A workplace injury left a local man wheelchair bound six years ago, and today, he says he wants to help other people struggling.
Kyle Murray told his story at a National Day of Mourning ceremony hosted by the Leeds Grenville Labour Council on the weekend.
“Back in 2017, I was working for a local arborist, loading the woodchipper, when a tree fell and hit me on the head,” explains Murray. “I was loading the chipper and didn’t see it coming.”
Murray spent a week in a coma and could have been hurt more severely if he hadn’t been wearing safety equipment.
“Once I recovered from the coma,” he says. “I was moved to the neurosurgical floor at Kingston General Hospital, where I worked with an occupational therapist and a physiotherapist to begin learning how to live this new life without a working spinal cord.”
Murray also spent time at Kingston’s Providence Care Hospital.
He says he’s received a lot of support, including being connected with social groups and therapists that ultimately helped him finish his degree in college.
“Not every hospital will give you those connections upon discharge,” Murray explains. “I was lucky, in a sense, with Providence Care, that when I left, they set me up with all these connections, but if, say, I went to Ottawa, I might not have gotten in contact with community brain injury services, or I might not have gotten a community occupational therapist to help me out.”
Murray says he has a positive outlook on life, and that he hopes to help other people that suffer from workplace injuries in the future.
“Because going to work is difficult,” he says, “I’m hoping to at least continue doing peer support, and to continue advocating for more community support for those who need it.”