David Walker and his wife

The three a.m. club

David and his music

The alarm on David Walker’s Garmin watch doesn’t actually need to go off. Usually, by 2:30 a.m., he’s already awake, a card-carrying member of what those in the Parkinson’s community wryly call the “three a.m. club,” when sleep arrives in fits and starts. He used to love going to bed. Now, the controlled-release medication he took the evening before keeps his rigid muscles from cramping and holds off nightmares so vivid he refuses to repeat them to his wife, Janet.

Rising in the dark, he treats the walk from bed to den as a deliberate act of reclaiming himself. He pads into his study, a compact six-by-ten artist’s refuge he built himself and lights a stick of incense. For ten minutes, he practices disciplined mindfulness, a practice validated by MRIs and neurological scans that have mapped new, calming neural pathways in his brain.

Next, he dons headphones. “There are two kinds of music,” he says. “Good music and bad music.” He dials up “the best tunes in the world,” a playlist that ignores genre, moving seamlessly from classical movements to jazz riffs, or perhaps to the electric roar of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady.”

Before him sits a sketchbook. Five years ago, David didn’t know how to draw; his early attempts felt like a kindergartner’s doodles. But after finishing a triathlon for his 70th birthday, he found himself staring at the space left by a sprawling life and asking: What do I do now?

Some mornings, before his medication has fully taken hold, he braces one wrist with the other, letting the tremor shape the delicate veins of a leaf—small studies, warm-ups before the real work begins. His larger pieces take far longer: up to 50 hours each, rendered in fine pen and mixed media. For weeks, he lived alongside the faces of an Indigenous grandmother and her grandson as they slowly emerged on the page, before donating the finished piece to a charity auction.

David's drawing

“I sit there and I’m transported,” David says. “I don’t have a back forty. But that studio is my woods. It’s the sweetest spot.”

The T100 and the art of retiring

By four, his studio ritual ends. After a quick shower, he lines up outside Gold’s Gym with a dozen early-morning professionals, waiting for the doors to click open at five. He’s almost always the oldest person in the room, working through an hour-and-twenty-minute routine every weekday.

It’s a grueling pace, particularly as he prepares for the upcoming T100 triathlon in Vancouver this August. The training is as physically demanding as his past runs at the Boston Marathon or cycling the GranFondo to Whistler. But the math of his body has changed. Running two kilometres now requires the same energy and sheer willpower that twelve kilometres once did.

The shift is a stark reminder of a turning point at the World Masters Championships in Finland, where David represented Canada in the 5,000 metres. On the tenth lap, he lost his footing. He fell, got back up, and fell again. By the third fall, track officials stepped in and touched his shoulder—an automatic disqualification.

For a man who spent 47 years commanding global stages in humanitarian and charitable work—travelling to more than 100 countries and speaking to crowds of 10,000—the progression of the condition has forced him to reimagine his boundaries. He views the upcoming T100 not as a defeat, but as a declaration.

“I’m retiring from triathlons,” he says. “I’m choosing this based on the data before me. I’m going to do it one more time to raise awareness, and then I’m stepping away on my own terms.”

Living on the edge

David and Janet

During the day, David moves with a sharp, resilient posture. But as the exhaustion of the day sets in, his facial muscles tighten into a mask, his right foot stuttering into short, halting steps. One eye droops.

This is when he reaches for his canes. But these aren’t simply mobility aids; they’re fashion statements, curated to match his mood and his outfits. The canes are sourced from an Indigenous artisan who harvests wild willow logs up north in the Northwest Territories during the summer, letting the natural fungus cure into unique patterns. For a flight out of the airport, he might lean on a deeply knotted rustic wood that feels anchored to the floor. For a summer night out with Janet—who matches his energy in a leopard-print wrap—he swaps it for a pale, sun-bleached willow stick that perfectly complements his linen whites.

He ran over the first one with his car, but the remaining sticks are distinct tokens of pride. He’s so unbothered by what the cane represents that he openly posts it on his Instagram account (@poemsandphotosbydw) with a characteristic, dark-humoured Shakespearean wink: “To fall or not to fall… that is the question… far better not to fall is the answer!”

“Initially, it was hard on my pride because society uses the word disability,” he says. “But I wanted something that looked classy so I could walk alongside my classy wife. Now, we adjust. Our friends know we have early dinners. On the golf course, the game is different. By the 16th hole, a friend will quietly step up and tee up my ball for me without making a fuss. You learn to punt. You learn to play the Parkinson’s card when you need to.”

David and his dog

Every three hours, an alarm chimes on his wrist. No matter where she is in the house, Lulu, a rescue dog from Mexico turned service companion, comes trotting in. She jumps in half-circles on her front paws, acting as a living, breathing compliance officer. David has a strict rule: he can’t turn off the alarm until the medication is in his mouth, and Lulu won’t settle until she watches him swallow it.

“We rescued her, and now she’s rescuing me,”
David says.

The condition continues to claim its territory, small inches at a time, but David claims what’s left. He adjusts the math of his days and turns up the volume.

“I have to salute Parkinson’s. It rules, but it only rules so far,” David says. “I’m on the other side, letting this thing come at me and slowly take things away. It has more limits, but I’m not shrinking; I’m limited. I mess up, but I’m still living.”

He gestures to the space around him. “I used to have a huge table. Now my table is really small. It’s just this. But I still like living at the edge of it.”