Twenty years ago on a curve in a highway just outside Calgary, Andrea Wojcik’s life was forever altered.
A motorcycle crash claimed the use of her legs and torso from about her collarbone down. She had just wrapped up her first year as a gym teacher, a job she loved.
She was athletic and had a lifetime’s worth of dreams ahead of her.
“I definitely was suicidal,” she said, pausing to wipe away a tear from her eye.
“Fortunately, I had people who loved me and took care of me through those moments and made sure I came out the other side.”
While her injury robbed her of her mobility, it didn’t stifle her willpower or eliminate her plans to live an adventurous life. It just changed the way she would have to do it.
“If I attempt something and someone says, ‘I don’t know if you can do that…’ I’m like, ‘Just watch me. You haven’t seen nothing yet,'” she said with a chuckle.
“Not much takes me down. If there’s adventure, I’m in.”
The 47-year-old learned how to sit-ski and has kayaked many lakes and calm rivers. But last year, she decided it was time for something a little more epic and turned her sights to white-water kayaking.
“Doing physical things really helps heal my soul, and being in nature just kinds of mends all those things that come apart during the school year when I’m counselling kids, so this is when I got this bright idea. If I scare myself a little bit, it grounds me in my body and life is a lot happier,” she said.
Canmore organization Rocky Mountain Adaptive and Bow Valley Kayak teamed up to help make her dream a reality. A team of about 25 people spent months training with her and outfitting her boat.
“I had to do a lot of learning different strokes,” said Wojcik.
“I can’t rotate my body, so I needed to find a paddle that would do that for me. I don’t have abs, so I needed to find something to supply me with lateral support.”
Her coach Robbie Mcavoy said the experience forced him to get creative and think about the sport in a different way, breathing new life into something he has done and loved for so long.
“It becomes pure creation. You design the boat, you trade one movement for another movement, you improvise and it’s good fun. It makes you feel quite good about your craft,” said Mcavoy.
Two weeks ago, and after many practice runs and scenario simulations, the team was ready. Andrea and six other paddlers ran the Class II rapids on Lower Kananaskis River, stretching about seven and a half kilometres.
“The first couple of rapids, I was kind of having a little heart attack, little freak-out but got through them fairly confidently. By the third one, I was on my way,” said Wojcik, still riding what she calls a gratitude high from her experience.
“You know what? Things that have not been done before can be done. You just have to find a way to make it happen.”
“It’s good to see the effort she puts in. Andrea proving the opposite is possible. It just takes a wee effort,” said Mcavoy, adding he hopes it will open the sport to others with spinal cord injuries.
“I’m hoping this takes off. This is something we could be doing every day if we had the resources to do it.”
It’s not Wojcik’s only big feat this summer. Twenty years after her injury, she is going back as a full-time gym teacher because someone believed she could.
“Life is totally a team effort. I don’t know if one person can live life by themselves,” she said.