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Lorna Wreford has lived with spina bifida all her life but it hasn’t stopped her from painting. Her latest project was a fundraising calendar.
By SANDY McLEAN
Special
Despite having been born with spina bifida, Lorna Bentley Wreford has made a life-long habit of beating the odds and forging her own path.
“I seem to be the exception,” she said. “I’ve always done incredible things. I’ve had a lot of fun in my life.”
Despite her disability, Wreford walked unaided until the age of 10. It was only then that she began needing leg braces to get around.
For the past 40 years doctors have been saying she would lose her ability to walk, but Wreford continues to prove them wrong.
Although she finds it easier to use a wheelchair, she can walk and she even drives a car.
Some 30 years ago, Wreford was the first paraplegic woman to adopt two children through the Metro Toronto Children’s Aid.
At 61, an age many people with spina bifida don’t reach, Wreford is once again proving she’s a survivor. Her latest accomplishment is seeing 13 of her paintings, etchings with a watercolor tint, featured on the pages of the Spina Bifida & Hydrocephalus Association of Ontario’s annual fundraising calendar for the year 2000.
“It’s a knockout,” she said.
There are only 5,000 copies of this lottery calendar in print. For $20, the purchaser of a calendar has a one-in-17 chance of winning one of the 289 draws to be held throughout the year awarding some $20,000 in prizes. All proceeds go to research into spina bifida and hydrocephalus.
To buy a calendar, call (416) 214-1056 or 1-800-387-1575.
A nature lover, Wreford presents a variety of landscape scenes on the calendar, from a cluster of red trillium flowers she found in the woods across from the Bradley Museum to a snowy apple tree along on an old country road.
Although Wreford hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in over a decade, she never lost her touch.
The depicted scenes, she said, have been in her mind for some time now.
The association’s request for her to do the paintings for its calendar did wonders for Wreford’s spirit.
“I’ve been released from this kind of burden of slogging around in this body that doesn’t work,” she said.
Wreford holds an Ontario Teacher’s Certificate from the Ontario College of Education and she’s an English graduate of McMaster University.
She has taught ESL and continues to run her home business as an editor, tutor and desktop publisher, servicing a number of clients.
Wreford has presented many solo exhibitions and has been included in several juried shows. Her work has appeared at the Valhalla Inn Gallery in Etobicoke, at Erindale United Church and at several local libraries.
