Local author Steve Van Vlaenderen shows off photography skills with beautiful new book
St. Andrews author Steve Van Vlaenderen has had a very busy life. He’s raced cars, participated in competitive kayaking, and tried his hand at bodybuilding on top of running two different businesses in Selkirk. In 2011, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and though the disease has affected his life, he’s continued to keep busy now with the job of advocating for the need for research to be done into finding a cure.
“The neurologist did some basic tests and just advised me that I had Parkinson’s disease. I have to admit that I had no knowledge of what Parkinson’s was. I was taken aback. But when I started researching Parkinson’s, I realized that it was more than me having Parkinson’s and, at the risk of sounding altruistic, I just had to do something. I didn’t want Parkinson to define me,” said Van Vlaenderen
Residents in the region will probably know Van Vlaenderen as the former owner of Stronghold Self Storage in Selkirk with his partner Darlene Hildebrand.
Prior to his diagnosis, he and Hildebrand planned to sail on their, at the time, newly acquired sailboat, Cloud.
“It had been his dream to sail and I had never sailed in my life. He taught me how to sail. We had spent 2010 learning to sail on our new boat. We sailed out of Gimli on Lake Winnipeg and in April 2011, he got this diagnosis,” said Hildebrand.
Parkinson’s disease understanding has come a long way since Van Vlaenderen’s diagnosis. Many people associate Parkinson’s with the tremors that are a well-known symptom of the disease but it’s much more than that. Van Vlaenderen and Hildebrand explained that Parkinson’s affects a person’s whole body. There are mental health changes that take place, the person’s movement is slower than it was before, and they can also lack expression on their faces. Every person with the disease experiences it differently.
Van Vlaenderen was advised to stop sailing when he was diagnosed but he says that because he was still feeling well, he wanted to continue and sailed for seven years on Lake Winnipeg.
“On Lake Winnipeg, the dream of many sailors here in Manitoba is to sail the Great Lakes. So after being involved in things like the Parkinson’s Super Walk, Steve said, ‘We’re going to sail the Great Lakes and make it an awareness and fundraiser for Parkinson’s disease.’ So that’s what we did,” said Hildebrand.
They called their journey Sail On with Parkinsons and with the help of Parkinson Canada gave presentations throughout the Great Lakes region. Their journey started in the spring of 2018 when they went from Duluth to Sault St. Marie and then to Sarnia Ont. They left Cloud for the winter and then started up again in 2019 in Sarnia. They travelled to some ports in Pennsylvania before heading to Toronto and then up the St. Lawrence. They returned to Sarnia and expected to start their journey again in 2020.
This allowed Van Vlaenderen to speak to many people about not letting Parkinson’s disease define you.
“We raised almost $15,000 For Parkinson Canada through Sail On,” said Hildebrand.
They were also awarded the Sailors of the Year Award from Sail Manitoba in 2019 for their efforts.
The pandemic caused Van Vlaenderen to have to shift his attention to an activity closer to home in 2020. Luckily, he was able to jump into an old hobby in which he’s found renewed passion.
“I’ve been a hobbyist photographer for 50 years. I love taking photos. I experiment with different lighting. I always have a camera in hand when we’re travelling, snapping pictures,” said Van Vlaenderen.
At first, he left the house and Hildebrand said that she assumed he’d take photos of birds or landscapes but then Van Vlaenderen found an old car.
“I came across this car sitting in the treeline and I looked through the lens, looked beyond the patina and the car was layered in stories and it got an emotion started. I started thinking about who drove this car, how it got here, and what was it like back then. The more questions I asked myself more interested I got, so, I started looking for cars,” said Van Vlaenderen.
He finds cars to be incredibly fascinating. Van Vlaenderen speaks about how industries like gas stations, modern roads, car dealerships, drive-in movies and even fast food as we know it is all thanks to how we use cars. He feels that vehicles represent the triumph of the human spirit.
From then on, he decided to find vintage vehicles that had been left in place and take photos of them. At first, he was driving around looking for them but eventually, he found a car enthusiast who sent him to others who had more cars that he could photograph.
“As he got into this and decided he wanted to do more than just take photos for himself. That’s when he decided I want to publish a book,” said Hildebrand.
That started a 16,000km road trip from our area to Banff, Alta. which had him take the 115 photos of vintage vehicles that are in his new book Vanishing Wheels.
Once the pair made it back home, the book was written and it’s now available for purchase with all proceeds going to Parkinson Canada.
He dedicated the book to people living with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers as well as his partner Hildebrand.
“I really want to create awareness because not very many people know what Parkinson’s is. They think it’s an old age disease. A few tremors and what’s the big deal? It’s much more than that and there has to be funding for research to find a cure,”
– said Van Vlaenderen.
He is currently working on a second photographic homage to vehicles sitting in what might be their final resting places.
His book Vanishing Wheels is available at the McNally Robinson bookstores in Winnipeg as well as through Van Vlaenderen’s website https://www.vanishingwheels.com/. They offer delivery to Winnipeg and Selkirk residents and more information can be found on their website.
