Page 14 - The Mobility Project, April 2020

going places By Laurie Watanabe
Ben Leclair: New Purpose
in an Adventurous Life
As a professional wake- boarder from Canada, Ben Leclair is used to traveling
the world, competing as an elite athlete, pushing through pain during training, and appearing on film with the great outdoors as his backdrop.
In November 2016, while training in Florida, Leclair sustained a C3 complete spinal cord injury that changed his life.
But Leclair will also tell you that some things haven’t changed at all.
Learning New Possibilities
Today, Leclair is still an athlete, still trains, and still travels the world. “I’m probably more of an athlete now than ever before,” he noted. “I eat better, I train much harder, and I’m constantly giving my body the tools needed to optimize.”
Filmmaking remains a big part of his life, both in front of and behind the camera.
And rather than slowing down, he’s actually added credentials to his résumé. In 2019, he became an ambassador and spokesperson for Amylior, a power wheelchair and seating manufacturer in Vaudreuil- Dorion, Quebec, and will help design and develop future products. And he remains an ambassador for O’Neill, the surf wear/lifestyle brand, as he was during his wakeboarding career.
Leclair has come a long way from November 2016, when he was on a ventilator and a feeding tube, reha- bilitating first in Orlando, Fla., and then in Montreal.
He shares his adventures not just to encourage people living with disabil- ities, but also as a much-needed lesson to the able-bodied world. The message: “People are capable and deserving of all the adventures and
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People are capable and deserving of all the adventures and possibilities that life has to offer
possibilities that life has to offer.” Part of the goal is to share
advances in assistive technology
to make everyone more aware of available seating, mobility and elec- tronics options, and what a differ- ence those options can make.
“It’s hard to know what’s out there, even though there are more social media pages now,” Leclair said. “When you’re new to this world [of assistive technology], it’s not easy to find. When I was at my rehab center in Montreal, they tell you what they know, and you think that’s all that’s out there.”
A priority of Leclair’s is to help people to use technology to move forward in new ways.
“When I was there, I couldn’t move my arms,” Leclair said, of his starting point during rehab. While he said he was aware that some people under- going rehab with him were “going
to be able to play rugby or some kind of sport, which might give them a passion,” Leclair didn’t learn until much later that wheelchair sports
are available for people with various levels of injury. “I just heard recently that some people play soccer in wheelchairs, with cages and the whole thing. It’s things like this I’d like to share, and make videos for people to enjoy and see there are so many more things you can do. It’s not about the level of your injury. There’s probably something you can do at almost every level.”
A Cinematic Career
Filmmaking is front and center of Leclair’s life now, just as it was before his injury. “I was working for a wake- board company that did a bunch of wakeboard events in Canada, and it was televised on a French-Canadian TV channel,” he said. “I had a TV crew that followed me around, and they came to Asia and Europe with me a couple of times.”
Spending so much time with the TV crew taught Leclair cinematography.
“That’s where I really learned
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PHOTOS: SIMON DUBÉ (PAGE 14); GOPHRETTE POWER (PAGE 15/RACING); COURTESY AMYLIOR/DIANE MAQUET (PAGE 15/FILMMAKER)