The story of Shawn Burnett is the story of an 18-year-old who loses the use of both legs after a bad landing during a parachute jump.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It was June 6, 2021, in Farnham. For a friend’s birthday, Shawn was going to do his first parachute jump.
Statistically, skydiving is safe. Even if, as Shawn’s father Mike says, the sport involves this inescapable fact: you have to launch yourself into the void of an airplane in flight.
They were five jumping in the group, including Dania, 17, Shawn’s little sister. He was the last of the group to jump from the plane. Mike was there with his girlfriend Caroline, the children’s mother.
They looked at the sky, the plane dropped the five points in the blue immensity: Shawn, Dania and their three friends. One, two, three, four and five parachutes opened.
Mike thought, looking at the sky where his two children floated: “Phew, they are off the hook now…”
But the statistics are clear: most accidents occur when parachutists land.
And on that day, June 6, 2021, a beautiful day, hot and humid, cloudless skies as the future can be when you are 18, just when the tandem of Shawn and an instructor s approached the ground, a squall upset the duo’s landing. Poor reception, very hard landing.
After the shock, on the ground, Shawn could no longer feel his legs. It was serious, everyone knew it instantly.
Shawn’s first words? “Better it’s me than Dania.” »
An ambulance transported Shawn to the Montreal General Hospital. Emergency surgery, it did not change anything: he was paralyzed, the spinal cord affected.
You’re 18, life ahead of you. Two weeks before the jump, your parents rented your apartment in Laval for your admission to the Quebec Fire Protection Institute (IPIQ), the last stopover before fulfilling your dream: to become a firefighter.
You’re 18, life ahead of you, you’re a ball of energy, sport, you eat it. Life is beautiful like this day of June 6, 2021. But it is this beautiful day that will lead to days, weeks and months of fog.
At the Montreal General Hospital, groggy because of the morphine, Shawn alternates between sleeping and waking phases.
He woke up, he was crying. He looked at me: “Mom, my life is over.” And he fell asleep crying…
Caroline Laberge
Mike and Caroline watched over Shawn. The first days, at the Montreal General Hospital, then at the Lindsay-Gingras Institute for Rehabilitation. Every day they traveled from McMasterville to Montreal.
Hospitalized, Shawn fought the spleen, measured the vertigo of a brutally changed life. In an interview, he recalls those days, the fog of the early days. Fear, too. And despair: “If I had been able to get to the window of 12e floor, at the hospital, he told me, I would have thrown myself downstairs…”
The story of Shawn Burnett is therefore the story of an 18-year-old young man whose life was turned upside down by a gale.
But this is where Shawn Burnett’s story gets so wonderful. This is where some light will begin to shine.
Shawn is therefore still bedridden, it is the month of June 2021. Around him, his relatives do not want him to lose morale. People are working to make Shawn’s story known, to get messages of encouragement.
His story has been shared by several people, such as Martin Gendron, a particularly challenged family friend.
And Shawn begins to receive dozens, then hundreds of messages of encouragement. Her tragic story is going viral. Something is happening inside him: it gives him strength. The fog still envelopes Shawn and his family, but each message of encouragement acts on him like a ray of sunshine.
Shawn’s parents are still in shock. They suffer with him—they would like to suffer in his place—they silently mourn the possibilities that will not be. Caroline and Mike have difficulty thinking about the “after”: adapting the house for a young adult in a wheelchair, for example.
Mike: “I’ve never had the same pain. I was curled up in the corner, crying. »
The wave of digital love grew and grew. Thousands of messages began flooding Shawn’s Facebook messenger: “I was glad I wasn’t alone,” he says, a year later.
A friend of the family launched a crowdfunding campaign to meet the costs of this new life, an adapted life. Because adapting a house for a disabled person is complicated. And it’s expensive.
But there, the fire started, if you will, by one of those mysteries of human nature: construction contractors landed at the Laberge-Burnett house, plumbers, electricians, a concrete guy. Dozens of people pitched in to prepare for the adaptation of the house, for Shawn’s return, for the start of his new life by donating time, property and money. It was coming from everywhere.
Mike: “From July to December, the chain of solidarity was incredible. We know we are lucky. We… ”
The father’s voice cracks.
“…we know that not everyone is so lucky. »
This wave of solidarity stirred Mike Burnett. He felt confronted: he, before, would he have had this breath of generosity towards others, before Shawn’s accident? “I wondered if, apart from my family, I had given enough to others. Maybe not. I’m sorry for not taking the time. The people who gave us help, they went way beyond their needs…”
Another cat stirs in the throat of the father of the family.
The kindness of the people… I can’t believe it.
Mike Burnett
I jotted down Mike’s words while silently searching for a popular expression that fit perfectly with the togetherness described by Shawn, Caroline and Mike…
Coudonc, what is this expression again? Mike beat me to it when he said, “There’s still a lot of good people out there.” »
In rehab, Shawn was struggling, but he was also overwhelmed with messages of encouragement, thousands of messages of encouragement from total strangers touched by his story. Among them, people with disabilities, like Shawn, wrote to him: You like hockey. Do you know para hockey?
It’s hockey, sledding. We play seated, propelling ourselves with sticks.
For the rest, well, it’s hockey…
Well, less than a year after his accident, Shawn has become an elite para hockey player: he is a member of the Quebec para hockey team, which won the Canadian championship in June. Shawn found para hockey a passion, his parents found a supportive community.
Good news: Shawn has been invited to the Team Canada selection camp, which will take place in two weeks in Calgary.
Shawn’s parents have a thousand thanks to offer. They asked me to list a few, while apologizing if they forgot any names.
So here it is…
Their extended family, their friends, Sarah-Eve (Shawn’s girlfriend), Habitations Raymond Guay & Associés as well as their suppliers, André Joseph and Martin Lepage as well as the golfers of the tournament organized by this duo, Luc Meloche and Cantine La Cravings, GoFundMe donors, neighbours, co-workers, the para hockey community and the firefighter community…
Caroline observes: “It takes a village to take care of a child. »
And for Shawn, the virtual and real village responded. It’s not just ugly on Facebook.
On the morning of our interview, Shawn was changing his car’s exhaust himself, with the help of his father, who was moving the wheeled dolly on which Shawn was lying under the vehicle.
A year later, Shawn is fine.
But put the word in quotes. Let’s say Shawn is “fine”.
“It’s still cr… de m…, what he has to deal with,” said Mike Burnett. It’s quite a life change. »
Shawn smiles looking at me:
“My father talks too much! »
After the interview, we were all heading to the parking lot and I thought of this life swept up in the wind. It does not depend on much, life, sometimes. Watching Shawn riding valiantly in front of us, his back straight, I thought of this song by John Lennon, the one where he talks about life not always collaborating with our projects…
Before crossing the street
Take my hand
Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans
I greeted Shawn, Mike and Caroline by asking myself: coudonc, what is the title of this song where Lennon evokes this female dog of life who sometimes makes legs with our certainties?
And it came back to me in the car: Handsome Boy…
Exactly, you’re gorgeous, Shawn Burnett. Thousands of us think so: don’t give up.