By Adam Prudhomme
Staff Reporter
Told his whole life of all the things he can’t do, James Potvin is proving all his doubters wrong in a big way.
The nine-year-old Whitby native and his dad Chris are scheduled to arrive at Giver Park in Ottawa’s Mooney Bay on Friday where they’ll complete their week-long, 500-kilometre bike trek for charity.
“James is on the autism spectrum and struggles in school,” said his dad. “There’s a place in Oshawa called the Grandview Children’s Centre which helps out kids with different developmental issues and challenges they’re going through. They’ve been going since the 1980s. It originally opened up with space for 400 kids, they’re now serving 6,000 in the same facility. They obviously need room to expand and staffing.”
Currently there’s 2,000 children on Grandview’s waiting list, with James being one of them.
“We’re doing this ride for two reasons,” said his father. “The first thing being for James to see what he can actually do. I think riding across the province is a pretty nice feather in his cap. The second is to bring awareness to the need for a facility to treat these kids.”
Though their ride is to support Grandview, Potvin says during their travels they’ve learned that several other centres of its kind are facing similar staffing and space issues. The numbers show that could be trouble down the road.
“There’s a 20 per cent rate of teen suicide among autistic males,” said Potvin. “There’s a disproportionate number of them who end up with addiction problems. We’d rather see the centres funded to support these guys when they’re this age and prove to them that they can do things at this age instead of waiting until they need the help later on.”
Averaging about 80 km a day, they’ve counted on a support staff from their connections with Cadets, Scouts and Guides to provide them lodging at various checkpoints throughout their ride. They’ve also had plenty of moral support from the communities who have heard about their ride as they roll through town.
On Tuesday they were in Napanee, which was an unofficial halfway mark of their journey. Throughout their ride they’ve been providing updates to Twitter using #RideJamesRide, which also links to a GoFundMe page for Grandview. The duo set out with a modest goal of raising $1,500 in honour of Canada’s 150th. As of Tuesday they had already raised $4,700 and hope to raise as much as they can before they reach Ottawa tomorrow.