by Rick Mercer
It was Gerald, my executive producer and partner in crime, who said about the Rick Hansen segment, “No fishing. Tell him you want to go bungee jumping.”
At that point, I had no idea if a paraplegic could go bungee jumping. I knew very little about bungee jumping at all, apart from the fact that it’s terrifying and dangerous. But once again, a quick search of YouTube showed me that, all over the world, guys in wheelchairs are every bit as stupid as those of us who aren’t. In fact, there are piles of them who will happily pay good money to literally jump at the chance to upgrade from paraplegic to quadriplegic.
A few quick calls to some scenic British Columbia bungee-jump operations and we found one that was not only wheelchair accessible but had ample experience helping disabled individuals simulate the feeling of plunging to your death.
Now all I had to do was convince Hansen.
When I got him on the phone for our second conversation, I could tell Rick was disappointed that I wasn’t sold on sturgeon.
“Rick,” I said, “how about you and I go bungee jumping?”
The silence at the other end was deafening.
He finally spoke, saying, “I would have to check with my doctor.”
I can tell when someone is looking for a way out. Next, he’d be claiming there was a sudden unavoidable change in his schedule and he’d be out of town for the next year. Grasping at straws, I appealed to that part of mankind that stops them from asking directions or taking doctors’ orders: “Do you always check with your doctor before you do something? What did he say about taking your wheelchair on the Great Wall of China? Was he cool when you took your wheelchair on four-lane highways?”
He admitted he rarely takes his doctor’s advice and said he would get back to me. He mumbled something about heights and signed off.
I knew I’d lost him.
Lots of people are afraid of heights. My brother is afraid of heights. Growing up, my family would entertain ourselves by watching my brother, on a stepladder, trying to change a light bulb without passing out. This was back in the days when such a thing wasn’t considered child abuse.
But people who are afraid of heights have a very simple way of dealing with them: they avoid them. They don’t visit observation decks in the world’s tallest buildings, they don’t go up on their roof to install Christmas lights, and they certainly don’t bungee jump.
Which is why I was taken by surprise a few days later when he called me up and said, “I’m in.” I think he may have threatened my life, too, but I didn’t care. I was going to meet Rick Hansen.
And just a few days later, there I was, in beautiful British Columbia, standing on a bridge with a Canadian hero. With my hero.
A hero I could tell was in a full-blown panic.
Not that he said he was in a panic, but once we got up on that bridge I could tell.
B.C. can be overwhelmingly beautiful. There are times in British Columbia when I feel like I am standing inside of a giant special effect. Can natural beauty really be this beautiful? This was one of those days. Standing on the bridge, mountains in the distance, towering trees on either side of me, I was captivated by the sight of the raging glacial river two hundred feet below. The Man in Motion, however, wasn’t captivated by the river because he never once looked down. Never once did I see him peer over the edge. He would look anywhere but down.
As always, Rick caused a stir. The young men running the bungee jump were thrilled to meet him, and this probably helped his nerves, because he went into total gentleman mode. One of the bungee technicians (are they called technicians?) was Australian and knew all about the Man in Motion. Turns out his early impressions of what Canadians were like were formed when Rick rolled through Australia twenty-five years earlier.
The bungee guys assured us that yes, they had done this before, other people in wheelchairs had made the plunge, and we were in good hands. I believed them, but part of me was thinking, Of course they would say that. I knew nothing about these people. I had no idea how long they have been on the job, or how late they were up last night, and for all I knew this Australian guy could be on the run from the law. I have done some dangerous things in my life, but this was different. I have jumped out of airplanes, for example, but in those instances I was strapped to a member of the Canadian Forces. I knew they were the best, I knew the equipment was the best, I knew they had packed the ’chute. Everything I knew about this outfit was on a glossy pamphlet. Now I was starting to panic.
One of the reasons why I like being with someone who is more nervous than me is that, for some reason, it alleviates my nerves. I can concentrate on helping them instead of dwelling on my own imminent death. In this case, I was also aware that the only thing worse than my bungee cord breaking would be Rick Hansen’s bungee cord breaking. “Yes, Mercer’s show was going great until he pushed the Canadian icon off a bridge and killed him. Ratings kind of took a hit after that.”
While I was engaged in this mental horror show, John Marshall, my road director, had decided that for the purpose of the story, I would jump first. Hansen readily agreed. Don Spence, my cameraman, had only this to say: “You have to jump backwards, otherwise I can’t get the shot.” Backwards? Then he looked over the edge and added, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.”
I realized a long time ago that I suffer from a psychiatric disorder common among circus folk that allows me to do things in front of an audience that I would never do if left to my own devices. There is only one circumstance where I would stand backwards on a bridge with an elastic band tied to my torso and leap into nothingness. I wouldn’t do it for money and I certainly wouldn’t do it for kicks. For some reason, I will do it for TV. Discuss.
They attached the cord to my body, and I looked at Rick and said, “Let’s hope when this is over, you are the only guy in a wheelchair.” I went to the edge, turned around and stood with only my toes on the bridge. I thought, What a beautiful day to be out fishing for sturgeon.
Advice to potential jumpers: if the plan is to count down from three and then jump, stick to the plan. I didn’t. If you chicken out on your countdown, it just reveals your cowardice and makes it exponentially harder to jump when the time comes. It took me a long time to take the plunge. We counted down from three a lot. Then Rick became like some Zen master or sports psychologist and began to tell me that I could do this, that I was going to prove to myself that I could overcome adversity, that I was going to go out there and win one for the team. He’s so good, I actually believed him. I counted down from three and fell backwards into nothing.
All you really think about on the way down is the bounce. You know that eventually you will reach the end of your rope. At that point, one of two things will happen: the rope will break and you will die, or it will hold and you will bounce back up from whence you came. On the way back up, a third scenario enters your mind: “What if this stupid rubber band whips me back up so hard I slam into the underside of the bridge, which from down here appears to have giant metal spikes sticking out of it? Spikes that look like they were designed to impale a TV host?” Luckily, my bungee cord held and I ricocheted up and down like a hysterical baby in one of those long-discontinued doorframe Jolly Jumpers—this is the fun part, apparently. Your brain slams against the side of your skull a few times and finally you come to a stop. By the time they dragged me back up to safety, my blood pressure was on bust and there was so much adrenaline in my bloodstream, I could have bitten my own finger off without feeling it. I looked at Rick and, drawing on all my skills gleaned from a lifetime of acting, I lied: “That’s amazing,” I said. “So much fun.”
Now it was his turn.
So let’s get this out in the open. It’s not actually that straightforward for a guy in a wheelchair to bungee jump. There are a few issues. For starters, when you bungee jump, you have to jump. You have to propel yourself off the edge. You can’t just drop straight down—that’s dangerous. Rick can work up a wicked speed in his chair and can propel hims
elf quite well, but to do that he needs a little room. This bridge was very narrow. This meant I would have to push him as hard as I could and kind of launch him off the edge like a Hot Wheels car.
The other issue surrounded the actual bungee cord. When an able-bodied person jumps, the cord is attached to a harness on his or her body. When someone in a wheelchair jumps, the cord has to be attached to the chair, not the person.
The bungee operator wanted Rick to feel safe, so he spoke in a very calm voice. “Okay, we are going to attach the cords here, here and here,” he said, as he pointed to various points on the wheelchair and attached the cords. Rick looked dubious. “Now,” said the operator, “we are going to hoist the wheelchair just a few feet in the air to show you how you will be positioned as you fall. You will be tilted back on a forty-five-degree angle. You will be comfortable. You will be like a baby in a basket.”
And then they hoisted him up a few feet to show him just how safe it was. He was twelve inches off the ground when, suddenly, the wheelchair flipped ninety degrees. In the blink of an eye, his feet were in the air and his face was an inch from the platform. If it weren’t for the seatbelt, he would have fallen out onto the bridge. He got a bonus adrenaline rush.
We righted him, and one of the bungee guys pointed at a part of the chair and asked me, “Do you think we should attach another cord here?”
“What the hell do I know? Why are you asking me? Ask him.”
Rick said, “No, that part of the chair isn’t stable.”
Eventually, through trial and error, the ropes were changed. When hoisted in the air, the chair indeed tilted back slowly. It looked like it would work.
“Okay,” said Hansen, “let’s do this.”
And so, on a count of three, I pushed with all my might and the Man in Motion flew off the edge of the bridge. He was wearing a microphone. We had to bleep some of what he said.
It’s one of my favourite moments in all the years I’ve been on TV. It is not every day you see a guy in a wheelchair get thrown off a bridge. It’s not every day you get to be the dude doing the throwing.
After his numerous residual bounces, he at last came to a stop. Dangling on the end of a rope, sun glinting on his chair, like a giant lure over the river.
“Rick, brother,” I yelled. “How do you feel?”
There was a long pause, and then he answered, “I can’t feel my legs!”
And his laugh echoed up the canyon.
Luckily for me and my viewers, Rick’s entire raison d’être is to prove time and time again that a person in a wheelchair can do anything he puts his mind to. A person in a wheelchair can circle the globe, can conquer ignorance and can conquer fear. Anything an able-bodied person can do, he can do as well or better.
And thank God Rick doesn’t just talk the talk; he walks the walk—or in his case, rolls the walk.
Because of that desire to lead by example, he never let something as simple as a deep-seated, ingrained fear of heights stop him from sending a message to the world. You could argue he didn’t have to do that. That he’s done more than his share. The Man in Motion tour was twenty-five years ago. He could easily have said, “Get some other kid in a wheelchair to throw himself off a bridge—I’m going fishing.” But the Man in Motion doesn’t stop moving.
Building a Habitat for Humanity house with officers and cadets of the RCMP, Regina.
Rick: “A little trick I picked up along the way: if you grunt, people think you’re working hard.”
BUDGET DRAMA
February 3, 2009
Like many Canadians this past week, I found myself caught up in the drama of our latest budget. Well, actually, I take that back. I watched the budget. But I was curious what our various leaders would say about our current economic crisis. And they did not disappoint. Starting with our newest political leader, Stephen Harper.
Now, I call him the newest because he seems to have been reborn. Again. I mean, here’s a guy who got elected saying he was going to cut spending to the bone, and then he became the biggest-spending prime minister in Canadian history. Now he’s running deficits that would make Pierre Trudeau blush. He is a no-down-payment, no-payments-forever kind of prime minister.
On his website, the Prime Minister claims that he’s an economist, but I ask you, has anyone actually seen his diploma? Because this guy changes political philosophies the way the rest of us rotate our tires. What’s he going do for an encore? Get a perm and join the Bloc?
And then we have the new Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff. The budget dropped, and Iggy came out swinging. He tore the hell out of Stephen Harper, and that budget, in a truly spectacular display of withering criticism. Pausing only long enough to say, “Oh, by the way, we will be supporting this budget completely.”
We’ve seen that act from a Liberal leader before. The only difference is, this time around we actually knew what he was saying.
And then, poor old Jack Layton. He seems to be in the middle of a psychological crisis triggered by the fact that he thought he was going to be in cabinet and now it’s never going to happen. It’s a sin, really. He’s like that fellow in Ontario who thought he’d won the Lotto, only to find out his ticket had a typo.
And then, to make matters worse, nobody even cared what Jack had to say because Jack had already announced that he would vote against the budget long before he knew what was in the budget. It’s what we call a case of premature enunciation.
At that point in the proceedings, I couldn’t help but wonder what the security guard in the foyer of the House of Commons would do to save our economy. Because right now, based on what the other three have said, he’s got my vote.
BEST BEHAVIOUR
February 24, 2009
Unlike, it seems, everyone else in the country, I was not looking forward to Barack Obama’s visit. Now, don’t get me wrong—I was thrilled that he decided to come to Canada. I was just nervous. You know what it’s like. We’ve all been there. You’ve got people coming over, you want to make a good impression, but what if something goes wrong? What if someone says the wrong thing? What if the guest of honour is allergic to caribou and goes into anaphylactic shock? You just can’t control these things.
And remember, this visit was on Parliament Hill. What if there was a glitch in security and somehow Obama ended up on an elevator with Mike Duffy—or, God forbid, an actual cabinet minister? You only get one chance to make a first impression.
But everyone rose to the occasion, from the crowds on Parliament Hill, which were amazing, to our political leaders. Look at Stephen Harper—clearly, Obama brings out the best in him. He never stopped smiling. He never broke out the dead-eye stare once. Hell, he was so excited, he went on CNN and said that he was glad that Bush was out of the White House because it was Bush that was stopping Harper from fighting climate change. Think about that. Stephen Harper on Wolf Blitzer sounding like David Suzuki. Clearly, change is possible. If this keeps up, next thing you know, dogs will have kittens.
And then there’s Michael Ignatieff. He got a fifteen-minute audience with Obama, and what did he do? He brought Bob Rae. Now, that’s a very classy move. Until recently, these men were bitter rivals. That’s like calling up someone who tried to steal your date and saying, “Hey, just to show you there’s no hard feelings—I’ve got two playoff tickets. Why don’t you come along?”
And then, of course, there was Jack Layton—nowhere to be seen. His finest performance in years.
Overall, a very good day on Parliament Hill. This is a unique moment in time, though. Obama won’t be this popular forever. Fame is fleeting, but let’s hope the spectacle of politicians acting honourably won’t be.
Flying with the ice pilots of Buffalo Air in Yellowknife, North West Territories. Temperature: minus 40.
Rick: “I can barely move—that’s my challenge today. I’ve got so many layers, and then with the snow pants and boots and the jacket and the layers …”
Ice pilot: “It’s not really about the lay
ers. It’s about how smart you are when you’re outside.”
Rick: “Then I’m done. They’ll just find my corpse, and that will be the end of the piece.”
NOBODY WANTS AN ELECTION
The Globe and Mail, September 25, 2009
He could have been anywhere from 50 to 65, he has worked his entire life on container ships in the St. Lawrence Seaway, and he put three daughters through university. He has at different times in his life voted for three different parties, and standing on a wharf in Lunenburg, N.S., he told me that, if there is an election this fall, he is going to do something he has never done.
He’s staying home.
He summed up our current crop of political leaders this way: “If all three of them were in the water, I’d be hard-pressed not to watch them drown.”
And he happened to mention he goes to church on Sundays.
This is not a man who is suffering from voter apathy; this is a hungry man with a seafood allergy, looking at the menu from Red Lobster.
For years now, after every election, faced with increasingly dismal turnouts, journalists and pundits ask the same questions: Why are Canadian voters staying home? What is wrong with us?
Maybe it’s time to ask not what is wrong with Canadians, but what is wrong with our leaders. Or better yet, let’s just start placing the blame squarely at their feet.
It’s not like we choose the leaders, the parties do. And apparently this is as good as it gets. No wonder people are apathetic. Elections aren’t the problem, our choices are.
It may be a myth that the Inuit have 100 different words to describe snow; it is an absolute truth that people on Parliament Hill have twice as many words to describe Stephen Harper’s various levels of angry.
We have a minority government that bombards us, practically year-round, with campaign-style ads that are more vitriolic and personal than anything ever witnessed in Canadian history.
