The Comeback Kid

Everything can change in an instant. Sean Corner, a 21-year-old native of Hamilton, Ontario, was on the fast track to a successful career as an underwriter last spring. He graduated in May 2006 from Mohawk College and accepted a job with The Economical (Mississauga Branch). In September 2006, his whole world turned upside down when he was left paralyzed from the waist down during a rugby match. Later it had been discovered that a spam filter had blocked an e-mail to the teams saying that the rugby league had no insurance coverage for the game. Had the teams known that, it’s unlikely the game would have been played at all.

Corner faced perhaps the largest challenge of his life, but he wouldn’t be left carrying the ball alone. Backed by family, friends, teammates and an extremely empathetic insurance industry, Corner’s story is one of a community and an industry rallying against difficulty together.

Outside the office, Corner has a penchant for sports. He thrived playing hockey, lacrosse, football, rugby – basically “any or all of the contact” sports, he says. His passion for athletics stretches back through his high school years, when he shone as a star athlete. Corner particularly excelled on the rugby field, where he played with the Hamilton Hornets on the day that his life changed.

A six-year veteran of the team, Corner was tackled in open play. The impact of the tackle forced Corner’s torso downwards, dislocating his spine in his lower back at the T11 and T12 vertebrae.

“It happened in slow motion and instantly everything was gone,” Corner says. “Like a snap of the fingers. Bam. Gone. I went into panic mode. Everything ran through my mind. I can’t say I was in a calm state. I went to sit up and I couldn’t feel from my hips down and my legs wouldn’t move.”

He said he thought about his girlfriend on the sidelines watching the accident, his dad’s plans for retirement, the hopes of having a normal family life one day – and rugby. The thought, “I would never play rugby again,” surged through his mind while those around him rushed for medical help, he told Canadian Underwriter in an interview.

The weight and implications of the situation descended on him as quickly as the accident occurred. “I knew that I was screwed when the paramedics came and they wouldn’t look at me or talk to me,” he recalls. “I kept asking what was going on and if I was going to walk again and they just stared off into the distance.”

Not wanting his dad to hear about the accident from anyone else, Corner asked someone to pass him a cell phone so that he could be the one to make the call. He recounts how he maintained his cool, so as not to send his dad into a panic. He told his Dad he was in trouble, that there was an accident and could he please meet him at the hospital.

“I guess it all happened so fast,” Corner says. “Into the helicopter. Into the hospital. Cat scan. X-ray.” Less than two hours after he went down on the field, the doctor came in to his room at the Hamilton General Hospital. “I told [the doctor] not to sugar-coat it,” Corner remembers. The doctor simply said: “You need a miracle to walk again.” That was the moment, Corner says, that he realized he “had to suck it up and get through it.”

Just as these storm clouds gathered, Corner endured another strike. The Hornet’s insurance had been cancelled the day before the game. But the email notifying the game’s administrators had been caught in the spam filter and deleted before it could be read. That left Corner without any coverage or financial assistance to aid him on the long road back to recovery.

But when word spread of the accident and the cancellation of coverage, the insurance industry immediately sprung into action, Corner says. The industry held a number of fundraisers to help generate the necessary funds to get him home from the hospital and into a sense of normalcy.

The Insurance Institute of Ontario’s Hamilton/Niagara Chapter in November 2006 held a benefit entitled ‘We Are Family’ that drew more than 1,200 people and raised more than Cdn$100,000. Co-workers at The Economical also rallied for him, establishing the HeartFelt Help Fund with the view of becoming a permanent fixture in the industry’s landscape – with Corner being the inaugural recipient. Earlier this year, the Honourable Order of the Blue Goose held its annual Scotch-nosing and donated close to Cdn$30,000 to the Sean Corner Benefit Fund.

“I think that I have taken it very well, mainly because of the people that I have around me,” Corner says of his overall mindset after the rugby incident. “If it wasn’t for my family and friends, my girlfriend and the support of the insurance community and the rugby community, I would be in a much worse spot than I am right now.”

Corner is not quite home yet. Still, he credits the support of the insurance industry with getting him that much closer. The Corners have taken residence in a temporary apartment while their home is renovated to accommodate him. The massive project has seen walls torn down, elevator lifts installed, and a total retrofit and redesign of the bathroom and kitchen, to name a few. The renovation has been ongoing for the past four months, and Corner has his fingers crossed that he will be back in his house by the summertime.

“The house renovation is a lot bigger than I thought,” he says. “It’s enormous. But because of the insurance fundraising benefits, I’m going to be able to go home.”

Corner plans to return to The Economical as soon as he feels he has a firm enough grasp on his new situation. “The folks at the office have been absolutely fantastic,” he says with a smile. “When I first started working there, I was thrilled because everyone was absolutely fantastic and they’ve been fantastic the whole way through [the recovery process].”

Corner says he makes a point to drop in to visit and attend staff appreciation luncheons. “My desk hasn’t been touched,” he observes. “They’ve left everything exactly the way it was before my accident. It’s just waiting for me to come back – except for my stapler. Someone lifted my stapler and it was a good one, too,” Corner laughs, making reference to a line from the film ‘Office Space.’

Corner says the analytical aspect of underwriting drew him into the field, and that’s what he misses the most, he says. “I love taking each risk and analysing it,” he says. “You have to visualize a lot of risks without being able to see them. It’s like trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together and come up with a figure.”

He says “no time is a good time to get hurt.” But he says he especially regrets that he “was in the midst of a real learning curve” at The Economical when the accident happened. But he remains confident and driven to get back.

Corner refuses to let his injury keep him from the rugby field. Of course he is devastated that he will never enjoy the rush of being out on the field again. But he’s found a new way to remain involved with the sport: he is now able to share his passion and knowledge of the game by coaching two girls’ high school teams, one of which is his alumnus, Hill Park Secondary.

Corner has also picked up a tennis racket and a basketball – two sports to which he hadn’t paid much attention until now. But now he finds himself enjoying the two sports, and hopes to earn a top seat in Canadian tennis.

The key to finding a new sense of normalcy in life is to keep taking each day at a time, challenge by challenge, he says. Before the end of the interview, he stresses that he “just wants to say a huge thank you to everyone in the insurance industry.” He pauses and adds: “If it wasn’t for those people I wouldn’t be able to go home. My life would be much more worrisome.”