Listowel’s Nathan Elg is helping support kids with disabilities who just donated his recent string of can tabs to help make wheelchairs, a collection good enough to go towards a third wheelchair.
Nathan who has cerebral palsy spent much time visiting the London Children’s Hospital for treatment but as he says, he didn’t have the more heavier affects of cerebral palsy but watched as other kids his age were wheelchair bound.
Elg says it’s his visits to the hospital which inspired him to help others.
“I’d go down there and see more than 1 kid that was my age of even younger that was in a wheelchair and it was pretty obvious they were never getting out of that wheelchair.” said Elg.
“In the case I was in, I thought to myself ‘this condition hasn’t stopped me yet but these kids don’t get to experience what I can and I’d like to help them out in anyway'”
His recent drop off load was nearly 330lbs of tabs donated.
Elg says when he started this 12 years ago, he had hoped to get enough for one wheelchair but the continued support has now expanded with 1/3 for a third wheelchair already done.
Elg adds the support he’s seen is what has made this all possible.
“Hockey coach Doug Berfelz. He claims to this day I was his inspiration but to this day I say he was mine. I started it but Doug came along and figured we had something good and he and I took it off. He had contacts and with the help of my family that’s how we got people from Scotland and the states to join in. I’d also like to thank Jerald and Nancy Smith, they’ve been with me from the very beginning, dropping off tabs whenever they even had a handful. Doug and Karen McCourt have also been with me since day 1, dropping off just even a handful when they had them.”
Elg now heads for study at the Olds College of Agriculture and Technology for Agricultural Management.
