sold a number of his paintings, has had labels he created appear on millions of bottles of wine and has donated a number of his works to The Variety Club, B.C. Paraplegic Association and other good causes.

His program of presentations for schools - Above and Beyond - is in its fourth year. Robb now works full-time as a program coordinator for the Rick Hansen Man in Motion Foundation, seeking to improve the lives of people with spinal-cord injuries.

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Joe Roberts, Chemical Dependency

Photo credit: Nick Procaylo/The Province

Joe Roberts, 37, of Coquitlam is the 2003 Courage to Come Back Award recipient in the Chemical Dependency category. Joe started using drugs at age nine in Ontario, moved on to alcohol, marijuana, LSD and cocaine as a young teenager, and got into intravenous drug use by the time he was 16. He was "an angry young man," he says now, with low self-esteem and family problems.

He moved on his own to Vancouver in 1986, becoming "a weekend junkie, hustling" and doing transient labour. He soon found himself sleeping under the Georgia Viaduct. He got into morphine in lieu of heroin and finally hit bottom in early 1991. He got clean and has been ever since.

He earned two sales and marketing diplomas in Ontario and moved back to Vancouver in 1996 and worked successfully in sales. In 1998, he and a partner founded Mindware Design Communications. Joe is also a professional speaker. He's written a book, "The Seven Secrets to Profit from Adversity." His presentation, "Don't Buy the Lie about Getting High," has been delivered to thousands of B.C. students.

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Jill Stainsby, Mental Health

Photo credit: Jon Murray/The Province

Jill Stainsby, 49, of Vancouver is the 2003 Courage to Come Back Award recipient in the Mental Health category. Jill experienced what she describes as a “complicated” childhood; there was mental illness in her large family. She moved out at age 17 and suffered her first psychotic episode at 22.

Over the next 15 years, between hospitalizations for paranoid schizophrenia, she often worked as a labourer and acquired a UBC degree but also self-medicated with alcohol.

In 1986, she underwent a thorough self-assessment, got sober and went back to school, receiving a Masters degree in 1991.

She began working and volunteering in the mental health field. She told her story and those of six other consumer/survivors in the landmark award-winning documentary “Within these Walls.”

Jill is a political activist and a feminist, employed as a Consumer Support Worker by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and studying toward a second Masters degree. She attends Quaker meetings and is active in the gay and lesbian social dance community in Vancouver, taking part in square dancing, country-and-western and ballroom dancing.