Kim Kilpatrick

She gained qualification to the 1978 Ontario Games for the Physically Disabled that were staged in Windsor by achieving the minimum qualifying standard at a sports competition for the blind at her school.^[5] Kilpatrick won the 50-metre freestyle, 400-metre freestyle and the 50-metre breaststroke in the blind division. She placed second in the 50-metre freestroke and the 100-metre breastroke competitions.^[6] In the 1979 Brewer Park Centennial held at the Ottawa Coliseum, Kilpatrick won six events in her division, such as a gold medal in the relay event.^[7] She went on to achieve four first places in the Class A blind division at the Central-West Ontario Regional Games in Brantford.^[8] At the 1980 Ontario Games for the Disabled, she placed first in the women's 400-metre freestyle and the women's 100-metre butterfly events.^[9]

Kilpatrick qualified for her first international competition, the 1980 Summer Paralympics in Arnhem, Netherlands.^[1] She failed to qualify for the final of the women's 400 metres A athletics competition by finishing second in her heat and placed fourth in the final of the women's 800 metres A event. Kilpatrick went on to come fourth in the women's 4 × 50-metre individual medley A swimming event and won the gold medal in the women's 4 × 10-metre individual medley A. Kilpatrick also finished seventh in the Women's 100 m Freestyle A.^[10] She was part of the Canada team that won the silver in both the women's 4 × 100-metre freestyle relay A-B and the women's 4 × 100-metre medley relay A-B events alongside Lisa Bentz, Yvette Michel and Andrea Rossi.^[11]

At the 1982 Ontario Games for the Disabled in Sarnia, Kilpatrick won five gold medals in swimming and set two new personal records in the 100-metre freestyle and 200-metre freestyle disciplines.^[12] She qualified as one of ten students at her school who would compete in the 1984 Summer Paralympics in Long Island, New York.^[13] Kilpatrick finished seventh in the women 100-metre backstroke B1 competition, sixth in each of the women's 200-metre individual medley B1 and the women's 100-metre freestyle B1 events and fourth in the women's 100-metre breaststroke B1 competition.^[10]

Kilpatrick became a therapist and worked to assist in the direction of a Canadian National Institute for the Blind summer activities program for legally blind preadolescent children in Eastern Ontario in 1988.^[14] She subsequently became a music therapist and worked for the Victorian Order of Nurses program for those with various disabilities.^[3] Kilpatrick is also a disability advocate as well as a storyteller.^[15] She is a 2013 inductee of the Ontario Blind Sports Association Hall of Fame.^[16]