Michelle Stilwell goes beyond the podium

OTTAWA – Six-time Paralympic champion Michelle Stilwell was inducted Wednesday into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, honoured for a storied career that spanned two sports and redefined what leadership and ability can accomplish.

For Stilwell, Wednesday’s ceremony wasn’t only a celebration of medals and world records. It’s about advancing Paralympic sport, changing perceptions about disability, and recognizing the achievements of people with a disability. Her performances in sport and later her political career has had an impact on all of the above.

‘’My sports story has become part of its history,’’ said Stilwell, the 18^th Paralympian inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. ‘’It’s kind of incredible when you sit back and wrap your head around it. Sport has always been a part of my life.

‘’It’s shaped who I am.’’

In 1991 at age 17, Stilwell became quadriplegic when she fell from a friend’s back while piggyback riding in a freak accident. Three years of resulting complications, surgeries, and a long rehabilitation ensued. She discovered wheelchair basketball and soon was invited to a team’s practice.

‘’I still had my halo brace on,’’ she recalled. ‘’I had never seen wheelchair basketball before but I was instantly hooked. As soon as I saw those athletes weaving up and down the court, I was all in.’’

It was the start of a magnificent career in sport.

At the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, she was a member of Canada’s women’s wheelchair basketball team that won gold, the first quad athlete to win a gold in the sport.

However, complications to her spinal cord injury forced her to switch sports and by the 2008 Beijing Games she had reinvented herself as a world-class wheelchair racer in the T52 sprint events.

There were blips on the way – “in my first international race I came in last place. I didn’t like that” – but she would soon be a dominant athlete in her sport.

In Beijing, she swept the 100 and 200-metre races, four years later in London she took gold in the 200 and silver in the 100, and she was a double gold medallist again in Rio. In addition, she won nine world championships medals (seven gold), set over 20 world records, and won many 10 km as well as half and full marathon races in Canada and overseas.

She is also the only Canadian female to have Paralympic gold medals from two separate summer sports 

While in Rio, she was already immersed in her second life chapter as an MLA in the BC Legislative Assembly. She was elected in 2013 representing Parksville-Qualicum, likely the first elected government official to compete at an Olympic or Paralympic Games.

She was reelected in 2017 and Stilwell also served in the cabinet as Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation.

Stilwell admits her competitive nature served her well in the unforgiving political jungle. From podium to politics, from gold to government, Stilwell remained unfazed.

‘’The Paralympics are quadrennials, public office is quadrennials,’’ she compared. ‘’It’s all about the preparation and the plan that gets you there.’’

Her approach to campaigning mirrored her approach to competition.

‘’No Paralympian makes it to the top without a team behind them,’’ she said. ‘’It’s the same in politics, you rely on your caucus, your staff, everyone pulling towards the same outcome.’’

Today Stilwell is mapping out the next step in her career. Only 51, there is a large chapter that awaits to be filled. In the meantime, her public service continues.

She is vice-president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee and sits on the board with Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart Foundation, helping make sports more accessible for children across the country.

‘’If we can ensure youth have opportunities to participate in sport, we’re creating future leaders,’’ she said. ‘’We’re building people with confidence and resilience who will do extraordinary things.’’

For Michelle Stilwell, everyone deserves a chance to discover what they are capable of. That belief – more than medals or titles – may be her greatest legacy.