Arielle Vienneau
January 2016
As an adaptive athlete and a knee disarticulation amputee, Arielle is always looking for new ways to add athletics to her life. The indoor track at CGC has been a life changer. She started blade running last June and as someone who had not ran for over a decade the track provided a safe environment to train on her carbon-fiber running prosthesis. Arielle enjoys the choices in activities provided at the Canada Games Centre. Although she mostly uses the gym for weight lifting, she likes all that the CGC offers. She may consider a fitness class or enjoy an occasional swim. The facility is well maintained, clean, and very accessible for the adaptive and diverse community. Her results continue to motivate her physically and mentally. Arielle's lost over 100 lbs in the last four years and has completely reshaped her body. In return this has given her improved mobility, flexibility and most importantly, has made her quality of life as a leg amputee much easier and manageable. Being active is a huge part of how she maintains her mental health. She views athletics as therapeutic management for her self-confidence, stress and anxiety. Arielle plans to proceed on her journey of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for the rest of her life. She hopes to empower and motivate other women and individuals with adaptations (disabilities) to get stronger and have the self-confidence to succeed at anything they want to achieve. Being a full time employee with the Mental Health and Addictions program at the Nova Scotia Health Authority along with her active lifestyle doesn’t provide much spare time for Arielle. However she loves to cook, and is proud that she has revamped her not-so-healthy dishes (pizza, hamburgers, pancakes & sweets) into celiac and macro-friendly healthy dishes! Other past times are discovering new restaurants/cafes, hiking or walking local trails and parks, bingeing on Netflix TV series (Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, Jessica Jones, Sons of Anarchy, etc.) and of course spending time with loved ones and her cat Moo.