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When I was a pre-med student in Alberta, I worked two summers at Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton.

As an accredited lifeguard, IÌýthought I’d been hired to run the swimming pool for the summer — but instead they had me in the water from day one, teaching children with significant physical disabilities how to swim as part of their therapy.

That experience was my first real exposure to children with physical challenges‘ and it made me realize that these little bodies are capable of truly amazing things when they’re given care and attention in the right environment.

I’ve always loved kids and so I decided to combine this affinity with my love of sport to become an orthopedic surgeon, helping kids become more fully included in their world no matter what body they were given.

This same field of work is where Children’s Health Foundation of Vancouver Island made its earliest mark. The foundation’s very existence came about in 1927 because of the need for orthopedic support — for corrections to bone and muscle deformities — that emerged with polio and tuberculosis in the 1920s.

Heeding the call, the Women’s Institute of sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ raised funds to build what is now the Queen Alexandra Centre (QAC) for families to send their children to when tuberculosis and polio were rampant and had to be quarantined — a time when it was the norm to institutionalize sick kids away from their families.

The field of orthopedics matured alongside this crisis and, when antibiotics and vaccinations began to cure these diseases in the 1950s, these specialized physicians began working with children who suffered from other physical disabilities like cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy.

In the decades that followed, QAC became a true centre of excellence for physical rehabilitation — with landmark capital projects in the 1980s that built a home-away-from-home for boys with muscular dystrophy, a trailblazing motorized wheelchair program and the Fisher Building, a workshop that specializes in orthotics and prosthetics for children to this day.

In the 1990s, kids went back home — the model of institutionalization disbanded — and our work moved with them.

Instead of being isolated, kids with physical disabilities are being fully included in society like any other child, playing sports, learning in classrooms and getting jobs. QAC became an out-patient facility, a base for therapists to work in Island communities so that kids living up Island don’t have to travel for care.

I’ve practiced orthopedic surgery in Victoria since 1978 and the changes in this field are dramatic and constant.

It used to be that children were diagnosed, given a wheelchair and told to live their lives — but now we can diagnose them and tell them how we can make their lives better.

We can do so much more for kids today with complex surgeries, orthotics and prosthetics — and that’s hopeful work. Early care truly makes a huge difference in a young person’s life, affecting their quality of life for decades to come.

And the possibilities for these kids are endless with the right support early on — just look at Rick Hansen and Michelle Stilwell. Just like any athlete, Island children with disabilities are simply trying to get the very best out of the bodies they’ve been given.

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Dr. Norgrove Penny is an orthopedic surgeon and a member of the board of the Children’s Health Foundation of Vancouver Island.