A Saskatchewan paralympic champion’s children’s book aims to show young people with all kinds of abilities they can do anything.
Lisa DeJong, originally from Biggar, won a silver metal at the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Games in Snowboard Cross. After needing to have her leg amputated due to birth complications, Dejong needed to learn how to be resilient at a young age.
“My parents, their ideology was, kind of throw me to the wolves, see what I can do. I’ll either sink or swim, but you’re going to figure it out. No special treatment,” she explained.
DeJong started skiing at four-years-old, then switched over to snowboarding at the age of 12.
“It was really hard going from facing forward down the hill to going sideways and to having one fake leg strapped onto a board where you have to use those feet. And I struggled for a few years pretty good, before I finally started picking it up. But I really wanted it, and I was really tenacious,” she explained.
“And I just kept getting out there and falling and getting back up and falling and getting back up. And slowly I started getting better and better.”
DeJong is now an author and motivational speaker. She carried the mentality of falling and getting back up to her children’s book, Lucy’s Fancy Leg,
“That’s one of the big lessons, is perseverance and it’s all about the journey. It’s about the falling down and the getting back up, not about the end result,” she said.
Some Regina students got a special book reading from DeJong on Friday, where the students were able to ask DeJong questions, and even hold her silver medal and one of her prosthetic legs.
“It’s actually the one year anniversary since I wrote the book, and it was kind of a labour of love. It took a few years to actually write the book,” she explained.
“The book is just something that I wanted to bring out to the kids around me that focuses on inclusion and just visibility for disability, and kind of bringing different stories to light in more of a light hearted way.”
DeJong said reading her book to students is important to her since it shows them that they can celebrate their differences.
“They’re excited to see all the things I do and how I do them differently, and just to watch that mindset change, I think is really important,” she said.
“And a lot of schools I go into, I’ll have a kid come up to me after and say, ‘Hey, I have this disability.’ And instead of them maybe hiding it from their friends before, they’re proud of it ... and I love seeing that confidence of kids that are now proud to show their differences.”
- With files from Donovan Maess
