Cayman Brac is a small island in the middle of the Caribbean, with palm trees, golden sand, and topaz colored water. It's a place where people go for a little rest and relaxation. It's also a mecca for scuba divers. So it's not that unusual to see a boat load getting ready to go out for the day. But there is something a little unusual about this group.

On board is Monique Lefebvre, born with cerebral palsy and Alain Cote, born with a debilitating genetic disorder. Both are in the Caymans on holiday but they're also there in search of something. What Monique and Alain want isn't complex. They just want to be treated the same as everyone else.

"To me being as normal as possible," says Alain. "That for me is important. Not to be different. I try to be as normal as everybody else without modifying and being, and having exactly the same things as everybody else."

They think that taking part in an extreme sport gives them a chance to just blend in. But to understand why Monique and Alain have this desire you have to understand what their day-to-day lives are like.

Monique spends most of her days in a wheelchair. Her cerebral palsy means that her body movements and muscle coordination are limited. She has trouble with tasks like writing and cutting with scissors. But she has worked hard to overcome her developmental disabilities and learn new ways to accomplish difficult tasks.

Alain prides himself on being able to overcome most obstacles. "I learned how to deal with the day to day restrictions," he says. "And I have nothing modified, really, between my house, my car, my work, there's nothing much that is modified."

But always being reminded of what you can't do means always wanting to show what you can do. Alain and Monique wanted to show that they could learn how to scuba dive. It was a life long dream that both pursued for years. No one would teach them, until they met one man -- Hubert.

The teacher

Monique remembers, "He said, oh, the lesson will be at 24 Sussex. At which point I definitely thought the guy was pulling my leg."

That's because 24 Sussex Drive is the official residence of the Prime Minister. Monique called his office. "Several employees must have thought that I had taken leave of my senses as well, because they kept saying to me -- you do realize that 24 Sussex is the Prime Minister's personal resident right!"

But it was no joke and when she turned up. "Mr. Chrétien was getting out of the pool and he wished me a good first dive, and I apologized for kicking him out of his own pool," says Monique. "And he said it wasn't a big deal because he was done his swim and he hardly ever used it and he wishes me a good dive. And that was the first time I met the prime minister of Canada."

Why 24 Sussex? Well Hubert turned out to be Hubert Chrétien, the son of the former Prime Minister. Diving for decades, he's had many scuba buddies including another former prime minister, Pierre Trudeau.

He even took his dad down once, and jokes: "I've had quadriplegics that were looked more relaxed when they surfaced then he did."

From a pool attached to his house, Chrétien's been teaching and promoting disabled diving for more than 15 years.

"If I teach them well, very, very well, much better than most divers are trained," says Hubert. "Then they can go on a dive where they can't do everything that everybody else is doing. But what they do they do better."

"One of the nice things about Hubert," says Monique, "is that he doesn't he doesn't see the disability he sees the person's enthusiasm first."

Hubert made this extreme sport seem very easy for both Monique and Alain.

Alain says, "It never occurred to me that I was getting over my head. This was something that was fairly easy. I caught on quickly."

Underwater

And that's how Monique and Alain ended up in Cayman Brac. A chance to enjoy the water, a chance to blend in.

"At first I thought that I would be really singled out on dive boats because I would be the disabled person on the boat who would need assistance with their wetsuit," says Monique. "But I've noticed all divers are there to help each other out whether they're able-bodied or not."

Aside from their wetsuits Monique and Alain need a lot of help. They have to be carried to the side of the boat, they have to be dressed from head to foot in their equipment, they have to co-ordinate with two buddies instead of the usual one. One who attends to their needs and one who acts as a back up.

But when the moment arrives--all the work and any differences are forgotten. Monique and Alain drop into water and gently, almost dreamily, sink down to the reef.

"Under water there's definitely a feeling of freedom," says Monique "There's the feeling of weightlessness that I wouldn't get above water. It really enables me to be a lot freer with, with my movements. And I can go around and see all the coral heads and all the fish and can keep up with the rest of the group. It's something I'm very proud of being able to do and I don't think it's something that anyone ever expected me to be able to do."

Alain says, "The scuba makes everybody the same. You float or you sink and you try to be buoyant and have fun just as everybody else - looking for fish and corals."

Back on the surface, like any other diver, it's all about comparing notes:

"It was a really good dive...I had trouble with my ears at the beginning."

"How was your dive? Good, we saw a sea turtle..."

"It absolutely levels the playing field," says Monique. "I don't feel any different then any of the other divers under water. I get as excited as they do when I see a fish that I hadn't seen before on any of my other dive trips and it's just fun."

As the group heads back to shore everyone is sitting around comparing notes about fish and coral they've seen. For this moment there are no disabled divers on board--just divers.

Under the surface

There's a similarity between the ocean and disabled diving. What you see on the surface in no way reflects the activity that goes on underneath.

For every disabled diver, there's a massive support system that has to kick in to make it happen.

Like on this dive--Hubert Chrétien and his assistant, Constance Dassen, are taking Monique to visit a reef just off the shore. "Shore diving" is a lot more labor intensive than just dropping off the back of a dive boat. Monique has to be carried in, equipment has to be carried in, Monique has to be geared up, and so on and so on.

And the work doesn't end when you get a disabled diver into the water. The bottom line--without support many disabled people couldn't dive. A freak current, a heavy swell, a breakdown of the gear and they'd be in serious trouble.

"The thing is," says Constance, "I can control to a large extent what happens to them but if something happens to me and my gear fails, then how, how am I going to get them to the surface safely."

So it's not surprising that one problem faced by disabled divers is finding support people--finding buddies. But there is an organization that helps. It's called "Freedom at Depth." Their president is Daryl Rock.

"There's so many things that could potentially go wrong for anybody that being a dive buddy is a serious responsibility," says Daryl. "When you add to that the fact that I have limited mobility you may not be able to understand the communications underwater - that just increases the stress for both people."

Stress isn't the only hurdle. You need special training. "Freedom at Depth" offers courses. Their chief instructor Hubert Chrétien. He offered to show W-FIVE what's involved--starting with the basics.

"The challenge," says Daryl, "is finding somebody who's not either convinced that you as a disabled person can't dive or is afraid to break you."

Put a quadriplegic down the wrong way and they develop pressure sores--injure a paraplegic and they may not know it until it's too late.

Two hours and all we've learned is how to get Daryl in and out of the water.

The lesson continues in Cayman Brac. Taking a disabled diver under the water. Today we're working with Phil Utley--a quadriplegic from New York.

Hubert demonstrates how to hold Phil's tank and move him through the water. There's no question this person's life is literally in your hands. With a firm grip on Phil's tank we're off.

Only to be immediately corrected by Hubert--Phil's feet are dragging across the coral.

A slight adjustment and it's off again. The experience only lasts a few minutes--it seems longer.

From pool to ocean the whole buddy experience is intense. A lot to be learned, a lot to be responsible for.

"I get great joy out being able to help people around the office or around town," says Daryl. "So I would expect that somebody who's diving with me would get that sense of satisfaction as well."

Max Hillier agrees. He's the manager of Divi Tiara dive resort--where Alain and Monique stay in Cayman Brac.

Hillier caters to disabled divers. Though he hires and trains extra staff to do so, he says it's worth every penny. "Your life is forever changed when you go diving with them, with the quadriplegic, you know? When you wake up in the morning and you stub your toe, or your coffee is not quite the consistency you like it, those problems kind of go away when you're diving with somebody who is paralyzed from the neck down. It's pretty real."

"You know," says Constance, "a lot of people are always focused on if I do something I need to get something back. I think this is just one of those occasions where you go, no I'm happy to give something to someone else without asking for something in return"

Diving with disabled people is a two way street. They get a chance to feel normal. You get a chance to feel special.

"For some kind of reason," says Alain, "the non-handicapped divers see it as an inspiration seeing a handicapped diver with them."

"I may need you to swim for me," says Monique, "Whereas you can swim by yourself. But at the end of the day when we both surface, we both essentially just went diving, right? It was different but it was the same. And at the end of the day that's pretty much all I hope that they remember about the dive."