WINNIPEG – Bob Hebert works as a Walmart greeter, delivers papers, plays in a pipe band, participates in Toastmasters and volunteers with children and seniors.
And oh – Hebert, 56, has an intellectual disability.
“I want to see people with disabilities out in the community, not in institutions,” showing others what they can do, the Selkirk man said. “Mine was learning. I was a slow learner, but now, at this age, I know most things.”
Just don’t use the “R word” around him.
“I hate it. I hate it with every inch of my body,” he said. “It shouldn’t be in the books. We’re not retarded, we’re people with disabilities.”
Hebert is a familiar sight in Selkirk, a city of about 10,000 people located 35 kilometres north of Winnipeg. People honk and wave as they pass him while he delivers his papers; the children at Centennial School appreciate the way he knows what they want for breakfast before they speak to him.
“He’s good. Perfect,” one boy said.
“For the kids here, they see Bob. They don’t really see him as any different,” said Dawn Gunter, another volunteer for the school’s breakfast program. “He’s just a man that’s helping out.”
It’s an example of how Hebert is fulfilling his mission in life – to show people that a disability doesn’t define a person.
“I’m a person with a disability and I’m not retarded,” he said. “I’m just human.”
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