OUT TO PROVE SPORTS SHOULD HAVE NO LIMITS
Ottawa recreation therapist insists ‘anything is possible’ for disabled
In her final year studying human kinetics at the University of Ottawa, Emily Glossop’s career path was set by pure chance when she pulled a research assignment out of a hat.
The slip of paper issued her group a task: to find sporting activities available for disabled people in Ottawa. The project would introduce her to a whole new world — and to her life’s passion.
“It was the moment I became aware of this population, and realized that there were some sports that were inclusive and accessible for the disabled, but a lot were not,” she says. “And I asked myself, ‘How do we change that?’ “
For almost two decades now, Glossop has been working on the answer. A recreation therapist at the Ottawa Children’s Treatment Centre (OCTC), the 39-year-old has been a leading advocate for the city’s disabled, a tireless organizer and campaigner who continues to push for more and better recreational opportunities for children with physical and developmental challenges.
“We didn’t know any of this stuff was possible for our child until we met Emily. For us, she’s been a saviour,” says Connie Murphie, whose nine-year-old son, Alex, has cerebral palsy.
The Murphie family was at an event Glossop organized at the Jim Durrell Recreation Centre this week so that children of all abilities could try sledge hockey. Presented with Sledge Hockey of Eastern Ontario, it allowed Alex to hit the ice with his two brothers, Gregory and Marcus, and some of the city’s most accomplished sledge hockey players, including newly named Paralympian Tyrone Henry.
Henry, 24, who plays defence, took up sledge hockey after suffering a paralyzing spinal cord injury in a car crash in 2010. He vowed to play sledge hockey even before going into surgery at CHEO on the night of his crash.
“Hockey has always been a big part of my life, and sledge hockey has really helped me recover faster and stay positive throughout the process,” he says.
Henry’s Paralympic teammate, Ben Delaney, of Ottawa, was introduced to the sport by Glossop when he was 12. She raised the idea of playing sledge soon after his left leg was amputated above the knee due to osteosarcoma, the same bone cancer that claimed Terry Fox.
At the time, Delaney was having difficulty getting past the idea of never playing hockey again on two skates. “She told me, ‘You can still play the game that you love,’ ” he remembers. “But I was pretty hardcore and I didn’t want to start over.”
Glossop persevered and organized an exhibition game for Delaney, drawing on local sledge hockey players. Delaney was hooked after his first game. “As soon as I realized how similar it was, how fast it was, I pretty much fell in love with it,” he says. Delaney, 22, is a forward. “I had such a love for hockey that once I stepped back on the ice and started moving around on the sled, I thought it was just the best thing,” he says.
It was the kind of moment that motivates Glossop. “That’s what makes it all worthwhile,” she says. “We’re here to show kids opportunities, to show them anything is possible.”
Ever since her chance encounter in university with the city ’s disabled community — “My path was kind of laid in front of me,” she says — Glossop has been deeply involved in it.
As soon as she graduated, she joined the OCTC (it’s now part of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario) in 2001 as a preschool teacher and ran the centre’s summer programs.
Early in her career, Glossop was introduced to a young athlete, Kathleen Forestell, a legally blind skier with retinitis pigmentosa. Glossop, a trained ski coach and instructor, agreed to become Forestell’s guide skier. The two won a raft of World Cup medals during three seasons on the para-alpine racing tour. (Glossop skied in front of Forestell with a yellow X on her back, and talked her through the course on a headset.)
Glossop says the experience allowed her to meet disabled athletes of all kinds and learn about their strategies for competing and succeeding. “I was taking pictures of equipment and bringing all this stuff to Ottawa and saying, ‘That’s going to work for so-and-so, and that’s going to work for so-and-so.’ “
As a recreation therapist, Glossop introduces disabled young people to sports and leisure activities — anything that engages them in their communities — tailored to their abilities and ambitions. “I really feel sport is where you learn from each other,” she says. “You learn how to be independent. You see how other people challenge themselves, what they accomplish.”
Glossop also became a competitive wheelchair basketball player, which is how she connected with her husband, Todd Nicholson, a longtime Paralympic sledge hockey player. They met at a wheelchair basketball game and developed a friendship that later blossomed into a romance. Their twins, Gwen and Tate, are now eight years old.
In addition to raising their twins, Glossop and Nicholson have also been working together to bring a fully integrated and accessible recreational facility to Ottawa modelled after the Abilities Centre in Whitby, Ont.
Glossop is chair of Abilities Centre Ottawa, which two years ago partnered with the RendezVous LeBreton group to make an abilities centre part of the $4 billion LeBreton Flats redevelopment proposal, the final details of which are now being negotiated with the National Capital Commission.
Nicholson, who is Team Canada’s Chef de Mission for the 2018 Pyeongchang Paralympic Winter Games, says his wife is someone with both vision and commitment. “She’s a woman with endless energy who is always looking out for everyone else,” he says.