It’s not every day you get to go on a fishing excursion on Lesser Slave Lake. Much less for brain injury victims and much less for free. But that’s what four such people received last week, courtesy of Tony Gellings of Adventure Alberta Ltd. and Big Lake Country Tourism.
Four men from Edmonton who suffer the effects of brain injury, plus supervisor George Kapetanakis of Networks Activity Centre of Alberta went out on the lake on the evening of July 25 and again all day on the 26th with Gellings and Keith Denoncourt. The Leader was there at the launch, and spoke to George (a different George, one of the injury victims).
“We lost our lifestyle,” he said. “We have no opportunities. Thank God for Tony and Tanya Samizadeh (former manager of Big Lake Country Tourism) for opening this door. It’s not about disability. It’s about ability…what we can do.”
Kapetanakis explained that brain injury victims usually retain all their knowledge, but have problems with short-term memory and organization of tasks, which often makes them unemployable and can be quite frustrating for a variety of reasons. They subsist on AISH (Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped), which is barely enough to live on. The Networks group organizes social and recreational activities for them, and contributions like that of Gellings sure do help, Kapetanakis said.
Reached on the morning of the 26th, Gellings said the fishing wasn’t great the night before, “but we got about a 14 lb. jackfish.”
“They’re all smiling this morning,” he said, of his guests. “They said they’ve got some stories to tell and they’re going to have more to tell.”
No word on how the fishing went on day two.

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