By getting into the pool, Halifax ended 62 years of fear
For most people, a visit to a swimming pool is a familiar part of the summer.
But for Nova Scotia woman Deborah Ward, entering the pool at Sackville Sports Stadium two weeks ago was a major step after 62 years of anxiety.
In 1961, Ward, then seven years old, was living in military housing in Dartmouth’s Shannon Park.
While trying to get some sugar to lend to a neighbor, her dress hit the hotplate and caught fire.
Ward suffered third-degree burns over 70 percent of her body and spent a year in the hospital.
She told CBC Radios Now or never there was no psychological support at the time and she had just been treated and discharged from the hospital.
Ward said that when she was nine she put on a bathing suit and went to the neighborhood pool, despite some words of warning from her mother.
As she left the locker room and headed for the pool, Ward said she heard some of the parents making comments to each other.
Ward said everyone got out of the pool or went to the other side when she got in.
“With the comments thrown at me, as a little girl, I started crying and got out of the pool and went home,” she said. “I’ve never put on another bathing suit in 60 years.”
Ward has worked with burn survivors over the years. She said it helped her emotional healing.
Today she serves as president of the Nova Scotia Burn Support Group, on the board of directors of the Canadian Burn Survivors Community, and has published her autobiography. She is also a member of international burn groups.
Now or never8:16After 60 years, this burn survivor is finally ready to wear a bathing suit in public
Debbie Ward hasn’t worn a bathing suit in public since she was nine years old. When she got in the water at her local pool, kids and their parents made fun of her and moved to the other side, or all left together. Two years earlier, a terrible accident left Debbie with scars covering 70 percent of her body. Now, at age 69, she’s finally ready to try again.
Ward said a friend, also a burn survivor, would meet her at conferences and always bring a bathing suit to try on.
Once, at a conference in Calgary, she put on one of the bathing suits in the room. But she wouldn’t wear it to accompany her friend to the hotel pool.
Afraid to show her skin
As she prepared for her first swim in a pool in six decades, Ward said she’d deprived herself of many things over the years because she was afraid of showing her skin.
She said she’s lived in the Upper Sackville area since the pool was built and watched her kids, grandkids, and foster kids enjoy it — but never went in it herself.
After relaxing in the pool and finally enjoying a thrill she hadn’t experienced in most of her life, Ward emerged and said her mind was racing in all directions, but she felt fine.
Ward said it felt like the start of something she wants to continue.
“I feel… I’m not sure what the expression is… a relief,” she said.
“I have overcome a fear that has been in me for 62 years and that I have given wings to fly away.”
