Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/126959
profile: Brad Jacobsen A mobility advocate who loves to bust barriers " One of the toughest things is when my mind wants to do something I can't physically do. It feels like I'm trapped in my own body." B efore the accident, Brad Jacobsen took risks. He loved to jump off 30-metre cliffs into water, to mountain bike, to camp in the bush. "I went through life feeling pretty indestructible," he says. "If I got myself in trouble, I could always use my mind, or body, to get myself out." Until one day in 1994 at age 23, when he dove into a glacier river to retrieve a wayward Frisbee and never walked again. Instead, Jacobsen ended up on the Vancouver General Hospital spine ward, where X-rays showed breaks in the C4 and C5 vertebrae in his neck, then at the city's GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre. Left with partial movement in his upper body and total paralysis below the waist, he had joined the 4,300 Canadians who suffer spinal cord injuries each year and the 170,000 more it's estimated rely on wheelchairs to get around. Of course, Jacobsen was devastated. But he never dwelled on the negative, says Walt Lawrence, Jacobsen's rehab counsellor at GF Strong. In fact, he was struck by how Brad arrived already well equipped to do very well in life. "You're the same person post-injury as you are pre," he says. "If you met challenges pre, you're going to do the same post, just courtesy Brad Jacobsen p20-23_Profile.indd 21 differently." And Brad never shied from a challenge. Who knows what could have been. But what Jacobsen has done since his accident has certainly left Vancouver, and the world, a better place. "What he's accomplished is comparable to the achievements of Rick Hansen and Terry Fox," says Lawrence. In other words, "it's not all about him. It's about everyone else. He brings community together." "When you're recovering at GF Strong you find out a lot about yourself: who you are, who you want to be," says Jacobsen. His positive energy almost gushes out of his solid frame, which is topped with a shaved head, big smile and infectious enthusiasm. "You reassess everything. And I realized I didn't want to be held back. I didn't want to sit still." He didn't. Even before finishing rehab, Jacobsen Brad Jacobsen broke his neck in 1994. And in the 19 years since, he's helped make Vancouver one of the best places in the world to live in a wheelchair, says f ormer Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan. He's founded numerous peer-support p rograms, pushed business to improve accessibility, supported those with mobility challenges in accessing bus and air travel, and is a leader in wilderness access. Westworld >> S u m m e r 2 0 1 3 21 13-04-18 1:34 PM