|
||||||
 |
|
|||||
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These are the stories of The Courage To Come Back Awards. Each year six people are honoured for their courage to overcome and recover from illness, injury or adversity. |
The Seventh Annual Courage To Come Back AwardsRecipients
Halldor Bjarnason - Inspirational Achievement
Halldor was born in Winnipeg with cerebral palsy, a birth condition caused by damage to the brain’s motor function, resulting in uncoordinated movements and a speech impairment. He dreamed of being a lawyer. After Queen’s University law school, he articled at a large Toronto law firm, passing the Ontario bar exam in 1991. Five of 16 articling students were hired back by the firm; Halldor wasn’t one of them. He moved to Vancouver and worked at a job outside the legal field. After being called to the B.C. Bar in 1993, he got a term contract as a lawyer with the Labour Relations Board. Unable to get work practicing law after that, Halldor did free-lance research for other lawyers while managing the affairs of the Cerebral Palsy Association. By 1999, he was practicing law by himself with an increasing emphasis on wills, trusts and estates. Halldor joined Access Law Group - an association of lawyers who share expenses and resources - in 2003. He deals primarily with the families of people who have a disability and is noted for staging 30-40 seminars each year on estate planning. He is chair of the Law Society’s Disability Advisory Committee and sits on a number of volunteer boards. He has taught at UBC and Langara College and has received numerous accolades including a Governor-General’s medal and the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award. Halldor is an active cyclist (using a trike) and a former Paralympic gold medalist (Seoul, 1988), a dedicated walker and hiker. Photo credit: Nick Procaylo / The Province Melanie Carlbeck - General Medicine
Melanie was born with spina bifada, a birth defect which leaves a gap in the spine, causing, in her case, paralysis below the waist and impairment of lower-body functions. She was not expected to survive her first surgeries, nor those when she spent 10 months at Children’s Hospital aged three. She soon got her first wheelchair and has used one ever since. She missed a lot of elementary school because of hospital stays, but stuck to it and was inspired by good teachers to dream of being one herself. She had a supportive family and “a good team of doctors.” She was a successful Girl Guide and was awarded the very rare Badge of Fortitude. At 18, she graduated from High School in Trail to a standing ovation. First discouraged, Melanie entered UBC, helped by a caring administrator. She maneuvered around the lack of accessibility on campus, graduating with a B. Ed. in 1972 and returning to Trail to teach children with learning disabilities. She has now been teaching such kids for 33 years. “The real thrill,” she says, “is to take them from here and get them to there,” motivating the youngsters with her example of dedication and productivity. She moved from Trail to the Langley School District in 1981 and now approaches retirement at James Hill Elementary School. She is self-supporting and independent. She drives a car with hand controls, travels and paints. As her nominator puts it, “she has persevered against all odds” to make a rich and meaningful life for herself. Photo credit: Gerry Kahrmann / The Province Donald Fraser - Mental Health
Don was a student in Surrey’s gifted program, active in sports, musically inclined and popular. At 14, he moved to 100 Mile House with his family and transformed himself from city kid to country kid, with involvement in the local 4H club. He and his brother started a country and rock group which played throughout the region. Don’s first symptoms of schizophrenia appeared when he was a student at UBC, suffering hallucinations - “visual nightmares” he calls them - and beginning a two-decade odyssey, a roller-coaster of diagnoses, institutions, a wide variety of medications and treatments, successes and failures. Along the way, he was diagnosed, in addition to schizophrenia, as having occipital epilepsy, which affects the optic nerve and can result in seizures. He fell in love and fathered a son, born in 1986, who was given up for adoption at birth; Don would now like to get back in touch. The turnaround in his life came in the mid-nineties with better diagnosis and the treatments which help him live a normal life today: anti-convulsant, anti-psychotic and anti-anxiety medications. Don began his much-valued work as a janitor at Nanaimo Transit two years ago and has lived at an independent boarding home operated by Columbia Centre Society since last August. He is a regular participant in the Partners in Education program of the B.C. Schizophrenia Society, talking to students, parents and care givers, “giving them the tools they need to deal with this disease.” Photo credit: Lance Sullivan / The Province Lora Johnston-Corbett - Chemical Dependency
After fourteen years of heroin addiction, a life of crime, sex for money and three years in jail, plus umpteen efforts to quit, Lora smuggled a razor blade into a Victoria detox centre, planning suicide. For some reason she can’t explain, she stayed her hand and began the road to recovery. Her first completely drug-free day was February 10, 1988 and she’s been clean ever since. She had an alcoholic father, often ran away from home and missed school. Labeled incorrigible under provincial law, she was sent to Willingdon School for Girls. Already into alcohol, marijuana and hallucinogens, a man turned her on to heroin at age 16 during a second stay at Eric Martin Psychiatric Ward in Victoria. She had a daughter, now 31, who was born addicted to heroin. Later she had a son. Both were raised by others. At age 32, Lora hit bottom. But after quitting drugs and crime, she began to pursue work as a counselor, achieving her Social Work degree in 1994 and her Masters in 2004. She now works for the Vancouver Island Health Authority as a drug and alcohol counselor. Lora is active in community affairs, happily married to Dalton Corbett and is now in “really close contact” with her daughter Angela. In 2004 she took time to care for her best friend, who succumbed to breast cancer last September. Lora herself will soon begin what she expects to be successful treatment for Hepatitis C. Photo credit: Lance Sullivan / The Province Johanna Johnson - Physical Rehabilitation
Johanna’s life changed forever on July 21, 1985. Visiting Sacramento, she was hit in a crosswalk by an uninsured driver passing on the right. Her four year-old cousin was killed; she was paralyzed from just below her shoulders and on a ventilator from the beginning. After a year at Shaughnessy Hospital, helped by a tutor, she went back to school at Point Grey High. In Grade 10, she was featured in a school-board video promoting the integration of students with disabilities. Her father Gary took a year away from his work to give her support. She graduated from Point Grey in 1990 and attended Langara College (“It was cheaper and more accessible”) before transferring to UBC and earning a B.A. in Mathematics. “I always wanted to be a teacher,” she says now. With her 1997 Education degree, she tried to get work with the Vancouver School Board, but obstacles kept popping up. She filed a Human Rights complaint, was featured in a Province story, and began substitute teaching in Delta. A change of senior management personnel coincided with her acceptance as a teacher in Vancouver and she took on her first substitute assignment in January, 2000. She is now a classroom teacher in full-day kindergarten at Nootka Elementary School. Johanna sits on the Board of the BC Coalition of People with Disabilities and volunteers with the BC Paraplegic Association, where she has received the Susan Marshall Fighting Spirit Award. She paints by mouth and has been inducted into the Terry Fox Hall of Fame. Photo credit: Gerry Kahrmann/The Province Emily White - Youth
Emily was diagnosed with asthma at age seven. Early treatments of what seemed like trial-and-error medications didn’t work and her condition began to deteriorate. She was given oral Ventilin in increasingly large doses and, at ten, adjudged to be dependent on the powerful drug. The doctors eventually concluded she wasn’t asthmatic, but suffered from Myasthenia Gravis, a neuromuscular disease. With her immune system now badly weakened, Emily continued to deteriorate. Before she was 11, she was confined to a wheelchair and unable to be at school. For the White family, it was "like living in a bad dream." Finally, a doctor who doubted the diagnosis recommended getting off the slew of medications. Emily started to move in her wheelchair. Back on her feet and in school in Grade 7, she lost friends, suffered depression and bullying but responded by becoming an A student and throwing herself into volunteer work. She is particularly attached to her efforts for Operation Christmas Child, which last year distributed 7.4 million shoe boxes of useful goods to third-world children. She has an exhaustive list of other school and community accomplishments, will graduate from Wellington Secondary School in June and plans to attend Malaspina College before seeking an education degree at the University of Victoria. Her goal is to teach special-needs kids at the elementary level and help poor families elsewhere in the world. It’s now believed her medical difficulties were triggered by a viral infection, and she is now healthy. Photo credit: Lance Sullivan / The Province |
|||||
|
|
||||||
|
Nominations | Recipients | Partners | Media | Buy Tickets Online | Home
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coast | Programs & Services | Coast Mental Health Foundation | Coast Social Enterprise Foundation © 2003-2008 Copyright Coast Mental Health |
||||||
Halldor Bjarnason, 41, of Vancouver, is the 2005 Courage to Come Back Award recipient in the Inspirational Achievement category.
Melanie Carlbeck, 55, of New Westminster is the 2005 Courage to Come Back Award recipient in the General Medicine category.
Donald Fraser, 46, of Nanaimo, is the 2005 Courage to Come Back Award recipient in the Mental Health category.
Lora Johnston-Corbett, 49, of Nanaimo, is the 2005 Courage to Come Back Award recipient in the Chemical Dependency category.
Johanna Johnson, 32, of Vancouver is the 2005 Courage to Come Back award recipient in the Physical Rehabilitation category.
Emily White, 18, of Nanaimo is the 2005 Courage to Come Back award recipient in the Youth category.