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Caring and Courage
For more than seven decades, the Walter Harris Callow Foundation has managed transportation and tours for veterans, people with disabilities and mobility-challenged nursing home residents. The organization is the legacy of Walter Callow who invented the wheelchair bus and shed a light on the barriers faced by the disabled.
A native of Nova Scotia, Callow entered the Royal Flying Corps in 1916 and became a mechanic at an Ontario base used for pilot training. He incurred severe spinal injuries after a plane crash, and remained at Halifax’s Camp Hill Hospital for veterans until 1918.
After the war, Callow settled in Advocate Harbour, married, and started a family. In 1931, his wife, infant son and mother died, leaving him to raise his young daughter alone. He remained in constant pain from his damaged spine, forcing him to return numerous times to hospital. By 1937, unable to be treated at home, he was transported in the baggage car of a train to Camp Hill Hospital where he spent the rest of his life.
Although paralyzed and blind, he raised funds to help Canadians serving overseas during World War II, and facilitated a local taxi service enabling hospitalized soldiers to attend sporting and social events. After the war, concerned for the welfare of injured soldiers and inspired by his own confinement, he designed a bus with a back that lowered to become a wheelchair ramp. Two custom-made coaches were built locally and financed by public donations.
The Foundation was created in 1947 and service expanded throughout the Maritimes and in other Canadian cities. Even in its infancy it served 8600 clients.
When Walter died in 1958, his body was returned to Advocate, Nova Scotia, to be buried — the only journey he had ever taken on the Callow Coach. Although bus operations ceased in 2019, the Foundation continues it founder’s inspired mission of fostering hope.
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