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There’s something gloriously defiant about Louisa Bridgman. She doesn’t knock politely and hope someone lets her in. If the front door stays bolted, she wheels around, sizes up the back door and boots it off its hinges.
At five years old, while most kids were learning to colour inside the lines, Louisa was confronting a school board. The crime? Trying to keep her out of school because she used a wheelchair. So, she rang up the local news anchor she had met while working as a campaign child for United Way . . . yes, working, at five, and told him what was going on. Ten minutes later, a news crew rolled in, and the board’s refusal quickly disappeared. She got in because she refused to be ignored!
Now fast forward through 47 years and 67 surgeries, decades of navigating care systems and a catalogue of fights most people wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. Louisa has become a fixture in her community, not just known, but counted on. Want your city more accessible? She’s been there. Want to build an inclusive boxing gym? She’s got the pads ready. Want someone who doesn’t flinch at saying what needs to be said? Pull up a chair, she’s got plenty to say.
Born two months premature and diagnosed with cerebral palsy, she’s been going toe-to-toe with barriers and pain ever since. However, Louisa does not run from them. She trains with them, literally. Wheelchair boxing has become her weapon and release. At first, she couldn’t land a punch. Now, she hits with such force! It’s not about the sport, though, neither is it about winning medals. It’s really about having an outlet that doesn’t involve internalizing the frustration, rage and the sheer volume of injustice that comes with having a disability in a world built without you in mind. Boxing has reduced her dependence on pain medication, improved her mental well-being and enhanced her physical strength. Whether it’s a punching bag or a cause, Louisa meets it with force and focus.
But the fight extends far beyond the ring. Louisa has had to wrangle her own care for years in more ways than one. For instance, caregivers would sometimes promise to come, then never show up. No warning or apology, just silence, and Louisa would be stuck in bed for hours, even days, because no one turned up to help her eat, dress or transfer to her chair. She’s had to call paramedics just to get out of bed. She’s slipped, fallen, been injured, all because someone decided not to bother showing up for work.
Despite that, she’s built something. A life and a network. Not through luck, comfort, or kindness from the system, but through a gritty, relentless commitment to living fully, even when the basics are a battlefield.
She’s taken that same resolve to the policy level. For over five years, she sat on the City of North Vancouver’s Disability Advisory Committee, helping shape infrastructure and urban planning. That’s not lip service. That’s changing the blueprint so others don’t have to bulldoze their way through life the way she’s had to.
Now, with a major award under her belt, the Courage to Come Back Award (Medical Category), Louisa is turning her attention to something even bigger: creating her own foundation, a place where disabled folks and their families can stop being ping-ponged between agencies and actually get answers. No more 20-step scavenger hunts to find out what help exists. They’ll have clarity, direction and support that makes sense.
And what does she want from the rest of us? No pity or applause, just action. She calls for more disabled voices in decision-making, thoughtful training for bus drivers, emergency responders and employers. True inclusion takes effort, and it starts with listening.
Louisa doesn’t pretend everything’s fine. She’s had a hard life, lived through pain and abuse others couldn’t imagine. But she’s still here, fighting for herself and for everyone else who’s ever been left behind or told to wait their turn.
“Don’t give up,” she says because she’s lived the days when it would’ve been easier to disappear. She’s had the dark thoughts and faced the three am demons. And she’s still here. So, if you’re stuck or scared, Louisa has one piece of advice: find something that pulls you forward. Paint, punch, protest. Just don’t quit. And if someone tells you it can’t be done? Turn their doubt into fuel and keep moving.