A TV show episode shot by former Burns Lakers Jeff Scott and Thomas Bowerbank aired last week on a national television channel.
The episode, called RADaptive, is part of the Our Community TV show of Accessible Media Inc. (AMI-tv), whose target audience is blind and partially sighted Canadians.
In the episode, Scott, co-founder and executive director of the Live It! Love It! Foundation, leads a crew of sit skiers as they attend a sit ski camp at the Revelstoke Mountain Resort.
Scott, who now lives in Victoria, damaged his spinal cord in a 2010 snowboarding accident that left him quadriplegic and wheelchair bound. Over the next year of intense rehabilitation, he regained partial control of his wrists and arms.
“In recent years Jeff and I have shredded backcountry pow together and he’s been a huge source of inspiration in general and such great role model,” said Bowerbank, a film director currently living in Kelowna.
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“If people don’t feel inspired at the end of this [episode], I haven’t done my job right,” said Bowerbank. “What they’re doing is so motivational and personal, it really makes me feel like anything is possible.
“It makes you want to get out there and chase dreams.”
Bowerbank said shooting the episode was rewarding but also challenging.
“Both Jeff and I knew we could do it, but at times it seemed almost impossible to make everything happen with the limited time-frame and budget,” he said. “Typically big productions will allow for lots of preparation time, but with this one we just had to go with it and get what [footage] we could get.”
Bowerbank said it was equally challenging to shoot the episode during the competition held at the end of the sit ski camp.
“We didn’t want to interfere too much with the group of athletes, which made coordinating and scheduling challenging.”
What Scott hopes to achieve, he said, is to keep athletes with disabilities, who are trying out adaptive skiing, motivated.
“I just want those athletes to know that there’s a community of us trying to share the knowledge and explore it together because it’s not cheap, and it’s not easy.”
Both Scott and Bowerbank moved away from Burns Lake shortly after high school. Bowerbank said this is their second project working together and that he sees himself partnering with Scott again on future projects.
The episode aired on TV last Thursday but it’s also accessible online at https://www.ami.ca/category/sports-our-community/media/radaptive.
