‘Strong advocate’ for blind was always active and on the go
54-year-old was dedicated to making life better for the visually impaired
On June18, Coranna Lee took part in what would ultimately be her last fundraising event — the Cycle for Sight, in which she planned to pedal from the back seat of a tandem bicycle for 75 kilometres from Alliston, Ont., to Blue Mountain.
Lee had been training for this ride for months. At age 54, she was an active woman who also sailed, skied, snowshoed, canoed and once went ziplining at the CNE. She lived alone in downtown Toronto and was always on the go. She was also blind. Lee owned her own tandem and had been riding one since 2007 when she joined the Trailblazers Tandem Cycling Club.
It’s an organization that lends out tandems and matches sighted “captains” in the front with visually im- paired “stokers” in the back.
“I joined not knowing whether I could ride a bike, but to my great surprise, I not only can ride a bike, but I really, really love it,” Lee said on a 2012 YouTube video promoting the Trailblazers. “It’s a really tremendous sense of freedom in the outdoors. When you’re vision impaired, your movements are somewhat inhibited, and on a bike, I don’t feel that at all.”
Fifteen minutes into the June 18 ride, Lee collapsed onto her tandem’s captain. He carefully lowered the bike and paramedics arrived right away. She was taken to a hospital in Alliston, transferred to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. Lee never regained consciousness and died three days later.
“She could do anything if she put her mind to it,” said her brother, Joeford. “She earned so much respect from her family for her independence.”
“She was a take charge kind of person” said Lynda Spinney, president of the Trailblazers. “Blindness never stopped her.”
In addition to being physically active, Lee was dedicated to making life better for blind people. Toronto city council passed a condolence motion in July, calling Lee “a strong advocate for the blind community.” Lee was born in Hong Kong on Christmas Day in 1961. The eldest of three children, she moved with her family to Toronto when she was 10.
With only 3- to 4-per-cent vision, Lee would watch TV with her face practically glued to the screen. As she grew older, her vision got worse. She visited eye specialists over the years, but none could turn things around, Joeford said.
She attended a boarding school for the blind in Brantford, Ont., then lat- er transferred to a public high school because she wanted to be like everyone else. That school was not prepared for a visually impaired student, Joeford said. Lee had a difficult time, struggling to fit in and learn.
Throughout her life, she never accepted the status quo and didn’t feel at a disadvantage in anything, Joeford said. She never had a guide dog and only started using a white cane relatively recently. She didn’t want people to think she was different, he said.
Huong Luu, a friend of Lee’s for the last 15 years, said Lee never shied away from giving her opinion and always had sound advice to offer. She could evaluate a situation more insightfully than other people, Luu said.
“She was super passionate and an easy person to get along with,” said Robyn Cook, an elections co-ordinator in Toronto’s city clerk’s office. Lee was a member of the city’s accessibility outreach network and offered feedback and suggestions at regular meetings held to make the municipal voting process barrier free.
Lee also did advocacy and fundraising work for the Toronto chapter of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians and recently served as its president.
After high school, Lee decided to become a massage therapist and in 1987 became the first visually impaired graduate of the Canadian College of Massage and Hydrotherapy, Joeford said.
After a few years as a massage therapist, Lee switched careers and studied to become a computer programmer. She worked in that role for the Ontario government for about a year, when an undisclosed illness unrelated to her vision forced her into longterm disability.
At Sunnybrook on those three days in June, Lee’s many friends visited around the clock. Family members were overwhelmed by all the love and affection they witnessed, not having been aware of all the lives Lee had touched, Joeford said.
Lee leaves behind her parents, two brothers and an aunt.