On a bright morning in March 1985, Rick Hansen rolled his wheelchair out of a Vancouver shopping mall and didn't stop for nearly two and a half years. When he finally pushed back into BC Place Stadium on May 22, 1987 — greeted by 50,000 cheering well-wishers — he had wheeled across four continents, up the Great Wall of China, and through the Swiss Alps. Most remarkable of all: he had shown the whole world what a person with a disability can do when the barriers come down.
Rick's story began long before that. Born in 1957 in Port Alberni, British Columbia, he grew up in Williams Lake, a fishing and sports-loving kid. That all changed on June 27, 1973. On the way home from a fishing trip, the pickup truck he was riding in rolled over, and the impact left him paralyzed from the waist down. He was just 15 years old.
But Rick refused to slow down. He finished high school, became the first student with a physical disability to earn a bachelor's degree in physical education from the University of British Columbia, and threw himself into sports. He won national championships in wheelchair volleyball and basketball, and even recruited a young runner named Terry Fox to join his basketball team. Inspired by Terry's own cross-country Marathon of Hope, Rick decided to use his athletic talent to change how the world saw people with disabilities — not as fragile, but as full of potential.
His Man In Motion World Tour became a legend. Over 26 months, Rick wheeled 40,075 kilometres — about 85 kilometres every single day, for 12 to 14 hours at a stretch. He rolled through 34 countries, climbing 1,700 metres into the Swiss Alps. He had already proven his power on the track, winning six Paralympic medals across the 1980 and 1984 Games: three gold, two silver, and one bronze, plus 19 international marathon wins.
The Tour raised $26 million to help remove barriers for people with disabilities — but its greatest gift was a shift in how we think. Today, that legacy lives on. Rick carried the Olympic torch, was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2006, and one of his worn tour gloves now sits in the Canadian Museum of History, a symbol of a man who proved that limitations are mostly made, not real.