Have you heard the joke about the blind insurance agent? Maybe not, given the fact that there seems to be only one such broker in Canada, (or perhaps the world) and many people these days are cautious about jokes that might seem to mock the physically challenged. But if you spend any time with Donovan Tildesley, Paralympic swimming star, downhill skier and, yes, Canada's first and so far only blind insurance broker, you are likely to hear good natured jokes about his vision, his work and his long career as a competitive swimmer.
Tildesley, who conducts his history-making career as a broker from behind a counter at Buntain Insurance in Vancouver's Point Grey neighbourhood, is notorious among his friends and co-workers for his effervescent sense of humour and bottomless supply of quips and jokes. For example, he confided wryly to this reporter about a new romance in his life, with a sighted woman.
"I can't say we've been seeing each other for three months," he says, "because I can't see her at all. But she's been seeing me for three months."
Born blind, Tildesley has filled his 29 years with achievements, from competitive swimming to downhill skiing to a UBC degree in English literature, and from careers in insurance and motivational speaking to investments in Whistler radio stations. As you read this column, he is competing in Montreal at the International Paralympic (IPC) World Swimming Championships, which he told me might be his last big meet before he retires from competition.
If the Quebec event is in fact his last competition, it will cap a stellar career. He took a bronze medal in the 200-metre medley at the Sydney Paralympics in 2000 and won five golds and one silver at the 2002 IPC meet in Argentina, followed by a bronze and two silvers at the Athens Paralympics in 2004, several gold medals at the 2007 ParaPan American Games in Brazil and a bronze at the 2008 Paralympics, where he was chosen to carry the Canadian flag at opening ceremonies.
Tildesley holds world records for blind swimmers in the 800-metre and 1500-metre freestyle events. Last week, he was engaged in a rigorous set of pre-competition workouts at the Centre Sportif de Gatineau. For years now, the determined young athlete has been training daily at the indoor pool of the Arbutus Club, where his father, local endocrinologist Hugh Tildesley, himself a former competitive swimmer, has been his coach and trainer, except for a period in his pre-teen years when, as his father says with a laugh, "Donovan fired me for being too tough on him."
At 15, Donovan invited his father back into the coaching role he'd held during his childhood and they've worked together since.
One of the roles that his father plays in Tildesley's training regimen is to act as his "tapper," the figure who stands at the end of the pool with a long pole tipped with Styrofoam and taps the blind swimmer just before he reaches the wall and needs to execute a racing turn, thus avoiding the discomfort experienced when you swim full speed into the wall, "or at least avoiding it most of the time," as Tildesley laughs.
Tildesley's employer, Gordon Buntain, says that to his knowledge, the young swimmer is the first blind insurance broker in the world, and adapting the workplace to Donovan's special needs has created increased expenses.
All worth it, Buntain says, and he is quick to reject any suggestion that hiring Donovan was inspired by pity or abstract interest in the rights of the disabled.
"Donovan is a good fit for us and our business, and a great ambassador. I knew him as a kid in the neighbourhood growing up, and he has always been humorous, generous and kind. He is growing and learning all the time."
