SECOND CHANCE

Blake Jamieson grew up on boats. As a child and into his teens, he was lulled to sleep by lapping waves against the hull of his parents’ sportfisherman. They’d cruise along the remarkable coastline near their home in Vancouver and into the waters just south of Alaska, digging clams one day, diving the next. When Blake was older, as a student at the University of British Columbia, he spent summers working with the Coast Guard doing search and rescue. When he had a few days off, he’d meet his parents on their boat in the rugged wilderness of Desolation Sound, where they’d swim in some of the warmest waters in the region, kayak, fish and kick back. Blake’s parents would say of their son that the ocean was ingrained in him. As for Blake, he’d contend that when you live in this part of the world, “you get the mountains and the water in your bones.”

And then in 2009, Blake’s connection to the sea was severed.

At the age of 25 and on the day before he was to start his third year of medical school, Blake was paralyzed from the waist down in a mountain biking accident at Whistler Mountain. Confined to a wheelchair, he would never walk again or step onto the deck of a boat. “The bike accident was one of those things, a ride that