Ryan Armitage

Manager and Trainer,
Soloway Jewish Community Centre
Fitness and Health Promotion – Class of 2007

When Ryan Armitage began studying at Algonquin College toward a fitness career, he imagined that one day he’d train elite athletes for international sport.

Instead, Armitage has instead become nationally known for his expertise and leadership in a much different but critically important area of fitness and health serving clients with special needs.

Armitage began his working life in construction but wanted a side career in personal training. He took night courses and enjoyed them so much he thought he’d make a career of being a trainer. He was among the 25 individuals who were accepted in the first year of Algonquin’s Fitness and Health Promotion program in Fall 2004.

“It was an amazing program,” Armitage says, “and there were so many good people who helped me along the way – like Gord Wilcox, the program head, and Pierre Chartier, who taught physiology, biomechanics and anatomy. When I arrived, I was kind of lost and didn’t really know what I wanted to do. But while I was in the program, I had all these ‘eureka moments’ and discovered something I really loved. I owe everything to them.”

While working toward his diploma, Armitage took a job at Ottawa’s Soloway Jewish Community Centre. He’d found the place where he wanted to be, and continues his work there to this day.

One day, five years after his start at the SJCC, he felt someone tap him on his arm. It was the beginning of his vocation in assisting special needs clients.

Armitage, then in his mid-20s, looked down and saw a frail man in a wheelchair. Addressing Armitage, he said, “I want to develop some grip strength. Do you think you can help?”

Tim Fauquier, once a chartered accountant working for the Canadian International Development Agency and the World Bank, was felled in 2008 by Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an auto-immune disorder that robbed him of his health and at first any kind of movement other than blinking his eyes.

When they met, Fauquier, who was in his mid-60s, had recovered some movement in his arms but could do little else. He was determined to do more. Armitage agreed to help.

They began strengthening Fauquier’s hands and then his arms and legs. Doctors told him he’d never walk again but after two years of work with Armitage, he took his first hesitant steps.

“He worked hard to get back his strength, and I’m so happy to see what he has accomplished. Our work changed me, too. As I was watching him progress, I thought, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to work with the people who need me most.’”

Armitage soon started receiving invitations to talk about working with special needs clients. It was while speaking at a conference on multiple sclerosis that John Woodhouse approached him.

A once-strong man, Woodhouse had been confined to a wheelchair by the onset of dystonia, a disease that impairs movement and speech. After losing his job and a normal life, he became an alcoholic. Severe leg infections necessitated double amputation below the hips. Yet Woodhouse did not give up. After overcoming his alcohol dependency, he approached Armitage to help him regain his physical strength.

They began to work together, and eventually Woodhouse regained enough muscle strength to restore his health and bolster his independence. He would go on to volunteer on behalf of other people with disabilities.

Armitage’s work with Woodhouse attracted media attention, including a page one story in the Ottawa Citizen. Armitage leveraged the publicity to help his client acquire a new wheelchair and anonymous assistance from the community. “That’s the thing I’m proudest of,” he says. “That made a big difference in his life.”

Armitage is still making a difference. As Fitness Centre Manager at the SJCC, he oversees personal training, conducts classes, and continues to work with those who need him most. He’s also passing on his skills, helping a young man with Down Syndrome become a personal trainer to work with other Down Syndrome individuals.

He continues to give back to the College that gave him purpose and from which his wife, father and other family members have also graduated. Armitage has hired more than 30 students from the Fitness and Health Promotion program and each semester he takes placement students.

“I loved my time at Algonquin and I continue to be impressed by the quality of the students coming out of the program. They emerge with the knowledge and practical skills they need to succeed.”