Montreal teacher and chef uses cooking to help manage his cerebral palsy

Daniel Vanson is a Montreal high school teacher by day, but when he’s not teaching, he’s a passionate chef who uses cooking as a way to help manage his cerebral palsy.

To help with his cerebral palsy, Vanson did a lot of physiotherapy to maintain his fluidity, however, these techniques weren’t helping in the way he expected; until he found cooking.

“I noticed I would get tighter, and then I started to cook and sort of doing those motions and it sort of almost doing like an O.T. therapy that it was something that I enjoyed,” he said. “So it really did sort of bring me into something that I really liked while still being able to do motions that I needed to work on.”

His passion for cooking started in his teens. Vanson loved being in the kitchen growing up and feasting on the delicious meals his family prepared.

“A lot of people around me, my Oma, love to cook, so I love being with her. And my mom also used to do big dinners for the family, and she would always do the turkeys, the mashed potatoes, all that,” he said. “It was sort of seeing how much food brought people together, it sort of made me happy.”

While Vanson loves to cook, his cerebral palsy does create challenges.

“When I’ve worked in kitchens, fast food or even cooking, teaching cooking rather, my legs get very tight being standing the whole time and it becomes very hard on my ankles and my knees,” he said.

When Vanson was a kid, he would wear casts and leg braces to school which kept his feet in place because his Achilles would get very tight.

“I was bullied a lot in school I would say, kids would kick me in the back of my knees to make me fall over because I couldn’t balance because of my CP,” he said.

Vanson says he became a teacher to help others in the same position as him and to become a role model for others who are going through the same struggles.

“I always said, I wish that there was someone like me that would teach and that’s sort of what inspired me because I loved working with people to become a teacher so I can be that person for other kids,” he said. “So that’s what I hope.”