Meet our members: Charlie

Meet Charlie. Charlie, also known by the nickname “Four-wheels”, is thirty years old. He enjoys reading, watching movies on Netflix, and volunteering at the Silver Threads Senior Citizens Activity Center. When Charlie is volunteering, he helps people learn how to use computers and assists with any problems they may be having. Charlie really enjoys volunteering at the senior center because it gives him a chance to help people who might not be that familiar with using computers so that they can get the most out of their technology.

Charlie also goes to a gym called MOVE, which is an adaptive fitness place. When he is there, he has a regular workout of forty-five minutes on a rowing machine and fifteen minutes on a handcycle machine. Charlie is also involved with the organization Power to Be, which is an organization that specializes in outdoor recreation activities for people facing all types of different challenges. Some of the activities that Charlie has been involved with in the past with this organization include rock climbing at Boulder’s Climbing Gym in Saanichton, BC. He finds that rock climbing gives him a good workout and makes him sore and achy the next day. He also has done hiking out at Prospect Lake in Victoria.

Cerebral palsy affects Charlie in several ways. He uses a wheelchair all the time to get around, hence his nickname, “Four-wheels”. Charlie has some difficulty finding his way around places he hasn’t been to before, so it takes a few visits before he feels comfortable and no longer worries about getting lost. Charlie’s hands will shake when typing on a keyboard, which causes him to make a lot of spelling mistakes when typing, so he finds the autocorrect function that is built into the Macintosh computer really useful.