Pubdate: Wed, 18 Jun 2003
Source: Mississauga News (CN ON)
Copyright: The Mississauga News 2003
Contact:  http://www.mississauganews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/268
Author: Jan Dean

TURNBULL SENDS EMOTIONAL CROWD INTO TEARS

Turnbull Draws Nostalgic Crowd

Almost 20 years after she was shot and left lying in a pool of her own 
blood, paralyzed from the shoulders down, Barbara Turnbull says anger is 
more debilitating than her spinal cord injury.

The activist, author and journalist said she came face-to-face with that 
fact when her own anger -- over not being able to attend a dinner party at 
an inaccessible Toronto restaurant -- threatened to smother her normally 
upbeat attitude toward life.

After wallowing in depression and rage for almost a week, Turnbull said, a 
chance encounter with a stranger helped her see what anger was doing to her 
life.

"It was like he held up a two-sided mirror," the former Mississauga 
resident said, to show her she had a choice about her attitude toward life.

Turnbull was in Mississauga yesterday to speak to more than 300 people 
attending the final in a series of Women of Courage luncheons to raise 
money for Interim Place's capital campaign.

Turnbull was 18 and working the night shift at a Clarkson convenience store 
Sept. 23, 1983 when robbers shot her in the neck, paralyzing her from the 
shoulders down.

One of the robbers she knew from her high school geography class.

"Life is measured in millimetres," Turnbull told the crowd of misty-eyed 
attendees. "If the bullet had hit a few millimetres higher, I wouldn't be 
here. A few millimetres lower and I'd have the mobility I so crave."

By turns, funny and passionate, the radiant redhead demonstrated that while 
getting shot brought her into the spotlight, she now uses her spirit, wit 
and intelligence to shape her life.

After school guidance councillors suggested she work for the government or 
study social work, "because that's what disabled people do," Turnbull opted 
to study journalism at Arizona State University.

A summer job as a journalist at The Toronto Star turned into a career she 
loves.

Turnbull credits advances in technology for affording her a modicum of 
independence. While her first assistive device was a wooden dowel she used 
to turn the pages of a book, she now uses a voice command computer for work 
and a sophisticated laser-operated wheelchair for mobility and to control 
everything in her apartment -- from the lights to her stereo -- with a turn 
of her head.

Turnbull became an activist for people with disabilities when she launched 
a successful 1993 Human Rights complaint against Famous Players Theatres 
for not providing wheelchair access. She was stunned when theatre-goers 
blamed her for the closure of several Toronto theatres after an eight-year 
battle.

"Sometimes when you win, you lose," Turnbull said wryly, adding she never 
intended to become an activist. She launched the Famous Players complaint 
simply because she wanted to go to the movies.

"We demand access because we must," she said.

Ironically, when she expected a backlash for publicly supporting the 
medical use of marijuana in 1999, she said, "there wasn't a whisper."

Turnbull drew laughs when she told her audience how she, "accidentally 
discovered that marijuana stops the muscle spasms that go hand in hand with 
paralysis. Now, I use marijuana when I need to."

She continues to advocate for a government program that would make a clean, 
safe and reliable supply of marijuana available for treating medical problems.

Turnbull also blasted the toothlessness of last year's Ontarians with 
Disabilities Act and urged the audience to join in her fight by calling on 
their provincial representatives before the next election.

Turnbull said she found hope in 1996 while she was finishing her 
autobiography, Looking In The Mirror.

When The Toronto Star assigned her to write about actor Christopher Reeves' 
goal to walk again, she found out about the tremendous strides scientists 
are making in the area of spinal cord injuries and realized science could 
change her life.

She dedicated the royalties of her book to setting up the Barbara Turnbull 
Foundation for Spinal Cord Research to help provide some much-needed 
funding for scientists.

Eighteen months ago, while visiting New York City in an attempt to ignore 
the 18th anniversary of the shooting that paralyzed her -- because that 
would mean she had lived more than half her life disabled -- she met a New 
Yorker who recognized her from a television show that had aired the 
previous night.

"He said, 'you took a bullet'", Turnbull told the audience.

Summing up her experience, she concurred with the New York stranger: "I 
took a bullet and lived 18 years, and it's been a helluva ride."
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