Outdoors: Helping disabled become enabled in canoes

A car accident in 2000 took Joe Moore’s left leg below the knee, but it wasn’t about to keep him off the water. Moore had been an avid paddler since 1990, and he quickly figured out ways to adapt to the new set of challenges he faced in a kayak and canoe.

Now, Moore is part of a team effort based in Virginia whose goal is to make people like him, people with physical challenges — amputations, spinal cord injuries, etc. — aware their limitations don’t have to keep them from enjoying America’s waterways.

“You can still do this,” said Moore, the education and outreach coordinator for the American Canoe Association, explaining how his group wants people with disabilities to approach paddling.

Moore stood on the banks of the Potomac River in Quantico as the ACA’s executive director, Wade Blackwood, a Richmond native and resident, paddled off into the hazy, midday heat with Sen. Tim Kaine.

Blackwood had brought together a number of interested parties for the event.

There were representatives from Team River Runner, a nonprofit that gets injured veterans into paddling; Kevin Carr, a former engineer who designs and builds adaptive equipment to put those with disabilities on the water, was flown in from Minnesota; Marine Corps Base Quantico Commander Col. David Maxwell and the mayor of Quantico, Kevin Brown, were there as well.

The event, which included speeches, an equipment demonstration from Carr and paddling opportunities for whoever wanted them, came together as part of this new push by the ACA to get more disabled Americans into paddling.

The key to doing that, Blackwood said, is twofold: No. 1. Having the adaptive equipment available at water access points so it can be utilized, and No. 2, making those with physical challenges aware that with this equipment, almost any disability can be overcome.

To highlight the second point, Carr told the group the story of a quadruple amputee — a man who had lost his hands and feet — who was able to paddle for the first time with adaptive equipment at a recent event.

When he was on the water, Carr said, you would have had no idea he wasn’t a natural in the kayak.

Much of Blackwood’s work is focused on the first point, and the ACA hopes to use Virginia as a model.

“We want to get this equipment out to colleges and universities, state parks, federal parks,” he said. “We’re now headquartered in (Fredericksburg) Virginia, and we want Virginia to lead the way on this.”

Quantico, he added, offered a kind of small-scale version of the way the project could work nationwide. The tiny waterfront town wants to start renting canoes and kayaks to visitors.

With the base nearby that’s home to many injured veterans, what better place to showcase what adaptive equipment can do?

Kaine, a lifelong canoeist, saw the effort as useful in addressing the transitioning of war veterans back to civilian life.

“This is a really good thing to do for wounded warriors, for veterans,” he said. “Some (of the challenges they have are) physical health, some are mental health, some are related to the job market. Some aren’t challenges; some are opportunities. We’ve got all these people with these fantastic leadership skills and we want to make sure we, as a society, continue to benefit from those skills. We’ll be richer as a society if we do.”

Blackwood hopes bending the senator’s ear will open doors for the project, which, he said, doesn’t require a huge up-front investment.

“We’re not talking about tens of thousands of dollars for each location. We’re talking about a couple thousand dollars to have these parks outfitted as well as these colleges and universities.”

Some of the equipment was as simple as a piece of foam that helped wedge the kayaker in the boat a certain way. Some was complicated enough to let paddlers with just one arm steer their boat confidently.

And whether it was war veterans with spinal cord injuries or victims of car accidents, like Moore, the message was obvious: “You can still do this.”

Now, it’s just a matter of getting the equipment, and the word, out.

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