Dan O’Rourke's father has been visually impaired for as long as he can remember. Now Dan, one of the NHL’s most experienced referees, is channelling his family's inspiration into a cause. More on how he's raising money with a 42-day bike ride ⤵️
But there’s not one time that he recalls him saying, “No, I can’t do that because I can’t see.”’s most experienced referees, and his brother, Steve, an associate coach for the Oshawa Generals, in hockey. That meant playing catch in the backyard, with his sons hoping to hell that they didn’t nail Dad right between the eyes. And yes, that even meant driving a wee bit longer in life than he probably should have in their tiny, one-stoplight town in British Columbia.
Tom was eventually diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a rare eye disease that progressively gets worse as one ages and often results in total blindness sometimes in the early 20s. If you take a piece of paper and poke two pinholes in it and hold it up to your eyes, that’s Tom O’Rourke’s field of vision. He has no peripheral vision. Then you add the night blindness and cataracts, and it’s just been a constant deterioration in his eyesight over the years.
“Being blind shouldn’t have to hold you back,” O’Rourke says. “I just spoke at their convention in Houston, and seeing thousands of people that are similar to my dad and at different stages of eyesight, seeing all the canes and the guide dogs, it was a very humbling experience. You listen to their stories, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
O’Rourke, 50, a former minor-league hockey player who has officiated 1,383 regular-season games, 187 playoff games and last month his sixth Stanley Cup Final, has always enjoyed physical and mental challenges.
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