Four-year-old superhero inspires smiles at B.C. long-term care home

DUNCAN, B.C. -

While he’s not faster than a speeding bullet, nor more powerful than a locomotive, this four-year-old is proving to be a superhero.

“He’s a dynamo,” says Don Munro, with a smile.

If Dynamo is his super-name, the boy’s not-so-secret identity is Innis Wright.

“Are we done yet?” Innis wonders after being asked a bunch of questions about what he’s doing at this long-term care home in Duncan, B.C.,

When I answer that we can be done if he wants, Innis starts sliding under the arm of the chair.

Rather than talking about his abilities, he’d prefer to show how he can escape the confines of a sit-down interview with ease.

But before Innis demonstrates his super-power, his granny Joan Wright reveals Dynamo’s origin story.

“So we came here,” Joan begins saying, before bursting into laughter after Innis grabs the handle on the camera’s tripod, tilting its lens away from her face.

While Innis attempts to straighten the camera, Joan says she brought her grandson to this care home for the first time in the spring, to attend a friend’s 80th birthday party. That’s when the boy met Don Munro, who was pushing his wife Nancy in a wheelchair.

“And he just muscled me aside and said, ‘I want to do that,’” Don recalls. “I thought it was great!”

So Don let the four-year-old push his wife’s chair, never imagining where Innis would ultimately lead them.

“He bonded with her instantly,” Don says, before showing photos of the boy sitting on his wife’s lap. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

They certainly never expected for Innis to ask to visit “Nancy’s house” again and again. And now, after almost eight months of visiting weekly, he’s proving his exuberance for the couple can’t be contained.

“He just bursts in here and leaps into her arms,” Don smiles. “And it lights up her day when he comes!”

And Nancy smiles the sort of smile that seemed ever present in the 56 years since they got married, vowing in sickness and in health. But recently, a series of setbacks, made that smile increasingly elusive.

So, you can imagine how grateful Don feels seeing the Dynamo bestow his super-powers with his beloved Nancy, and make her beam every time he jumps up on her wheelchair and wraps his arms around her.

“He generates that energy, that love,” Don smiles. “We just love him to bits.”

And that’s how young Innis revealed he was the sort of superhero who could expand hearts with a single bound.