On November 24, hundreds of people gathered at the Winnipeg Evangelical Free Church to bid a final farewell to a dear friend and loved one, John Loeppky.

The crowd filling the massive sanctuary that afternoon stood as testament to the many lives John touched over his 78 years. The memories shared induced visions of a humble, gentle, funny, optimistic, and fiercely tenacious man in the face of great difficulty.

At the age of 31, just as his career as a Niverville-area farmer was beginning to show promise, John fell from an electrical pole near a barn that was under construction on his property. He went on to live the rest of his life as a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

John was a husband to Linda and father to three very young children at the time: John Jr., Jaylin, and Marcus.

If anything can be said of John during those early years, and throughout his life, it’s that he saw his new situation as more of a hurdle than a handicap. Before he was even released from the hospital, he got busy planning a redesign of the barn that was going up, now including wider aisles to accommodate a wheelchair.

He would soon have more than 400 hogs to manage and 800 acres of field to farm. A minor hiccup like partial paralysis wasn’t about to stop him.

The year was 1978, a time before a lot of research and development had gone into the creation of mobility devices for paraplegics. Still, according to family and friends, he never lost hope.

In no time, John was designing and engineering his own devices and modifications around the farm. The barn was outfitted with an automatic feed release system that he could manipulate with a specially made rod.

He modified his own tractor with a hand clutch and brake and designed a manual block-and-pulley-style lift to hoist himself in and out of the tractors and farm trucks.

He constructed a similar manual pulley lift to get him and his wheelchair up a staircase and into the house.

In the coming years, John also developed a renewed interest in his high school passion, basketball, and began playing on a Winnipeg-based paraplegic team. He was instrumental in bringing the first Prairie Paraplegic Farmers Conference to Winnipeg.

In 1981, John was featured in an article by the Mennonite Brethren Herald titled “Being Handicapped Isn’t So Terrible.”

He also made the front page of the Winnipeg Sun, sharing space with former Canadian prime minister Joe Clark and Princess Diana. In that article, he is quoted as saying, “I usually don’t think of myself as handicapped at all.”

His son John Jr. regaled those gathered at the funeral with stories of his father’s life.

“Dad loved farming till the very end,” John Jr. said. “Farming was his passion. He didn’t farm for fame, glory, or riches. He had a hard time understanding people who looked forward to retirement.”

John Jr. recalled his siblings accompanying their dad in the barn and on countless farm errands that always resulted in stops for sugary treats. As young farmhands, they fell asleep at their father’s side in the tractor during the long hours of the harvest and occasionally experienced the thrill of taking the wheel.

“One of the benefits of adding hand controls in all the farm vehicles was that you didn’t actually need to be able to reach the pedals to drive,” John Jr. joked. “Even being able to look over the dash was optional.”

Life for the family was active and normal. They enjoyed road trips, ski vacations, and countless camping outings.

“Dad wasn’t one to sit around at home when a season of farming slowed down. We always had lots of excitement, whether it was going to the Morris Stampede and pulling him all the way up the stairs to the top of the grandstand, going to the Bomber games and sitting on the sidelines in the handicap zone, or even to local hockey games where Dad had his reserved spot in the corner.”

John also held a deep faith in God. He never worried about the weather or getting the crops off the fields when the season ran late. It all belonged to God anyway, he’d tell his family.

John and his brother Pete eventually passed the main farming operations to their own children. Cousins Marcus and Paul now run the family farm as partners.

Paul was witness to his uncle’s ingenuity growing up.

“His main lift to get into equipment was a simple block and tackle,” saud Paul. “[It] was originally designed as a fence puller, used to tighten fence wire over long distances. There was an arm that would come out of the tractor with the block and tackle attached to it. He would put a sling around his lower body and hook it up then use his arm strength to pull on a rope to raise himself up into a tractor or combine.”

Despite his resilience, though, John was also willing to ask for help when needed and showed sincere gratitude when help came.

Another local farmer, Grant Dyck, says that he grew up a friend to the Loeppky siblings and frequent visitor to their household.

“[John] went through life with a profound optimism and fantastic sense of humour,” says Dyck. “Oh, and he happened to be in wheelchair. But that was by no means something that defined him. Quite the opposite. With his outlook and positive, can-do attitude, it was a part of his life that wouldn’t slow him down.”

In fact, in all the years that Grant witnessed the Loeppky family dynamic, never once did he ever hear John complain about or bemoan his condition. His wife Linda, Grant says, was an absolute rock.

“John was of the old guard,” says Grant. “Despite being in the hospital [at the end of his life], he held on till harvest was done, passing away hours after it was complete. Just another example of his resilience.”

Another family friend, Jared Funk, recalls how John’s quiet resolve and acceptance impacted him as a child and young adult. As a child, Funk spent countless hours at the Loeppky household, having befriended John Jr.

In 1992, Funk’s life was permanently changed, too, when an accident rendered him a paraplegic.

“When I had my accident, I realized that this is all doable,” says Funk. “Everything is doable because I saw John do it. In that light, it was easier for me to approach and tackle things because I saw someone else do it before me.”

Since becoming a father himself, Funk says that the example John set, showing how to be an active father in the face of a disability, has been motivational. In the end, he realizes that the wheelchair shouldn’t symbolize something that you can’t do. Instead it’s really just another means of getting around, like a bicycle.

“It’s only the mindset that [distinguishes you] as the handicapped person as opposed to just a regular guy in a chair,” says Funk.