GOOD WORKS
come up with solutions to their challenges. Word is getting out about the new Edmonton chapter and requests are coming in. With one in five Canadians living with a disability, including an estimated 500,000 in Alberta, there’s always a need, says Mrs. Neunzig. She’s a paraplegic herself, injured in a snowmobile accident when she was 13. When she became pregnant with her first child in 2008, she started looking for customized equipment that would help her parent from a wheelchair, such as a crib with a sliding door that she could reach into rather than over. There was nothing on the market. She did some research and discovered Tetra, but since there was no active chapter in Edmonton, an uncle with carpentry skills took up the task. After her second child was born, she began compiling a list of resources to help out other disabled parents. Tetra still wasn’t active in Edmonton, so she contacted Tetra’s head office and offered to get the ball rolling. “I realized Tetra would be a great resource for Edmonton, not only for disabled parents but for the disabled community in general,” says Mrs. Neunzig. “It’s a great addition to the other services that are out there for people with disabilities.” While the Edmonton chapter is just getting off the ground, Tetra volunteers have been active in Calgary since the late 1990s. A core
philosophy behind Tetra: the recognition that people are not limited by their disabilities but by obstacles in their living environments. Sometimes the challenges are considerable. In 1987 a skiing accident left Sam Sullivan paralyzed. You may have heard his name before — Mr. Sullivan went on the become Vancouver’s mayor. He needed some low-tech adaptations in his apartment. He couldn’t shower, cook or even turn a doorknob on his own. So he wrote a letter to APEGA’s B.C. counterpart, APEGBC, seeking help. A Professional Engineer took up the challenge, spending six months coming up with creative solutions to expand Mr. Sullivan’s independence. It wasn’t long after that the Tetra Society was launched. Its name comes from the Greek word tetraplegic, which refers to a person with some disability in all four limbs. Today, there are 45 Tetra chapters across North America, including ones in Calgary, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Red Deer. Over the years, Tetra’s skilled volunteers — many of them Professional Engineers — have built 5,000 custom devices to assist people of all ages and backgrounds. Some projects are daily living aids. Some help clients in their workplace. Others are recreational. All the designs are shared on Tetra’s searchable online database. “Any area that a person with a disability finds an obstacle in — and they can’t find a solution that already exists in the marketplace — they can ask Tetra for help,” explains Brittney Neunzig, coordi- nator for the Edmonton chapter. “They don’t need to have a specific idea of what they need. They just have to be able to say this is an obstacle in my life. It’s the job of the volunteers to come up with the ingenious ideas that they have been coming up with.” What makes Tetra unique is the custom work volunteers do. Sometimes, they tweak existing equipment, like a walker or a wheelchair, to meet a client’s specific needs. But often they build devices from scratch, taking everyday materials or products and putting them together in resourceful new ways. “We try to use off-the-shelf items wherever possible,” says Mrs. Neunzig. Clients pay for the supplies, so this helps keep the cost down. “We put a lot of effort into minimizing the custom fabrications so it’s inexpensive and easily maintained.” With the guitar strummer, for example, the parts include a foot pedal from a drum hi-hat stand, a spring-loaded lever, bicycle brake cables, Velcro and lightweight aluminum. A guitar pick attaches to the lever, cable and pedal assembly, allowing Mr. Skelly to move the pick up and down with his left foot and strum the guitar strings. The lever attaches on the front of the guitar with Velcro, and the guitar is strapped on in the usual way, allowing the player to hold the guitar’s neck and fret the strings with the left hand. “So it just transfers all the mechanics of playing guitar to portions of Dave’s body that he’s able to use,” explains Mr. Twaites. Parts for the strummer are being sourced and building will soon begin. There will be a learning curve for Mr. Skelly, of course, but he’s looking forward to playing some Led Zeppelin, teaching a neighbour down the hall to play and maybe even joining a band again. “The people next door don’t know what’s coming,” he jokes. Mr. Twaites, who hopes to get his P.Eng. designation early this year, is also looking forward to working with other clients to
SIDEBAR
BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS
Early in January, the Calgary Tetra chapter got a special request from Open Sky Pictures, a television production company. Could volunteers create a device that would allow a quadruple amputee to curl — as in the sport of curling — from his wheelchair? the company asked. Open Sky is producing a documentary series about the challenges faced by disabled Canadians. The series, Invincible , is told through the eyes of 21-year-old Daniel Ennett, who lost his arms and legs to meningitis when he was a little boy. To meet the film crew’s tight deadline, a Tetra volunteer spent his day off designing a device to get Mr. Ennett on the ice and in the action. It consists of a special curling stick that attaches to the armrest at the front of his wheelchair with a magnetized plug. A notch at the other end of the stick fits onto the handle of the curling rock — similar to a shuffleboard stick but about five feet long. With the stick in place, Mr. Ennett can drive his wheelchair from the hack to the hog line, and use the momentum to propel the rock down the ice. He was able to join the Edmonton Rocks Wheelchair Curling club for a game at the Jasper Place Curling Club.
80 | PEG SPRING 2015
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