ETOBICOKE, Ontario — Claire Buchanan’s story is unique. She is an ambassador for sledge hockey, dedicated to promoting her passion and helping others.

Buchanan was born in Brampton, Ontario, and began her career at a very young age. Thanks to the support of his mother, Buchanan fell in love with hockey at the age of 12, when she attended the Cruisers Sports for the Physically Disabled club in Mississauga. Since that day, she has not stopped working so that para-hockey can reach more people, including rural communities where para-sports are harder to access.

“My mother was eager for me to be an active kid, and her friends told her about Cruisers Sports for the Physically Disabled club,” Buchanan said in an interview with the International Paralympic Committee. “She took me out to the hockey rink and we watched an entire practice. I was extremely nervous and was not sure about wanting to be involved. Yet, my mother insisted that I try it once, and if I did not like it, then at least I can say I tried it out.

“That next Saturday, I got up the courage to strap in and try out sledge hockey. I’m pretty sure all I did was go around circles and end up on my side for the most part, but from the second I was on the ice and feeling the cool gliding breeze through my helmet, I had fallen in love with sledge hockey.”

Buchanan’s career has not been limited to para-hockey. She has also played wheelchair basketball for the Canadian national team, with the Burlington Vipers in Ontario, the University of Alabama and the University of Arizona in the United States.

Nowadays, Buchanan is dedicated to advancing para-hockey while combining that challenge with being a single mother, a broadcaster and a student at Humber College in Etobicoke, Ontario. All of Buchanan’s activities are aimed to change the history of para-hockey, a sport she wants to be part of the Paralympic Games.

“We’re on the path to having the introduction of women’s para-hockey at the Paralympic Games in 2030,” she said in an interview with Humber College.

Buchanan is a member of the Canadian women’s sledge hockey team, and she has been successful in everything that has been proposed. Her achievements include being a 2-time women’s wheelchair basketball champion with the University of Alabama and a silver medal at the 2014 IPC Women’s Sledge Hockey World Cup.

Seeking to continue improving and learning to take para-hockey to another level, she started to be a broadcaster at The Neutral Zone, while deciding to study radio broadcasting at Humber College, where she is given consistent therapy at the Massage Therapy Student Program Clinic.

“As a disabled athlete, we would only really see our registered massage therapists (RMTs) and physiotherapists at training camp,” she said. “During COVID-19, I haven’t had access to any of those services. I want to make sure I don’t run into injuries and stay healthy as an athlete. The fact that the school I’m going to offers massage therapy and I can access it in between classes has been huge. My first session was with two students, and the professors must have been amazing. Both students asked a lot of questions and wanted to learn about the sport, how my body works, and the differences between my sports and other athletes coming in.”

Now, Buchanan’s goal is to change the way Paralympic sports are viewed and broadcast in Canada and around the world. Giving more significant publicity to the effort of the athletes is the mission to achieve.

“There’s world championships for so many different sports that aren’t shown or talked about,” she said. “We’re training just as hard as any other high-performance athlete.”

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