When Nick Perry gets in front of students to school them on being safe in the workplace, he's not looking to scare them.
"I don't want them to feel scared by safety, I want them to be empowered by it," said Perry, who has spent the past 10 years sharing the story of his own accident in 2001 that left him with a spinal cord injury. "I want them to hear the story, hear what I've overcome, be able to share things with me... and ultimately go 'hey, if this guy can face doctors telling him he's never going to walk again and fight for years to get back to it even when there's pain and suffering and all the rest of the emotional drama on top of it and still come through it with a positive attitude, we can be proactive and stand up for our rights in the workplace.'"
As a 19-year-old, Perry had been on the job at a Victoria lumber yard for six months before a mistake caused 42 loose sheets of fibre board, weighing 1,200 kg, to fall on him, leaving him with a severely severed spinal cord and the designation of incomplete paraplegic. The three years following, Perry endured the pain of working himself out of a wheelchair and into the brace he wears on his left leg to stabilize his lack of calf muscle.
Today, Perry works for WorkSafeBC to emphasize the importance of knowing how to prevent those kinds of injuries, especially for younger people just entering the workforce. This week he is in Prince George, making presentations at D.P. Todd and Duchess Park secondary schools. Perry has made multiple treks up to Prince George over the years, visiting all the local high schools as well as the College of New Caledonia.
Perry never lost consciousness after his injury, which makes for vivid recollection.
"That's why it makes it so easy for me to tell my story in the classroom," Perry said. "I guess my ultimate goal is that students understand their right to refuse unsafe work and how to institute it in the workplace so they don't feel like they can be intimidated or discriminated against to be made to do it anyway."
According to WorkSafe, an average of 26 young workers are injured every day in B.C. and six were killed on the job in 2013.
Young workers seem to especially be afraid of making waves where safety is concerned, said Perry. They're less inclined to ask pertinent questions about prior workplace incidents during an interview and if they receive the proper training - which Perry did not at his job - it may be coming from an older generation for whom safety is not necessarily the top priority.
And not asking those questions can cost you, said Perry, who was three weeks away from achieving his first-degree black belt before his accident.
But he doesn't let those obstacles keep him from living the life he's been dealt. Perry and his wife of nearly three years are expecting their first child this summer and he has found a passion in speaking about safety issues.
"I lost my youth to a spinal cord injury in the workplace and from that point forward I felt this undying need to make sure it doesn't happen in the future," Perry said. "You can only watch your mom cry so many times at your bedside because she's worried she's going to have to lift you out of the wheelchair at 60 or 70 years old and what that's going to entail before you go 'hey, I don't think that families need to suffer these kind of horrible incidences... So that's what gets me up every morning."
