For Collinda Joseph, wheelchair curling is chess on ice.
She meticulously plots the strength of her shot and the optimal line delivery by zoning out everything except the sheet of ice before her. But when the stage is the Paralympic Games, it’s easy to get lost in the
magnitude
of the moment.
“Sometimes I just go, ‘Holy s—t!’” she laughs. “But really, I try to continually repeat to myself, ‘You’re here, you deserve to be here, you’re good enough to be here. Just go out and do what you do, and then we’ll deal with the consequences of misses.’”
Joseph is no stranger to performing under pressure. In 2019, the Ottawa-native won bronze at the Canadian Wheelchair Curling Championship. In 2020 and 2025, she took home silver and bronze, respectively, at the World Wheelchair Curling Championships. In 2023, she also won bronze at the Mixed Doubles World Championship.
She was Team Canada’s alternate at the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics — playing in one of the team’s games. The team won bronze, solidifying Canada’s legacy as the only country to stand on every podium since wheelchair curling’s paralympic introduction in 2006. Joseph, however, didn’t play in the medal round four years ago.
“The opportunity to go to Beijing and win a medal was phenomenal and amazing. After that, I just sensed that I want to be on the ice when we win a medal,” she says. “I’m an incredibly competitive person, so that has driven me to find a way to get better.”
This year in
Milano-Cortina
, Joseph will be Canada’s starting lead at the Paralympic Games.
Throwing the game’s first few rocks is like throwing into unknown conditions, says Team Canada’s head coach Mick Lizmore. “The pieces never go over quite where you want them to.” But Joseph has developed a knack for details like rock placements and line deliveries.
With members scattered across Canada, the team gets together at least once a month to train in a central location. Joseph works with a personal trainer and a mental performance trainer to stay sharp in between practices.
Team Canada’s skip, Mark Ideson, has competed alongside Joseph at multiple world championships and at the Beijing Games. “I remember being intimidated by her because she is so experienced and really good at wheelchair curling,” he says. “But she has a soft side and a sense of humour as well.
“I would use the picture of a duck where on top of the water she’s super calm, and under the water, the legs are moving really fast,” he adds. (Ideson was quick to clarify that he is not trying to compare his teammate to a duck.)
“She’s a fierce competitor and I’m happy to be playing with her instead of against her.”
Hard work and competition has been a part of Joseph’s life since before she was a Paralympian — and before she thought of herself as a wheelchair curler.
Growing up, Joseph was a gymnast, played softball and spent five years as a competitive springboard diver. In 1983, a train accident in France left her with a spinal cord injury at 18-years-old. At her occupational therapist’s urging, she started para track and field a year later.
“The whole idea of parasport was foreign to me prior to my accident, because you don’t really hear about it if you’re not in that world,” she says. “That opened a lot of doors to see what other sports were available to me.”
Joseph tried her hand at adaptive track and field, downhill skiing and tennis before many years of wheelchair basketball in her thirties. Joseph sensed she wasn’t quite good enough in these sports to land a spot on Canada’s paralympic team. Developing shoulder and neck pain that comes with age didn’t help her chances either.
“I was always looking for a sport I could compete in that would get me to experience a Paralympic Games,” she says. “Curling ended up being that sport.”
Joseph tried the sport on a whim when it was available at Ottawa’s RA Centre in 2006. She immediately fell in love with its deceivingly challenging nature.
“You’re watching it and it doesn’t appear to be that difficult of a sport to play, right? … When I tried it, I thought, ‘Gosh, this is super hard,’” she says. “Part of my brain that stubbornly didn’t want to give up kept on saying, ‘I got this,’ so I just kept going back.
“As I learned more about the sport, I learned how technical it is, how strategic you need to be and how your brain is always activated while you’re playing.”
Placing a stone in an advantageous position is especially difficult in wheelchair curling, Joseph says, because there’s no sweeping to reduce the stone’s friction to send it farther and straighter.
“As soon as you let the rock go, it’s basically up to the gods,” she laughs.
Joseph’s husband, Euan Mackellar, and their two daughters, Sara and Hannah, are planning to watch Joseph compete in-person in Milano Cortina — a privilege they didn’t have during the Beijing Paralympics due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Being in the stands brings a more personal experience that Mackellar is looking forward to. Spending time in Italy with his family is an added bonus, he jokes.
“I see the dedication it takes and the commitment Collinda puts in,” he adds.
Joseph is aware of the time away from home she’s sacrificed for years of training, travelling and competing. She says she is grateful for her family’s continued support, as well as the flexibility that her job with Accessibility Standards Canada has to offer.
As Manager of Accessibility and Education since 2019, she helps develop accessibility standards to improve the lives of people with disabilities. The thinking and planning she applies to her day job is similar to the intricacies she plots while competing on the ice.
“They both kind of come together, even though they’re incredibly separate,” she says.
But as her first game approaches on March 7, Joseph is focused on “trying to keep it together” ahead of throwing Team Canada’s first stone on the Paralympic stage.
“You want to be really excited about it, but you also want to be steady so you don’t excite yourself to the point where you can’t actually perform.”
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