The road to recovery with para triathlete Leanne Taylor
Leanne Taylor’s life changed on a “normal” day.
She and her partner were on a bike ride at Bison’s Butte, a popular outdoors area in Winnipeg.
“We rode there all the time,” says Taylor. “It was very close to our house. It was pretty typical.”
Then, on the downhill slope of a hill she’d ridden dozens of times before, Taylor lost control of her bike and ended up flipped over the handlebars.
Even this, she adds, wasn’t that unusual.
“It sounds like a pretty bad crash, but it's kind of a thing that if you bike, you've probably done,” she says. “It seemed like a pretty low impact crash – it didn't really seem like anything was going to be wrong.”
And then she tried to get up – and found she just couldn’t do something she’d taken for granted her entire life.
“I was really panicked and didn’t know what to do,” says Taylor. “I just knew I couldn't get up.”
What happened next was a flurry of activity. Taylor quickly realized she couldn’t feel or move her legs. With a background in health science – she studied microbiology, worked in medical device sales, and had done first aid as lifeguard – she quickly suspected she had a spinal cord injury.
This was confirmed at the hospital, where scans revealed she had dislocated her T10 and T11 vertebrae. It’s an injury that usually results in permanent damage, including paralysis from the waist down.
“It’s not a great prognosis,” says Taylor, who says she’d been mentally preparing for this news for a few hours before the doctors actually delivered it. “I was prepared for it.”
She remembers the strange things your brain focuses on in these high stress situations.
“In the E.R., they had to cut my clothes off and I remember thinking, like, how much do I like these bike shorts? I hope this isn't the expensive ones,” she says. “Then I was like, oh, okay, no, these are like my cheaper shorts. That's fine. You can cut them. And I even remember thinking, if this is a permanent injury, I don't need these shorts anymore, why am I thinking this?”
Taylor soon had surgery, and then spent several days in the hospital. The faint hope that her injury might be temporary quickly faded.
Surrounded by friends and family, she began the slow acceptance of this new chapter of her life – and made a decision that would shape the path forward.
“I was like, I get to control this narrative and I don't want my life to be sad now. I want it to be different from that. And I have that option,” Taylor says. “I couldn't change what happened to me - but I realized that I had so much power to change how I reacted to it.”
After she was released from hospital, Taylor spent six weeks at rehab facility, undergoing intensive physiotherapy and occupational therapy, as well as learning wheelchair skills.
“What we did there was getting used to what my life would be like and how to do things as independently as possible,” says Taylor. “It was really nice to have had that early on and realize what's possible for me - which is more than you think.”
It wasn’t long before she began thinking about returning to work, a major step forward.
Since she first had the accident, Taylor had been working closely with a representative from Canada Life, the company behind her workplace benefits.
“My mom got her hands on the little green policy manual that talked about what our benefits were, and we looked for different things that were available to us,” says Taylor, who says they found that she was eligible for short term, and then long term disability insurance, as well as funding to make adaptations to their home and car.
Canada Life also made it possible for Taylor to access the paralysis rider on her life insurance policy 6 months early, enabling them cover some of the many costs that they’d incurred after the accident.
“We had the skepticism at the time that insurance companies weren't our friends and that they would try to withhold these benefits or we wouldn't really see the money,” she says. “And then as we started to get this support and have contacts that we trusted. It felt really good.”
This support even extended to her workplace, where her Canada Life return-to-work counsellor helped her navigate the transition, like purchasing a standing frame that made it easier for her work at a desk all day.
Her office also made their own adaptations to make it more accessible, like installing push buttons to open doors and creating an official handicapped parked spot for her.
Most importantly for Taylor, they reassured her throughout her recovery that she would have a job to return to when she was ready.
“At that time when so much was up in the air and there was so much that I didn't know, it was nice to be able to check off that one box and say, okay, this one thing I know,” she says.
On her Canada Life liaison's advice, her return to work started slowly: Two hours a week, then 6 hours a week, 10 hours a week, and then 20 hours a week, a gradual build up that set her up to eventually resume full time hours.
“It really felt like we were on the same team,” she says. “Canada Life, especially in my case, went above and beyond a lot of their obligations in order to help me.”
Leanne shares the inspiring story of how sport helped her heal after suffering a life-changing spinal injury.
Para triathlete Leanne Taylor explains how sport and Canada Life helped in her recovery to everyday life.
Text description:
[soft music begins]
Description: Brandmark of Canada Life. Triathlon medals dangle on a hanger.
Leanne: I'm Leanne Taylor. I’m a Canadian elite Para triathlete.
Description: The screen is split three ways showing Leanne swimming underwater, zipping down a path on a handcycle, and traversing a racetrack in slow motion on her racing wheelchair. The screen turns red. Text, Leanne sustained a spinal cord injury in a cycling accident. Leanne in her home, sitting for an interview. Text, Leanne Taylor
Paralympian, World Triathlon Para Series Champion, Compliance Officer, Medicure.
Leanne: Canada Life, especially in my case, went above and beyond a lot of their absolute obligation. I think with the goal of being able to go back to work and live my life in a way that was easy and that had everything I needed.
Description: Leanne works at her desk in the office. Working at her standing frame desk Leanne looks up, laughing. Leanne races down a path on her handcycle.
Leanne: I did my first race, it was eight months after I was injured and finished it, and it was just such an amazing experience, and I was so hooked from there.
Description: Leanne is training indoors on her racing chair. She appears in slow motion, silhouetted against a bright window. Leanne trains on her indoor handcycle.
[music swells]
Description: Leanne swims underwater in slow motion, her hand reaching out towards the camera.
[music crescendos and then ends]
Description: The screen goes black.
[soft music begins]
Description: Screen fades up to Leanne in her race chair staring ahead with a look of absolute determination.
Leanne: I think the world sometimes says something's difficult, so we shouldn't do it rather than realizing “this is difficult but that's okay. If it's worth it, go for it.”
Description: The screen turns red. Text, See a future where you can do anything. Brandmark of Canada Life. Text, Insurance, Investments, Advice. Canada Life and design are trademarks of the Canada Life Assurance Company. canadalife.com. 1-204-946-1190
[music ends]
Para triathlete Leanne Taylor explains how sport and Canada Life helped in her recovery to everyday life.
Text description:
[soft music begins]
Description: Brandmark of Canada Life. Triathlon medals dangle on a hanger.
Leanne: I'm Leanne Taylor. I’m a Canadian elite Para triathlete.
Description: The screen is split three ways showing Leanne swimming underwater, zipping down a path on a handcycle, and traversing a racetrack in slow motion on her racing wheelchair. The screen turns red. Text, Leanne sustained a spinal cord injury in a cycling accident. Leanne in her home, sitting for an interview. Text, Leanne Taylor
Paralympian, World Triathlon Para Series Champion, Compliance Officer, Medicure.
Leanne: Canada Life, especially in my case, went above and beyond a lot of their absolute obligation. I think with the goal of being able to go back to work and live my life in a way that was easy and that had everything I needed.
Description: Leanne works at her desk in the office. Working at her standing frame desk Leanne looks up, laughing. Leanne races down a path on her handcycle.
Leanne: I did my first race, it was eight months after I was injured and finished it, and it was just such an amazing experience, and I was so hooked from there.
Description: Leanne is training indoors on her racing chair. She appears in slow motion, silhouetted against a bright window. Leanne trains on her indoor handcycle.
[music swells]
Description: Leanne swims underwater in slow motion, her hand reaching out towards the camera.
[music crescendos and then ends]
Description: The screen goes black.
[soft music begins]
Description: Screen fades up to Leanne in her race chair staring ahead with a look of absolute determination.
Leanne: I think the world sometimes says something's difficult, so we shouldn't do it rather than realizing “this is difficult but that's okay. If it's worth it, go for it.”
Description: The screen turns red. Text, See a future where you can do anything. Brandmark of Canada Life. Text, Insurance, Investments, Advice. Canada Life and design are trademarks of the Canada Life Assurance Company. canadalife.com. 1-204-946-1190
[music ends]
And while this return to relative normality would have been an incredible feat in itself, Taylor was just getting started.
Back when she was in hospital, her sister had talked about her competing in the Paralympics.
It was a joke, but Taylor took it seriously. She looked up wheelchair sports and discovered the para triathlon, an event that combines swimming, biking and running with the opportunity to use adaptive devices, like a handcycle.
Through her recreational therapist, she got the chance to watch another wheelchair user doing their training.
Then, she tried her own hand at a few laps around the track.
“Just to have that feeling again getting your heart rate up and feeling athletic was so exciting, and I just genuinely didn't know if I would have that again,” says Taylor. “I didn't think that that was something that would be available to me.”
Not long after, she took part in her first race.
“It was eight months after I was injured, and it was just such an amazing experience,” she says. “I was so hooked from there.”
“Leanne's drive is incredible. When she puts her mind to something, she's going to do it,” says her husband, Scott Dyck.
“I knew that the odds were against her,” says Dyck, who has a research background in spinal cord injury and has been by her side throughout her journey.
“We knew from the data in the field is that the faster you get back to movement, the more you work out, the better your chance of recovery is,” he says.
“And it just so happens that working out is a perfect recipe to improving your mental health. So, we made it our goal to get Leanne as active as possible, as quickly as possible.”
It didn’t hurt that Taylor proved to be a formidable competitor. Para triathlon quickly became more than just a weekend sport for her, and soon she ranked high enough to be made an official member of Canada’s team.
This summer, after placing first in both the ITU World Series and the Americas Championship, she headed to Paris for the 2024 Paralympic Summer Games.
“Originally the goal was just to be there, I just wanted to qualify,” she says. “But last year in World Championships, I came fourth - and fourth is just that place where you don't want to be. You're so close to the podium, you're just not there. I had that feeling of like, ‘What if I just had a little bit more?’”
Canada Life sponsored her as she trained for the games – a continuation of the support Taylor says she’d had since the day of her accident.
For example, after her injury she received ten free counseling sessions with a charity that supports people with spinal cord injuries. Her benefits covered five more of these sessions, which she found very helpful. Once that coverage was used up, Canada Life made it possible for Taylor to keep working with this same therapist as part of her return to work.
“He became such an important resource,” Taylor says. “When things happen that are difficult, I can hear the things that he would tell me about them.”
Now, she counts Canada Life as a key part of the group of family, friends and other supporters who are cheering her on.
Before the games, Taylor reflected on what it could mean if she found herself on the podium.
She said that her overwhelming emotion would probably be gratitude to all of the people – most of all her partner – who’ve helped her get to this place.
“I feel like that's the biggest reason why you do it. In some ways, the biggest sort of thank you that you can give these people is to give them that experience,” Taylor says. “Just to be able to be there and to share that moment with those people who've done so much and who are so invested is so important.”