"Life-changing" relay
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Forget the medals: for Belleville’s Karen Kitchen, it doesn’t get any better than being a Parapan Am Games torch bearer.
“It’s awesome,” said Kitchen, a longtime champion of accessibility who on Tuesday morning lit the games’ community cauldron in Jane Forrester Park north of Meyers Pier.
“It’s so special I can’t put it into words,” said Kitchen. She co-chairs Belleville’s accessibility advisory committee and is a 15-year member.
“I spent my whole life creating awareness,” said Kitchen, a 15-year member of the accessibility committee.
She said taking part in the relay was “life-changing.”
Of the 314 athletes on Team Canada, the only local is Campbellford native Kyle Pettey.
Other athletes in a variety of sports and abilities, however, beamed as they carried the flame around the park.
The day’s first torch bearer was Belleville-born hockey player Derek Smith, who after playing in Switzerland has been picked up by the National Hockey League’s Arizona Coyotes.
He said he was happy to be involved in the hometown relay.
“It’s pretty special,” said Smith. “There’s a lot of energy.”
He said athletes need a 100 per cent commitment to succeed.
“You’ve just got to love what you do,” said Smith.
Two Special Olympics athletes — Tim F. Maracle of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory and Donald Jonah of Belleville — were among the torch bearers. (Unlike the Parapan Ams, the Special Olympics is an ongoing series of competitions, not a single event.) Others included barefoot waterskier
Allen Vansen, the games’ executive vice-president of operations, sport and venue management, urged Canadians to support their Parapan Am athletes.
He said the games offer an “incredible opportunity … to see the best athletes in the Americas competing here at home.”
He said Parapan Am athletes are inspiring because of their achievements despite disabilities.
“Not only have they overcome them, they see them as an opportunity.”
Vansen noted this year’s Team Canada is the largest in history.
“Every sport is a qualifier for the Rio 2015 Paralympic Games,” he said.
“We’ve got a goal, like we did in the Pan Am Games, to finish in the top two in the medal count.”
Krystal Cassibault, a 24-year-old Trenton native now living in Belleville, will be there in a support role.
She’s a volunteer with the games’ event services support crew.
“I took sports in school so I thought this was the right thing to do,” said Cassibault, a graduate of the fitness and recreation programs at Loyalist College.
The games’ opening ceremonies are Friday in Toronto. The games end Aug. 15.
luke.hendry@sunmedia.ca