Tag Archives: Disability

The Sun Doesn’t Cut It

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge” – Stephen Hawking I was quite shaken by the death of Stephen Hawking which has surprised me.  I knew of the man (you would have to be living under a rock not to know who he was) but I didn’t know […]
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Systemic Bullying

“One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered” – Michael J Fox February 28 is “Pink Shirt Day“, that one day a year when the emphasis is put on the issue of bullying.  One of my issues with this is the strong focus […]
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Family Day and Telethon’s

“I didn’t ask anyone to make me a poster boy, because poster boys always end up on a dart board” – Anurag Kashyap  Today is Family Day in BC.  Yesterday was the 2017 annual Variety Show of Hearts Telethon.  What do they have in common?  They are both family focused however they are designed to […]
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Stereotyping Through Stigma

“The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity – that it’s this or maybe that – you have just one large statement; it is this.” – Chinua Achebe I have spend the better part of my adult life fighting stereotypes and continue to […]
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Deconstructing Healthcare

“America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring or a system”  – Walter Cronkite This opening quote can also be said of Canada now.  I grew up in a Canada when health-care had doctors who came to your home.  I grew up in a Canada where home birth’s were not uncommon quite often performed by […]
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A Hostage of Circumstance

“The biggest restriction to independence for the disabled is the perception of retaliation for speaking out” – Terry Wiens (2018) I am so pissed off right now I need to speak out.  I have been a hostage of circumstance for the past four years and I’m tired of it.  I own part of the responsibility […]
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The Christmas Conundrum

“God bless us everyone” – Tiny Tim from Charles Dickens “Christmas Carol Christmas is a very mixed time for me.  My analogy is like comparing a good White Spruce Christmas tree to an artificial tree.  By the time I was sixteen I had spend eight Christmas’s in the Children’s Hospital and in my mind that […]
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Blogging Isn’t Journalism

“Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions” – Noam Chomsky I don’t pretend to be a journalist but the world of social media has suddenly turned everyone with a keyboard into a “journalist”.  Just because I took a few journalism courses at school and had a column in […]
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A Disability of Convenience

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both” – Dwight D. Eisenhower I have been trying to remain non-political for a number of months now due, in part, to the sad state we find ourselves in politically.  More so south of the border but also creeping into Canada yet again.  When […]
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The Poster Child Philosophy

“A commitment made to a child should be a commitment for life” – Terry Wiens (on the subject of Poster Children) How many times does a picture of some cute animal or cute child show up on your Facebook wall?  That’s because cuteness sells.  This is also a well established premise in marketing and nothing […]
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