Inspiring Participation

Overview: This session will highlight different forms of participation in Adapted Sports & Recreation, from three speakers with one two-minute video. Karli Bourque, a Therapeutic Recreationist will focus on ways to enhance engagement through the use of TREE a method for inclusive sports design. Sabrina Duschesne, a member of the Canadian Paralympic team will review her trajectory to the 2024 games. Joshua Koshuba, a Paracheer Coach, will review the formation and ongoing competitive activities of the team. His talk will feature a demonstration by the cheer team. We also will show a video from Music Teacher, Marie-Dominique Boivin including ‘Frog Touch’ a method allowing children with severe disabilities to create music.

Presenter Information:

Dr. Karli Bourque is a Therapeutic Recreationist from Ontario Canada. She works at the Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre supporting clients and families in engaging with recreation in all forms, from competitive to leisure. Karli loves to help others look at a problem from a different lens or light and bring creativity into everyday problem solving. Karli is also a member of the AACPDM Adapted Sports and Recreation Committee, and in her spare time loves to play sports herself; with her favorite being softball or hang with her dog Enzo when she is not on the field. As a newer member of the committee and AACPDM she is excited to be here to contribute and to learn at a conference held here within her own country.

Sabrina Duchesne is a member of the Canadian Paralympic team since 2015. She is a paraswimmer with cerebral palsy. She is also a student in criminology at the Laval University in Quebec city. Sabrina is a bronze medalist from the Tokyo 2020 games in the 4x100m relay freestyle. She will be competing at her third Paralympic games this summer in Paris.

Joshua Koshuba has been a cheerleading coach for the last 10 years. In 2023, he created Quebec's first Adaptive Abilities (Paracheer) cheerleading team. This season, he hopes to reach new heights with his team. At the end of 2024, Joshua will submit his team as a candidate to represent Canada at the 2025 ICU Cheerleading Junior World & World Championships in Orlando, Florida.

Marie-Dominique Boivin is a devoted and engaged music teacher at Madeleine-Bergeron school, a specialized school for children from 4 to 21 year-old with a physical disability. She has been working at this school for 15 years and received many awards, including two “prix essor” from the Quebec government related to her unique project “unir la difference au-delà des mots et des sons”, in which the frog touch was used to allow students with a severe physical disability to create music to accompany students from another specialized school with hearing impairment.