Former Kenner student competing at Invictus Games
A former city student is competing in the Invictus Games in Toronto after being the first veteran to carry the Invictus flag in its journey across Canada.
Elizabeth Steeves, 32, is a contender in wheelchair tennis and powerlifting.
She moved to Peterborough with her mom when she was about 15, attending Kenner Collegiate for a semester in Grade 10. About a year later, Steeves moved to Gananoque to live with her dad.
In 2007, Steeves joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in Saint-Jeansur-Richelieu, Que. She worked as a mobile support equipment operator driving cars, buses, forklifts and trucks.
Two years later, Steeves was transferred to CFB Kingston.
In 2010, she fell in a training exercise, going headfirst over a four-metre wall. She compressed three discs in her neck, injuring her spine.
A year later, she was transferred to CFB Esquimalt, where she met her husband Travis. They married four years later.
Eventually, the pain Steeves suffered from her injuries became too much. She was suffering physical and mentally, battling depression and PTSD. In January 2016, Steeves was released from service.
Later that year, she applied for the Invictus Games, parasports for wounded, ill and injured members of the military and veterans. Prince Harry created the games after he visited the Warrior Games in America.
The inaugural Invictus Games took place in London in 2014. More than 400 athletes from 13 nations competed.
In 2016, the games took place in Orlando with 500 competitors from 16 nations.
This year, the games are in Toronto. They start Saturday and wrap up Sept. 30. Five hundred athletes from 17 nations will be competition in 12 parasports.
Steeves, who now lives in Sooke, B.C., launched the Invictus flag on its trek across on Aug. 16. She’s one of 150 flagbearers to carry the flag, which lands in Newfoundland Friday.
“Even with great loss, to be able to represent my country and to wave a flag as powerful as that one was the biggest honour that any woman could have,” she said.
Steeves will be competing using an exoskeleton. She saw one her Team Canada teammates using them and quickly made the switch out of the braces that cut off circulation to her legs.
Unfortunately, during training, Steeves wound up having stomach surgery that might prevent her from being able to compete in powerlifting.
But she’s not bothered by it – she wasn’t going for gold anyway.
“A medal would be great, but it’s not why I’m going,” she said.
She’s going to accomplish the goal she set for herself, that she’d see this through from beginning to end.
Never giving up is advice she gives to others and takes to heart.
“Life is always going to throw you curve balls, and some of them do hit you and it hurts, but you have to keep moving forward.”
Steeve’s mom and stepdad still live in Peterborough and she visits as much as she can. Other than lounging around her mom’s house, her favourite thing to do is cycle to Omemee on the Trans Canada Trail to get ice cream.