Community activist.
Born at Ottawa in 1939, he was educated at Moosehorn and Starbuck. He contracted polio at age 14 while living in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba (BCom) in a wheelchair in 1962. He managed the first Pan-Am Wheelchair Games in 1967, and organized the Manitoba and Canadian Wheelchair Sport Associations. Simpson spent 30 years working on behalf of Canadians with disabilities, and was one of Canada’s most successful lobbyists. After working with Monarch Life Assurance Company from 1965 to 1983, in 1984 he became managing director of the Independent Living Resource Centre. In recognition of his community service, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal (1977) and was inducted into the Order of the Buffalo Hunt (1995) and Order of Canada (1998). He died on 26 December 1998.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 29 December 1998.
“They are gone, but not forgotten,” Winnipeg Free Press, 31 December 1998, page A4.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 17 October 2021
Memorable Manitobans
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