President's Medal recipient proving that disability isn't inability

Posted: June 13, 2011 1:00 p.m.

To Christine Selinger, receiving the President's Medal is a sign the message she promotes so passionately is getting through.

That message is that people with disabilities can do anything they put their minds to, and Selinger is an example of someone who has done just that.

Five years ago, a rappelling accident left Selinger a paraplegic. That fall changed Selinger's life but, far from being a setback, it seemed to spur her to do even more.

"When you have an injury like mine, it's very easy to give up on everything you had wanted to do or all of a sudden see yourself as incapable," she says. "I would like to show both the disabled and the able-bodied that a disability isn't an inability and that you can still do everything you want to do."

As an education student at the University, Selinger excelled at academics, undertook a dizzying array of extracurricular activities both on and off-campus and became an international-calibre paracanoeist. She also became the first paraplegic to hike the challenging Nootka Trail in British Columbia.

When she graduates this spring with a Bachelor of Education in Mathematics Education and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, she will be awarded the President's Medal, presented to a student who is receiving a first degree with a minimum average of 80% and has shown leadership in and commitment to extracurricular activities.

Selinger is now working, looking for a teaching job and continuing her activities for groups such as the Rick Hansen Foundation and Canadian Paralympic Committee.

She is training hard for paddling, hoping to qualify for the national team that will compete in Hungary this summer. Her long-term goal is to compete in the Paralympics in Brazil in 2016.

More adventures are also in the works. Building on the success of the Nootka Trail hike, she is putting together a team for a handcycling trip from Cairo to Capetown beginning in November 2012.

"It was on my bucket list to see every continent before my accident, and I refuse to give up the things that were on my bucket list," she says.