Triple Vision

"In this third episode on advocacy, the Triple Vision team connects the dots between the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 and the passage of the Accessible Canada Act in 2019. And who better to tell this story than two of Canada’s strongest advocates, who have been on the ground for many years making change happen? In this, our 16th podcast episode, the team interviews Order of Canada and Order of Ontario recipient David Lapofsky about his contributions to advocacy in Ontario and across Canada. We also speak to Yvonne Peters, who has been an advocate since kindergarten! Both these individuals were instrumental in ensuring the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the Charter. In this episode you will hear an excerpt from David Lapofsky’s presentation to the House of Commons committee reviewing the draft Constitution in 1980, available on his own Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Alliance (AODA) website. Meanwhile, Yvonne Peters talks candidly about the pros an cons of the 2019 Accessible Canada Act and her concerns that Canada is implementing a “two-tiered” rights system where Canadians without disabilities may go to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, while those with disabilities will need to seek re-dress elsewhere first. “That’s the way it happens for us, always. The barriers that we face aren’t because someone sat down and calculated them. The cost of including us for the most part is negligible. Where there is a cost it’s a cost worth paying. But the cost of not including and providing inclusion and accessibility for people with disabilities, that is much, much higher.”"

"In this second podcast series on the history of advocacy in Canada, the Triple Vision team covers the years between 1974 and 1982. We were fortunate to record this episode with John Rae just before his sudden death earlier this month. In this episode, John describes almost 50 years of tireless advocacy, beginning with the formation of the “Blind Organization of Ontario with Selfhelp Tactics,” or BOOST, in 1974. John also touches on a piece of Canadiana, describing the reaction of the blind community to the arrest and sentencing of Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones in 1979. Richards was ordered to play a benefit concert for the CNIB and the reaction of the blind community was, well, mixed! Finally, John brings this episode to the point where disability was enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. “We were an organization of blind people who came together to speak for ourselves. An important part about that is that we employed what is called a mass-based approach. We didn’t just have the Chair going out and doing all of the speaking. We tried to involve everybody in developing policies and our initiatives. For many of us, being involved gave us a chance to learn skills, skills of organizing, skills of writing, skills of public speaking. We learned by doing. For many of us, that was the first opportunity we had ever had in our lives to participate in a meaningful way in decisions that effected us. And that was exciting!”"

"In the early 1900s a young man arrived in Canada, ready to start a job as an organist for a Montreal church. But when the church discovered he was blind, they rescinded the job offer and, really, the rest was history! This week, the Triple Vision team starts a new series on advocacy in Canada. This first episode begins with the story of Philip E. Layton, the founder of the Montreal Association for the Blind (MAB). Our story is told through posthumous recordings with former NDP leader Jack Layton, and former MAB Board member Nancy Layton. It is a compelling history of one prominent Canadian families' indelible mark on the lives of blind Canadians. “Had penicillin been invented, my great grandpa, who knows, maybe never would have come to Canada because he would have kept his sight. But with no penicillin, the infection in his eye nerve moved from the one eye to the other and he was totally blinded. So here you have a blind teenager who was taught to play the piano, was quite proficient at it, already composing things. .... They didn’t mention in his resume that he was blind, they didn’t think it was relevant, but when he showed up they said, ‘I’m sorry, the job is taken,’ and I guess he got his first experience in discrimination against the disabled.” "

"The story on accessible books and libraries is still being written. In this third chapter in this series, the Triple Vision team speaks with George Kerscher, Chief Innovation Officer of the DAISY Consortium and senior officer of global literacy with the Benetech corporation of Bookshare, and Kieran LeBlanc, Executive Director of the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. Involved in accessible book publishing since 1988, George Kerscher talks about the kinds of standards which exist to assist publishers in producing accessible books without having to go through a third party. “You want to get to the place where you’re getting materials from the commercial outlets and not necessarily have to go through a service like NNELS or CNIB or CELA. All of these are great services, but my vision of the world is where they’d be born accessible right out of the box and we wouldn’t have to go through a service,” her says. But Kieran Leblanc is clear that the Canadian publishing industry still needs a fair bit of support to produce their works ""born accessible."" ""I would say publishers are doing accessible publishing because it is the right thing to do. They would not be seeing any kind of any monetization or profit from that at this point. But there is a value that they want their books to be available to all readers in formats that readers need to access,” he says. At the end of these three episodes, the Triple Vision team still has questions about this evolving industry, so stay tuned for more podcasts in this area in the future!"

In this third episode of a series on the history of the practice of eugenics in Canada, Peter Field speaks with Associate Professor Geoffrey Reaume of York University. Peter and Geoffrey discuss documents obtained from Library and Archives Canada, which show that the CNIB played an active role in the sterilization of Canadians who are blind in the late 1930s. The discussion begins with a letter from A. R. Caufman of the Kaufman Rubber Factory in Kitchener, Ontario. Kaufman writes to the CNIB’s Managing Director, Edwin Baker, making the case that more blind Canadians should be sterilized under the direction of his “Parent Information Bureau.” While Baker disagrees with some of Kaufman’s ideas, records demonstrate that, a year later, the CNIB paid for the costs of the sterilization of four blind men. Peter and Geoffrey discuss ideas about how we can react to this kind of history. What do we do about individuals who were so instrumental in improving the lives of blind Canadians, but also responsible for actively supporting eugenics practices? “I would certainly not agree with erasing him, or cancelling Edwin Baker, or anyone else, from history. I think we have to account for different people’s positions and critique them, but not erase them. History is history and we have to deal with them, and that includes people we have often thought of as heroically, but as time went on we’ve re-assessed.… So, I would say is what we do is re-assess and critique their positions, where they were from, also recognizing they were coming from a position of privilege. In the case of Edwin Baker, of course, he was very well connected and he certainly did make positive contributions to the welfare of people who are blind. There’s no question about that in terms of his work with the CNIB, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be criticized just as anybody else in positions of power or leadership.”

"In this second episode of a three-part series on eugenics, the Triple Vision team talks to Brian Moore, Dr. Mahadeo Sukhai and Marc Workman. Brian shares his experience with discrimination during a pre-natal class involving the birth of his son. Dr. Mahadeo Sukhai explains the origins of eugenics, as well as the difference between the science of genetics and the practice of eugenics. And Marc Workman, current Chief Executive Officer of the World Blind Union, expands on the past practice of eugenics in Canada, particularly in Alberta. He proposes the alternative that if the environment a child with disabilities is born into was more inclusive, it may be easier for parents to make difficult decisions during a pregnancy about whether or not to bring their child, determined to have a disability, to term. “One thing that I think we can do, that I think we could do a lot better at, is helping present the whole picture when someone is faced with making what is, let’s face it, a tremendously difficult choice. What scholars like Adrienne Asch would say is that, at the very minimum, we need to make sure that when parents are being presented with the information on the risks around the disability, that they’re also being given accurate information on what its like to actually have that disability. The thing is the genetic counselors who are providing this information may not have a ton of experience with disability. They’re probably not in the community. They may not have close friends or close family members, or they themselves probably don’t have disabilities. So, you have to wonder, how accurate is the picture that is being painted for parents when the individuals who are giving that information may themselves have their own biases, their own misunderstandings about what it is truly like to live with disability.” "

In this first episode in a new podcast series, the Triple Vision team tackles the difficult issue of eugenics. Eugenics as it was practiced in Second World War Germany is very well known, but in today’s podcast Triple Vision starts to peel back the layers of how eugenics was practiced in Canada from its very origins until today. You will hear stories from three blind and visually impaired women about their own experiences, where they were subjected to the practice of eugenics by the medical profession. Then, we talk to Dr. Bonnie Lashewicz, of the University of Calgary, about the links between colonialism and eugenics. She will present you with some surprising examples of eugenics thinking of today. “We went for genetic counselling, not really questioning what was really going on there. This counsellor told us, without ever taking any samples from us at all, that if we were to have a child, it would probably come out like 'The Elephant Man,' all distorted and disabled. As a result, we talked about it and decided not to have children. But when I look back on that now I think, 'Wow, they didn’t even take a sample or anything from us.' And based on no scientific evidence at all they told us not to have children. I think, 'How did I accept that so readily?' And It was just because it came from the medical profession. I didn’t recognize it as eugenics then, but that’s what it was.”

In this, our Valentine’s Day episode, the Triple Vision team takes a look at “puppy love” by tracing the history of guide dogs and issues related to public access and certification for our favourite furry workers. Hanna and David talk to Steven Doucette, the Client Services Administrator of Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind, about guide dog history, and the history of this Canadian training facility. Irene Lambert recounts her own story of arriving back in Montreal in 1969, to a less than warm reception, with her husband, two sons, and their two owner-trained retriever guide dogs. Finally, Alan Conway of Guide Dog Users of Canada discusses the thorny issue of recent Canadian efforts to have guide dogs meet new standards when they are already certified under the International Guide Dog Federation. “We were all gung-ho to join this new culture, however, we were often refused access to restaurants and to theatres, especially the Place des Arts. We looked into the Proof of Laws that allowed people access. We had carried these all around in the States with us and had never been denied except for the occasional taxi driver, but hear we were in Montreal facing all of these rejections.”

In the last podcast episode, The Opening Chapter, the Triple Vision team traced the history of library services for blind Canadians from the 19th century to 2014. In this Next Chapter the team brings us up to date with interviews with representatives of the Centre for Equitable Library Access and the National Network for Equitable Library Services. David and Hanna explore how these public library systems are enhancing library access to Canadians with print disabilities. They also start asking key questions about why publishers themselves are not taking more of a leadership role in this area. “In Canada, our public libraries are public service institutions. At their heart, they are meant to be inclusive and to provide equitable access to reading for all their users, including those with disabilities. I think that, historically, public libraries felt that that the services they were providing weren’t adequate and that they needed to be revisioned. This new approach is necessary to ensure a more equitable access to reading to those with print disabilities.”

In Canada, public libraries have been around in one form or another for about 200 years. On January 4, we celebrate the birthday of Louis Braille. Born in 1809, Louis Braille invented his famous system of reading 400 years after the invention of the printing press. In this first episode on the evolution of library services, the Triple Vision team talks to CNIB archivist Jane Beaumont about the founding of the Free Library for the Blind. This service eventually became the Canadian National Institute for the Blind’s library until it evolved into the Centre for Equitable Library Access. Joining Jane on this podcast is library user Albert Ruel, who talks about the variety of methods he uses to access his books. “I had done some research on audiobooks. It was fascinating to me to see that really this has just come full circle. We’ve come back to the way humankind was before the Gutenberg press. We are back to storytelling, the oral traditions. That’s part of our DNA that hasn’t evolved out of us yet.”

In this sixth episode of Triple Vision, we do something different. We invite six members of the community to talk about how they see the current blindness narrative in Canada. What is wrong with the current narrative, and what should it be? Who is controlling the current Canadian blindness story? “The sad part is, we all look at the news as a news and information source, and it isn’t. It’s a drama. It’s a dramatic work and belongs in the arts. A lot of people go there for their information. Unfortunately if it bleeds, it leads. And when it comes to blindness, we don’t bleed so much, but my goodness the narrative is pity filled.” Join us for this fascinating journey, exploring the dangers of the single narrative of the blindness story in Canada.

While people who are blind have used some sort of cane to navigate the world over the centuries, the white cane became a standard mobility device in the 1900s. But, in recent history, attitudes towards the white cane have shifted. In this episode, David and Hanna take a world tour from Winnipeg to Zanzibar and the United States to explore the issues associated with white vs. coloured canes. Is it time for the white cane to have a make over? “I have never had an issue using a cane other than white. The general public seems to understand that they are there for help. They offer their elbow, or they guide me to their vehicle, and they have never said, 'Why is your cane that colour?'”

Join us on this week’s Triple Vision podcast, where Doreen Demas talks with us about the impacts of colonialism on her life as a First Nations woman from Manitoba living with vision loss. Doreen traces her life, from attending the residential school for the blind in Brantford, Ontario, to a regular school, to an Indigenous residential school in Brandon. She speaks openly about the duality of service provision she experienced from the CNIB as a First Nations person. Listen as she talks about her work at the United Nations and her optimistic hope for the future. “My family always allowed me and my siblings free to go about our community. We were able to go and visit friends, we were able to play in the back of our house. We had trees and could climb them. We could pick berries. We could do whatever made us happy and that is what we did. But when I got to Brantford, I found out I could never do those things. Everything I did was pretty much dictated either by the house parents or the teachers and the structures we had there.”

In this episode, David and Hanna speak with Jim Sanders, former Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). Jim traces the history of the institute from its founding to its need to change in the current digital era. "Some of the strongest advocates in Canada have come out of the concern of CNIB, in the 70s and 80s and 90s, that they considered the organization as paternalistic and patronizing. These advocates, in fact, have had very positive influences on the CNIB opening up from what it was."

This week, Hanna Leavitt and David Best speak with Dr. Serge Durflinger, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa. Serge penned a book called, "Veterans With A Vision: Canada's War Blinded in Peace and War," about how First World War wounded were the first advocates in canada to establish reshaped the way Canadians and successive governments perceived war disability and, in particular, blindness.

In the first episode of Triple Vision, the team behind the Pandora Project introduces themselves and the goals of the Pandora Project. David Best, Hanna Leavitt, Charlie Ayotte, Peter Field and John Rae all speak to the motivations of the project and team members, alike.

From the AEBC's Pandora Project and AMI-audio comes a new podcast that aims to tell the history and stories of blind Canadians. Join co-hosts David Best and Hanna Leavitt as they speak to historians, community members and those who were there for the moments that shaped the lives of blind Canadians for generations. Podcasts are released bi-weekly starting October 12th. Subscribe on your podcast platform of choice today.