As 1996 began, Steven Fletcher was a young mining engineer with brilliant horizons. Six-foot-four, dark, handsome and athletic, he had a new job and a woman he loved. At 23, he seemed to have it all.
Then, before dawn on January 11th, the world as he knew it ended. Driving to work through the rugged Precambrian Shield northeast of Winnipeg, he collided with an enormous moose. When he woke in the mangled wreckage of his car, he was trapped beneath the steaming carcass of the moose and completely paralyzed from the neck down.
In the years since, Steven Fletcher’s story has been a tale of tragedy, courage, determination and, ultimately, triumph. Not only has he become the world’s only C4 quadriplegic to be elected to a national parliament, not only does he maintain a schedule that would leave most able-bodied people breathless, he does all this while maintaining an attitude that is endlessly resolute and perpetually practical. If the front door is inaccessible, what about the back? If something seems impossible, what can be done to make it work. And among his colleagues, assistants and aides, he is infamously tireless; his favourite phrase, which often has everyone scurrying for cover, is “What’s next?”