Debbie Donald; icon in the disabled community
Hyfler/Rosner
BYLINE: Catherine Dunphy, Toronto Star
She wanted to be like you and me. She sailed, went camping,
believed in retail therapy, trolled the Internet looking for
a good man.
But Debbie Donald was not like everybody else.
She was a gifted artist. A people magnet. A mentor. An
accomplished lay group leader in her church. A media
personality.
She was the longest living C1-2 quadriplegic in the world,
the first Canadian recipient of a breathing pacemaker, the
first person on a ventilator to move into supportive
housing, an icon within the disabled community.
And while Donald may have been in a wheelchair, immobile
save for her pretty, expressive face, she was a force of
nature.
"She was an outgoing, vivacious, magnetic person. Debbie
spots you and targets you and chooses you to be her friend,
you have no choice," said Don Noble, pastor at The Stone
Church, which Donald attended for 10 years.
And so it was with a sense of disbelief that many of her
friends and family gathered at The Stone Church, on
Davenport Rd., to honour her spirit and fight after she died
Dec. 3 of complications from breast cancer. The last time
they had come together there to honour Donald had been six
weeks earlier, at her Oct. 15 wedding to Philip Aldrich.
She had met the 57-year-old widower from Florida through a
Christian Internet dating service - they met for the first
time in person just a few days before her 50th birthday last
year. That date, June 23, was also the day she received her
diagnosis of breast cancer. Other people might have
crumpled. But she was not other people.
"She had always wanted to get married," said Debbie Butler,
her namesake and the daughter of Donald's best friend from
childhood. Butler said she considers it an "honour" to be
named after Donald; she also changed careers to become a
personal support worker for people with disabilities because
of knowing Donald. She was Donald's single attendant at the
ceremony. "She used to say I was the daughter she never
had."
"In her words, her wedding was her 'lifelong dream,'" Noble
said. "She had been through a lot of near-death experiences.
I had been by her side at the hospital on many occasions and
thought we were saying goodbye and she would always fight
back. She would say there was one more thing she wanted to
do before she died - get married."
And so Donald's friend, Ann Stocker, organized her wedding,
a mother-and-daughter team at the church spent 120 hours
sewing sequins and beads on the two-piece sheath, and
another woman delicately stitched the matching design on her
veil. "When I was working on the wedding, I felt I was
granting someone a wish. That's how we all felt," Stocker
said.
Donald, one of 11 children, was 17 in 1972 when she dove
into the backyard pool at a party near her hometown of
Guelph. Her boyfriend made a shallow dive, but Donald dove
deep.
Her oldest brother Bill remembered how he and his siblings
haunted the halls of Toronto Western hospital, being allowed
to see her for only three minutes, being told she wouldn't
live out the week.
"I thought her chances were nil," said Dr. Graham
Vanderlinden, a neurosurgeon. "She had fractured a portion
on her second cervical vertebrae, the highest level of
quadriplegia that abolishes voluntary breathing."
He remembers a "lovely 17-year-old girl" who could only
communicate by blinking. "I did a tracheotomy to free up her
mouth and put her on a frame, and I thought frankly probably
it would be best if she died. I hadn't seen anyone that
disabled. I thought the outlook was beyond dreadful."
But then he got to know Donald and her determination. After
a chance conversation with a thoracic surgeon, he began
researching EPR, ElectroPhrenic Respiration - now called a
breathing pacemaker, featuring an antenna and radio
transmitter that are worn externally - which eventually
changed her life. It was the first significant step on her
journey to an independent life.
But at that time, Toronto had no place for people like
Donald and so she lived at Toronto Western for close to 10
years. She was one of the first people to move into the West
Park Healthcare Centre, where she had her own small
apartment and took up mouth painting. Debbie Butler said
nurses at Toronto Western had noted that Donald often drew a
small mouse beside her name when she signed her thank-you
cards and letters, and so she arranged art lessons for her
friend.
Donald became one of the 13 artists associated with the
Canadian Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists and
was always willing to do public appearances on its behalf.
Last September, her portrait of shimmering, glowing roses
graced the invitation to the group's first-ever art exhibit
in its new headquarters on St. Clair Ave. W. Donald is
photographed at work in the association's 2006 art calendar,
and her vibrant piece of a boat in full sail heralds the
month of August.
That reflected her other grand passion - sailing. "She would
say it felt as if she didn't have a disability," said Ann
Stocker, who often sailed with Donald on a Martin 16
keelboat named Freedom. "To be sailing is one thing. To be
able to take somebody out who feels they have left their
disability behind on the dock is wonderful."
Donald soon became president of the Disabled Sailing
Association of Ontario. She was also a leader in the
movement for independent living for people with
disabilities.
She moved into her own apartment almost 20 years ago.
With her van and driver, she was able to consult, do media
interviews, demonstrate equipment for the disabled at Expo
86 in Vancouver, represent Canada two years ago in Atlanta
at a conference of mouth artists - and regularly show up at
the bedside of others recently paralyzed.
"I was just 20 when she visited me 23 years ago," said
Stephen McPherson. "I saw another high quad going out,
having a good life and enjoying things."
She gave him advice that he said he's lived by since: Don't
ask or wait for doctors' permission or approval. Go out, do
it, and tell them afterwards.
Donald took her own advice when she bought her own condo in
Brampton and planned on taking a honeymoon cruise after her
Nov. 17 mastectomy.
"She did it all. She was financially sound, she had
organized her life," said her sister, Gail Bosman.
Donald's siblings are finding it hard to believe she is
dead.
Officiating at her funeral was "brutal," said Noble, the
pastor. "I was saying goodbye to a hero."
The only comfort he said he could offer her family and
friends was that Donald had achieved something else she had
always wanted.
"She always wanted to be free of the wheelchair. Her death
was like freedom."
Catherine Dunphy can be reached at cdunphy @ thestar.ca.
GRAPHIC: Debbie Donald, shown in this undated photo, was a
mouth painter, sailor and advocate for independent living.
"She did it all. She was financially sound. She had
organized her life," one of her sisters said.