Meet Wheelchair Basketball Athlete Chantal Benoit, 2023 Canadian Disability Hall of Fame Inductee

Joeita Gupta:
I am Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse. The Paralympic Games are the world's number one sporting event, driving social inclusion. Para-sport as a rule has developed a track record for challenging deeply rooted misperceptions about people with disabilities. For the para-athletes who are the backbone of any inclusive sporting event, para-sport represents an opportunity to achieve sporting excellence and to scale new heights of personal accomplishment. Many para-athletes make waves outside the sporting world as well, being passionate advocates for the rights of people with disabilities.
Today, we discuss disability sports and advocacy. It's time to put your finger on the pulse.
Hello, and welcome to The Pulse on AMI-audio. I'm Joeita Gupta. As always, I'm delighted to be with you. Before we go much further, I wanted to remind you that if you haven't already done so, please don't forget to like and subscribe to this channel. We upload videos about once a week. And so, whether you catch us on YouTube or a podcast, or even on the broadcast on AMI Audio, it's a good way to be notified about our next video, just to make sure you don't miss anything.
Over the next three weeks, we'll be hearing from some remarkable people. We'll be meeting two out of three inductees to the Canada Disability Hall of Fame. The Disability Hall of Fame recognizes Canadians with disabilities who have made an exceptional contribution to the lives of people with disabilities. Next week, you'll be hearing from Michelle Stilwell, and the week after that, from Natalie Wilkie.
But first, I'm really delighted to introduce to you my guest today. Chantal Benoit is widely recognized as the greatest female wheelchair basketball player in the world. She achieved remarkable success over more than two decades with the national team. As a seven-time Paralympian, Benoit won three gold medals and a bronze. She leaves a remarkable legacy on and off the court. And Chantal Benoit is being recognized, along with Michelle Stilwell and Stephen Harper, as three inductees to the Canada Disability Hall of Fame.
Chantal, hello and welcome to The Pulse. I am so happy that you could join us today.

Chantal Benoit:
It's a pleasure for me. Thank you for entertaining me.

Joeita Gupta:
Chantal, congratulations on your induction to the Canada Disability Hall of Fame. You have received so many accolades, won so many medals in your life. What is the significance of this moment for you?

Chantal Benoit:
It was very good news when they called me to let me know about this, but it was a bigger honour to be inducted with fantastic people like Stephen Harper and Michelle Stilwell. Through my career I have been ... I do love my career, along with those people, especially with Michelle, where I share the floor with her everywhere in the world. And just being nominated with them, it's tremendous.

Joeita Gupta:
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you got the call saying that you were going to be inducted to the Canada Disability Hall of Fame?

Chantal Benoit:
I was just working. And then you received a call from Vim, and Vim, just tell me the big news and I said ... Speechless. Are you sure? Is it happening? Especially with Michelle and Stephen Harper, I mean, it's a good crew to be inducted with them. It's a kind of a long road accomplishment to be all together towards that line. So it was good.

Joeita Gupta:
You talked about having a long road of accomplishment, and you have been a part of wheelchair basketball and the Paralympic movement for almost 30 years now. So you had your breakthrough movement in 1984. And to be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't even born in 1984. When you look back on those almost three decades of involvement, how have things changed?

Chantal Benoit:
It changed a lot, because see before when the wheelchair sports started, they were using the hospital equipment, so it was very heavy and big and it was like slowing down the performance of an athlete. And when I started wheelchair basketball, it was about the same years where the light wheelchair came into the market. They had no brakes, they had no side guard. There's colour and different angle on the wheel. So I saw the development of the equipment along those 30 years, and it has been massive. Not only the equipment, but also the knowledge of all the coaches, the knowledge of all the staff people surrounded a sport team like ourselves. And then there was more information to be the best you can be on the court.
So it has been a huge development. As much as the technology grew up a lot on those 30 years, I will say wheelchair basketball, and wheelchair sport in general develop, immensely. It's crazy.

Joeita Gupta:
You mentioned something earlier that really piqued my interest. You said that there's been an evolution in the knowledge of the coaches and the staff of wheelchair basketball. And as someone who hasn't played wheelchair basketball, it's actually the first time that I've thought about the fact that there might be a difference between how you coach wheelchair basketball versus how you coach able-bodied mainstream basketball, if you will. What sort of differences are there?

Chantal Benoit:
No. Well, it is a good question because people has the tendency to believe that wheelchair basketball is not a regular sport. You do have basketball, and it's played with people that has no disability and it's stand-up. And you do have a wheelchair basketball that they are using a piece of an equipment, which is the wheelchair. Both are two separate sport with their own regulation and their own way of accomplish the two score, the two point, at the end of the day.
At the same time though, it is the same spirit, the same concept to be the best you can be. And you develop yourself physically off court, training yourself in the gym and learning how to accomplish things: looking at some video or talking with your coaches to see what should I improve, like any other sport go through. And wheelchair basketball is the same thing. So the coaches, they just need to learn the sport, what the sport is all about. And the coaching is the same. You're using the best of everyone on the court. Some people are good at this and some other people are good at that. It's a team sport, so the coach needs to put the completion with that team and make a winning team. And this is what you'll find in any other sport.

Joeita Gupta:
I'm afraid you're going to have to indulge me because every time, and I mean every time I have an athlete on the program, I like to ask them the exact same question, which is how much training do you actually do? So when you were gearing up for a big international competition, Chantal, how much training would you actually engage in on a day-to-day basis?

Chantal Benoit:
When I started wheelchair basketball, there was no emphasis on the training, but we were playing each and every day. I do remember in the '90s up to I would say 2000, I was a member of a local, regional, provincial, national, and international team, and we had tournament for each of them and practice for each of them. So at the end of the day, I was playing wheelchair basketball each and every day, and tournament every weekend. We could have a season of 75, 80 games per year, and that is only the games. And I'm not counting the Paralympics and the World Championship event. So that was pretty much what an athlete, through wheelchair basketball, was doing.
After that, it was more you developed the gym. I mean it started, the knowledge of the coaches and having you at the top of your fitness was happening for the sport like any other sport. So on top of that, you were spending time in the gym to complete the goal that you were setting up. Yeah.

Joeita Gupta:
Your goal. Right. When we think about athletes, especially high-performance athletes, I'm thinking about able-bodied athletes who perform in the Olympics, for example. They get a lot of support there, sponsorship agreements. There's a lot of coaching support. In the almost 30 years that you've been involved with wheelchair basketball, how has the support for parasport evolved and changed in Canada in all of these years?

Chantal Benoit:
Well, I would say at the beginning when we were starting, it was all about your pocket money. That was the reality. But later on, wheelchair basketball has been recognized as a sport like any other one. We started to be carded by Sport Canada in 1994. Then the budget for the National Sports Organization increased a lot. I think they are like 5 million today on the ... If somebody can correct me. But it's pretty high funding that the National Sports Organization has on hand to develop the national program. So I would say ... And more and more, you have Toyota, you have lots of other sponsor that are putting their help into it.
And I will not ... The problem I have right now is more that at the national level, international, there's no problem for the money. I think the problem is domestically. At the basis level, this is where we need to put a lot more time and effort to allow an organization to be healthy and provide opportunity for them to grow. And we are in a situation right now that you do have a local team who will have a star athlete, and unfortunately, the star athlete will be taken by the national organization away from the local organization. Would bring the local organization on the bottom again. And I think we should focus a little bit more on this to create a bigger and stronger foundation, and to have at the same time automatically the best national team program.

Joeita Gupta:
You said in the beginning when we were talking that when you started with wheelchair basketball, it was like getting your pocket money. So how exactly did you get your start in wheelchair basketball?

Chantal Benoit:
It's a funny story. I was at the rehab centre and they asked me to come in the basement to play wheelchair basketball. And good enough, I said no, because I don't have a disability. I want to walk. And I was taking my crutches and I went away from it. I did not even go take a look. And two, three years later when I was home, a friend of mine bring me to Jeux du Quebec to a demonstration game in wheelchair basketball. And when I saw the game, the speed, the aggressivity, the intensity, I just fell in love with this. And we decided to start a team less than a year after, in [inaudible 00:13:11], and the rest is the story. Just in love with it.

Joeita Gupta:
When you got involved with wheelchair basketball, there wasn't a team locally, not in your neighbourhood or in your area. How did you go about recruiting for your team? Did you have to sell people on the idea, or were there a lot of people who were already interested in the game?

Chantal Benoit:
No, well, [inaudible 00:13:33] it was a 40,000 community where we were able to find six, seven person that wanted to have something. Do not forget, and back in the '80s, there was not much around people with physical disability to be part on a physical activity. And when the wheelchair basketball team started, then people were interested and they came.
The team ... I played there eight years. I'm saying that lots of people from Montreal did help us to teach us the fundamental of it, but it was just recreational. It was a social aspect of the game, which is very important in sport. And when my focus was the national team, I did have ... Well, I fall in love with someone that was in the national organization and he did help me to move away from that local organization to another one in Ottawa. And in Ottawa there was about seven national team member playing there, and the career just started there.

Joeita Gupta:
And things just took off. Yeah. It's just the rest, as they say, is history. You have had such an extraordinary careers. You've been a flag bearer for Canada. You've won so many medals. And I'm sure if I were to ask your friends, they would be able to point out some pretty memorable moments. But I'm going to ask you if there was a single moment which you look back on with a great deal of fondness. If you had to think of the one thing in your years of playing wheelchair basketball, what would be a highlight for you?

Chantal Benoit:
Well, I think I already mentioned that from another interview. The national women's team was in this area back in 1990. And the first World Championship for women was during that year. And Canada almost said, "No, we're not setting a women team there because there's no future, no hope for that development." But they were able to convince to do that one more time. And when we show up in Saint-Etienne in France, we won the bronze. And that was the first medal that the women team accomplished in the entire history of the women program. And the coach that was associated to it was hired only for that tournament, but he said, "You know what? Give me two more years and we're going to Barcelona do the same thing." And Barcelona, of course, it was so emotional, so intense, and we were working for two years so hard and long. With the win of that gold, the first gold medal ever in front of these 18,000 people in the stadium, I think I will never forget that. That was probably the best.

Joeita Gupta:
And it all starts out with a group of people being determined and saying, "Well, hang on a minute. Canada should also have a wheelchair basketball team for women. Why shouldn't we send one as well?"

Chantal Benoit:
And following that, we improve each and every year, and we were learning. We were also opening our door to every knowledge coming from everywhere technically, tactically, emotionally, psychologically. So the team open their windows to bring as much people, to make them the best we can be.

Joeita Gupta:
Throughout our conversation, you've talked so much about your coaches and the people who mentored you.

Chantal Benoit:
Yeah.

Joeita Gupta:
And of course now you are in a position where you get to be a mentor to other people. What advice would you give someone, maybe a young person with a disability, or even someone who's just acquired a disability, who is making that first foray or that first exploration into, I guess parasport in general, but wheelchair basketball in particular?

Chantal Benoit:
Yeah. Well, I would just say lots of people has a pre-judgment of something they never tried. And you have to do it, even if it's one time, you have to push yourself to give you that opportunity to touch and feel. A lot miss that opportunity, unfortunately. And you will never know what you will like. And today there's so many and so much possibility, not just in sport, in every other sector. And you just have to go and touch it.
And when you got what you like to do and you think you're not good enough, but because you like what you do, you have to push yourself to the max. And even though it takes you two hours to reach the rim of the basket, you have to keep pursuing and keep shooting until you hit that rim. And you will see that put another two hours and the ball will go in. And never, ever give up. Always push, push, push and be the best you can be. It's only yourself who can limit yourself.

Joeita Gupta:
That was really nice. No, really that was so well said. You should in fact put it on a T-shirt, to be perfectly honest with you. You mentioned just at the beginning of our conversation about how momentous it was for you to be able to share this moment with Stephen Harper and also with Michelle Stilwell. And I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, in your years of involvement with wheelchair basketball, the ways in which you think your legacy as an athlete may have helped you make change for people with disabilities beyond the sporting world.

Chantal Benoit:
Oh, no question. I strongly believe, and I did a big paper at university about it, that sport change everything in our society. Every athlete and team athletes has to travel. For example, they have to travel to go to their competition. Believe it or not, but back in the '70s when you took the airline, a plane, the Air Canada was putting a maximum of one person with a physical disability with one attendants. That's it. So it became very difficult to send a team of 12 athletes to Vancouver, for example. And because of there was so much sport going around and so many wheelchairs and people with physical disability to travel, the airline company changed their regulation and changed their law to accommodate the travelling of all of that sport member.
Same thing with the accommodation, the hotel. I mean, there was no wheelchair-accessible rooms back in the '80s, for example, or very few. Today a hotel that is built out, it's like 10, 20, 25. I mean, it's just a simple example, but you can imagine in the social aspect and the financial aspect, every aspect have been influenced by a sport for people with disability, no question about it.

Joeita Gupta:
About changing attitudes with people with disabilities-

Chantal Benoit:
The same thing.

Joeita Gupta:
Yes, I know the same thing.

Chantal Benoit:
Especially in wheelchair basketball, because in wheelchair basketball, the country is so big and we are only 35 million people across a huge land, and [inaudible 00:21:28], and comparatively to Germany, who is like, how many times fit in Canada and is 5, 6, 7 time more populated. So it's very harder for us to create wheelchair teams around. And because we believe that the wheelchair is part of the equipment, we opened the sport to everybody who wants to play. You have a physical disability, fine; you don't have, it's fine too. So we did create a kind of a classification system allowing me to play with my brother or play with my neighbour. Having a system, the classification that will allow everyone to have floor time without putting the athlete, the wheelchair athlete, aside. And just that has been a big influence of changing perspective.

Joeita Gupta:
I know, that's really great. I can certainly see how if people with different abilities are able to play the same game, it can break down some of those barriers and take away some of that stigma that people with disabilities face on a day-to-day basis.

Chantal Benoit:
Yeah.

Joeita Gupta:
I only have about a minute and a half left, and so I really have to ask you this one last question. You have been called the Michael Jordan of women's wheelchair basketball. What does it mean to you to be compared to someone like Michael Jordan?

Chantal Benoit:
Yes. I think [inaudible 00:22:58], that was the person who started the name and the nickname. But one thing that is important to mention is even though I was a quick player, a fast player, a deceiving player, like I like you to squeeze in and squeeze out. I mean the ball needed to come to me. And I have a tremendous appreciation for all the players that play with me and make me look good, because it's just because it gave me the ball then I was able to accomplish something. And it's a hard position to be a guard and to be a center and all that kind of stuff to make another player look good. And I would say I say thank you to my teammates.

Joeita Gupta:
Your humility knows no bound. Now Chantal, unfortunately, I really just have that last minute left to go. And I'd like to ask you what you think you're going to work on next and what the future holds for you?

Chantal Benoit:
That is a good question because I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I mean, I am involved with a business called 49 Bespoke, and I am really into it. I am passionate with it the same way I was with wheelchair basketball. Just focusing on the moment and not really see the future, but the doors are open for whatever is happening.
One thing I need to mention is my partner, and the one who started to make me look good and feel good and be known the way I am is Reg. Reg has been a tremendous supportive person in my life. And without him, I would not be here today. I mean, he has the vision and the perspective of what things needs to be done and what need to be doing. And this is pretty much under his direction that I think I am what I am. I know I do have quality to make this happen, but the opportunity I was talking to you about it at the beginning of the show is exactly what Reg give me: the opportunity to be the best I could be. And I have a long way to go, and he's pushing me all the time to reach that.

Joeita Gupta:
It's been such a pleasure to speak to you. My heart is heavy having to say goodbye to you, but unfortunately we are all out of time. Thank you so much for joining me on the program today.

Chantal Benoit:
Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

Joeita Gupta:
That was Chantal Benoit, who is a Canadian Paralympian and a phenomenal wheelchair basketball player, and one of three inductees to the Canada Disability Hall of Fame. Next week you'll hear from Michelle Stilwell, another Inductee, and the week after that, you'll be hearing from Natalie Wilkie, the recipient of the King Clancy Award. So I hope you'll tune in for those future conversations as well.
If you have any feedback on my conversation with Chantal Benoit, please feel free to write us an email at feedback@ami.ca. Give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. And don't forget to leave permission to play the audio on the program. You can also find us on Twitter or well, it's known as X now, but you can find us by looking up at AMI-audio and using the hashtag pulseami. And of course, if you're finding us on YouTube or listening to the podcast, please feel free to leave a comment down below and we would love to read them out as well. And I do try and respond to comments when I see them on YouTube.
Until next time, it's been a pleasure talking to you about Chantal Benoit's remarkable legacy in sport. The Pulse is brought to you by a number of people every week. Our videographer this week has been Ted Cooper, video editor has been Jordan Steeves. Mark Aflalo is our technical producer. Ryan Delehanty is the coordinator for AMI-audio podcast. Andy Frank is the manager for AMI-audio. And I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thanks so much for listening. Enjoy the rest of your day.