In today's episode, Che will introduce you to Stephen Salter; he is the son of the Doctor who saved her life and taught her how to walk again.
Eight years ago, Che shared her game-changing personal story on the CBC show The Current, and by some strange fate, Stephen Salter and his sister Dr. Jane Salter in different provinces heard the show and reached out to Che. They now have this unique connection and friendship.
Stephen is an Environmental Engineer dedicated to sustainable infrastructure for water, energy, and materials across the world. He is always looking for solutions to "balance" the needs economy to reduce our carbon footprint.
As a child, he was fascinated by the beauty and efficiency found in nature; it impacted his perspective as an engineer, always looking at the interconnectedness of things and engineering. He feels that although there is a kind of inertia in the current generation, the generation growing up has an awareness and understanding and willingness to change behaviour. And if we pay attention to our transportation needs, heating our homes and what we consume and how we consume that and make in our kitchen and right there we can make changes that positively impact the environment and is working on some remarkable concepts in his right. Most recently, Stephen and his wife Fernanda Oliveira. felt compelled and inspired to do something to help during the pandemic; drawing on his background, they came up with the idea to create Masks with filters that would for people that work in a long-term care home to use on their way home to and from work to reduce the risks. They organized a team of people, including his eighty-seven-year-old mother law Odete Oliveira., with scoliosis but sewed hundreds of masks herself and sent them to Ontario and Quebec. He was curious about how useful the masks were and tested them. They came back as over 90 percent effective.
Stephen loved nature and how things were connected; he was always interested in the interconnectedness of things and observing nature's beauty, a love inspired by his mother. And even though he came from a family of physicians, he found nature far more compelling.
In this very illuminating conversation, Stephen describes his father's passion and makes a difference as a researcher and innovator. Behind the scenes, he saw his father working on a then-radical experimental process called Continuous Passive Motion that would support joints' healing; this would directly impact Che. Stephen described his father's mobile experiments on rabbits, data analysis and observations of animals. He described the resistance his father experienced and his commitment to continuing to the continual study of cases from around the world; he never wanted to give up. Stephen continues to find inspiration in his father and mother's life experiences.
Below you will find a link for his website and the abstract on the mask,
“Canada Sewing Hope” - https://canadasewinghope.ca/index.html
“Reinventing Cloth Masks in the Face of Pandemics” - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.13602
You can reach Che here- https://www.coachchemarville.com/
