King Charles medal: What inspires this award-winning disability advocate?

Two Kelowna residents are among 64 British Columbians to be awarded the Premier's Recipient King Charles III Coronation Medal.

Spring Hawes was chosen for raising awareness for people living with disabilities and working to dismantle ableism.

Kory Wood was honoured for starting a clean energy Indigenous-owned business and advancing Indigenous self-determination and reconciliation.

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Original story

Spring Hawes has a straightforward message for society when it comes to combatting ableism and advancing equity and accessibility for people with disabilities.

“If people could just stop being weird, that would be great,” she told Kelowna10 behind the wheel of her specially modified SUV.

Hawes was recently awarded the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship for her extensive work over many years championing accessibility, whether as a councillor in local government, or at the Interior Health level.

She’s also active in volunteer and working groups focusing on wheelchair-friendly dialogue, activities, and events.

She has used a wheelchair since a mountain bike accident 18 years ago, and co-chairs a provincial committee whose work is guiding the implementation of vital accessibility legislation.

She works for the Canadian-based not-for-profit Praxis Spinal Cord Institute, that leads global collaboration in spinal cord injury research, innovation and care.

“Ableism is the belief that having a disability is not good, is inferior, and not being disabled is superior,” she explained. “That understanding informs all sorts of ways people interact with disabled people.

“Stop building barriers,” she said. “The ancient Greeks built ramps into their holy places to bring people who couldn’t walk upstairs. We know how to build things accessibly, and yet we continue to choose not to.”

Hence the B.C. legislation to set standards and monitoring across hundreds of organizations that includes aspects such as parking spaces, door handles, service counters, and many more.

“Disabled people have always existed, we always will. Disability is a normal part of the spectrum of humanity,” Hawes said. “Many people will become disabled as we grow old and yet we live in this denial that disabled people exist, and we continue to build structures and societies as if we didn’t.”

If you saw Hawes driving around Kelowna’s streets in her SUV, you’d have no idea she requires a wheelchair once she gets out of the car.

And that’s very much the thrust of what she has worked towards for nearly twenty years: don’t focus on the wheelchair but the human being in it.

“I have a lot of things that make my life exciting and fun: my family – I have two grandbabies, two grown children, I have wonderful friends... good, solid relationships. I try to live the best life you can live.”

And what drives her to fight for equality and accessibility?

“Because we face so many barriers in our lives, we have to, we don’t have a choice,” she explained. “If I had a dollar for every time someone said: ‘you should write a letter Spring’ – I would be a very wealthy person.”

She figures she was just born with a sense of diversity and equality.

“I hope that I’ve been able to make change in some of the roles I’ve been asked to play. That’s my goal, to leave some sort of positive mark on the world.

“Disabled people just want to live our lives. I would just like to go to a coffee shop and not have to wait outside for someone to open the door for me.”