François Blanchard exercises every day – sit-ups, crunches and his favourite, push-ups – he’s now up to 150 per day. When he’s not at the gym, he’s in the kitchen, whipping up an omelette, or else glued to his computer surfing the Internet, or reading the paper.
Every Monday morning he takes the bus from his parents’ house in Gloucester and comes to the Bronson Centre where he meets his fellow volunteers, people with acquired brain injuries.
Blanchard, 28, had a brain tumour when he was a child, one that in his words “kept growing bigger and bigger”.
When he was six, surgeons removed the tumour but Blanchard’s optic nerve was damaged. He lost all vision in his right eye and half the vision in his left. His sense of balance was also affected.
Since June, Blanchard has been coming to the Bronson Centre every morning three times a week to volunteer at the new clubhouse work centre of the Brain Injury Association of the Ottawa Valley (BIAOV). The centre opened Sept. 17 .
“The clubhouse is truly unique because it is run by members with acquired brain injuries for members with the same injuries,” said Jessica Brenner, program manager at the clubhouse.
“Everyone comes to this program with particular skill sets, say, with computers or in the kitchen, and these skills can be picked up by other members of the group, making it the perfect learning environment.”
Blanchard has put the cooking skills he gained while working in the kitchen of a Vanier retirement home and at the Newport restaurant in Westboro to good use, preparing coffee for the clubhouse, doing dishes, and keeping the space neat and tidy.
“Before the clubhouse I didn’t go out very much. Now, I can come here and volunteer and meet new people, and it makes my day much more fulfilling.”
The clubhouse is made up of a dozen rooms once used as the bedrooms of the nuns who ran Immaculata High School, which once occupied the site.
“This is the kind of place where members are going to be able to get together, learn life skills, become more independent and be surrounded by other people who understand the difficulties of living with a brain injury – the memory loss, the fatigue and the speech issues,” said Brenner.
Wendy Charbonneau, the president of the BIAOV, understands these difficulties all too well. Twenty-two years ago her husband, a firefighter, fell from a ladder and suffered a brain injury that left him constantly fatigued and unable to return to work.
“After my husband’s injury, I saw that there were gaps in the services offered to people with these brain problems,” said Charbonneau.
“After the initial health care and the rehabilitation there was nothing and these people would just go home and sit there and become depressed or addicted to drugs. People with acquired brain injuries need to find ways to express themselves, and that’s what this new clubhouse is all about.”