‘A kind of safe space’: Invictus athletes set to inspire in Vancouver

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, attend a welcome celebration during the 2025 Invictus Games, in Whistler, B.C., Monday, Feb. 10, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

On a rare subzero winter day in Vancouver, the ground covered in snow, there was an equally unusual sight in Stanley Park: a group of New Zealanders engaged in a snowball fight.

“Fun, cold, and magical,” is how Kelly Sunnex described the experience. For many on the team, playing in the snow was a first, which is fitting given they are here to compete in the Invictus Games, which is all about putting yourself out there.

“I just want to experience everything I can, meet everyone I can,” Sunnex said.

New Zealand joins more than 20 other countries competing in Vancouver and Whistler, which started last Saturday. The teams are made up injured, wounded, or sick veterans and armed forces members, who for the first time at the 2025 games, will compete in both summer and winter adaptive sports.

Invictus is about much more than hitting the podium. The event, founded by Prince Harry in 2014, provides the men and women who have suffered while serving their countries an opportunity for shared rehabilitation and recovery.

Among them, one of the New Zealanders frolicking near Vancouver’s seawall last week, was Ed Dore-Wright. His long journey to Invictus began in 2001, when a training exercise went sideways.

“I took three rounds from a machine gun in the back of my right leg. The prognosis was amputation. But I was stubborn enough not to allow that process to happen,” Dore-Wright told CTV News.

He was told he would never be able to walk without help, wouldn’t be able to drive, wouldn’t be able to be a soldier. But Dore-Wright did soldier on, overcoming the odds both physically, and mentally.

“The mental journey was tough. To be brutally honest it was tough,” Dore-Wright said. “I saw four psychologists before I finally connected with the one that resonated with me.”

Many of the Invictus athletes have fought to improve their mental health, including Canadian co-captain Cheryl Belanger. The Canadian Forces medical technician was diagnosed with PTSD after what she experienced in Afghanistan and Haiti.

“(It’s the) tragedy you’re seeing across the world,” Belanger said. She now focuses on staying in the moment. “I struggle with anxiety and depression. A lot of times it’s worrying about the future and dwelling on the past, basically reliving the moments that affected me.”

Belanger calls Invictus a “giant safe space.” Her teammate, and Canada’s other co-captain Kiernan Underwood, considers the games transformational.

“It’s almost like the most amped up group therapy that you have,” Underwood said.

Underwood served as a soldier in Afghanistan and says it was only when that life ended, he realized the damage that had been done.

“My therapy was doing the infantry thing, being cold, hungry, tired and alone, being a thing that goes bump in the night. That was therapy for me,” she said.

Belanger, now an army material technician based in Winnipeg, has overcome mental health challenges, concussions, and hip surgery to become an ultramarathoner. He’s thrilled to represent Canada on the world stage and says he isn’t sure, quite yet, what the coming week in Vancouver will bring. “I don’t know exactly what the Invictus games means to me yet. Every time I start to figure it out, it changes.”

More than 40,000 fans were in attendance at BC Place Saturday, with performances from Katy Perry, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Noah Kahan, and BC-born Nelly Furtado.