History

Rick Hansen and Sam Sullivan together launched the notion of adaptive sailing in Western Canada; the former supplied the boat – given to him by the British Prime Minister at Vancouver’s Expo ’86 – and the latter developed proceedings and set the stage for the international movement that it is today.

The story begins with Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion tour, a truly heroic undertaking: 34 countries, 40,000 kilometers and $26.1 million raised for spinal cord injury research. His journey around the circumference of the Earth took two years, from 1985 to 1987, and included Rick’s introduction to adaptive sailing, in a 15-foot Bellway Sunbird.

“I was going through the UK in 1985, where the Sunbird was being prototyped,” explains Rick Hansen. “They asked me to be part of that. They gave me a lesson, the instructor jumped out of the boat, and there I was, learning how to sail.

“The boat was displayed during Expo ’86. At the conclusion of that, Margaret Thatcher donated the boat to me, personally, as a tribute to what I was doing on the tour.”

As Rick was on the road at the time, the boat was officially presented to his sister, Christine Hansen (now Clayton).

“While I was away, a couple of guys had been using the boat,” he continues. “When I came back, Sam said he knew some guys that would like to use it, and said, ‘Sell it to us.’

“I did not feel it was appropriate for me to keep the boat, or to sell it. I said ‘I’ll donate it if you form a society to let people use it.’”

Sam Sullivan remembers the boat having been stored in a farmer’s field when he initially inquired about it. “Rick worked hard to try to get people to take it on and do a good job with it,” he says.

Rick Hansen presented the Sunbird in July 1989. By the end of that summer the newly formed Disabled Sailing Association of British Columbia (DSA BC) had launched more than 22 sailors with disabilities into English Bay.

Sam decided to raise the money for four more of the $15,000 boats to expand the sailing program – to “accommodate more disabled sailors, as well as host competitions,” as he put it in a 1990 newspaper interview.

“We had the idea for the Mobility Cup right at the beginning, around 1989 or 1990,” explains Sam. “It was important to have people come together and celebrate their achievements, and to do that in the form of a race.

“It was originally an expansion of the sailing program. It was to have disabled sailors come together and celebrate what they had achieved. After the first year, when we ended up having people come from another city, we realized there was a possibility that the Mobility Cup could be used to expand the disabled sailing program.”