Brian McKeever qualified for the Paralympics and the Olympics, too bad his team started someone else.

Most people think that the ‘para’ in Paralympics means paraplegic, but it actually means parallel. Ironic, since for much of its history, its treatment has been anything but. In fact, the Paralympics has always been that thing that you’re vaguely aware is supposed to come after the regular Olympics, but is never seen, nor heard from unless you really are grinding it out to look.

Most audiences really get into disabled sports when they see them live, or they’re marketed with the right approach, (Remember, Murderball?) but when you combine a lack of coverage with an international community that has largely just begun to realize they should probably let their disabled citizens out of the attic, you basically get an event that looks like it was put together just to save the IOC from a potential human rights quagmire.

Yes, most able-bodied people see the paralympics as an athletic aside. The part that literally no one has energy for after the immense production of the Olympic Games, but I hope now that for the first time — things will be different.

The tickets to Paralympic events are still appallingly cheap, costing between $15 to $175 for the closing ceremonies in Whistler, as opposed to the $800 my family paid for the Olympic closing ceremonies.  A monetary value judgement that says nobody cares. With this information, what can possess me to think that this games will turn a corner?

Two things.

First, the coverage. This year’s Paralympics features 57 hours of Canadian coverage. (30 in french and 27 in English)  Sure, it seems utterly disparaging when compared against the 2,200 hours of Olympic coverage, but those 57 hours, of mostly replays, tape delays and highlight packages, are the most ever for a Paralympic games. Don’t forget the 150 hours of online coverage.  Plus, packaging Friday’s opening ceremonies with Saturday’s Canada vs, Norway sledge hockey game will give the games almost a day of exposure.

“Is it good or bad? Well, it is better than what they’ve had in the past. There wasn’t anything for the last two [Paralympics], I think, in this country,” Terry Wright, Vanoc’s executive vice-president of Games operations told The Vancouver Sun.

“We’ve certainly had an improvement. I think in general broadcasters see the importance of showing something.”

Exposure is most important because from that comes demand and from demand comes the raising of the overall international profile of the games, which allows the IPC to raise the price of broadcast rights and feed the resulting cash back to further Paralympic development.

There will be live coverage too. All sledge hockey games involving Canada will be live and all the medal rounds will be live.

Just to get two dozen broadcasters to come out for the games is a victory, since none will make any money from their efforts.

But broadcasting isn’t the only step forward, the other one began during the able-bodied games. That’s when Rick Hansen became the most prominently featured disabled athlete at an Olympic Games as one of the final torch bearers.  Sure, Mohammed Ali had Parkinson’s when he lit the torch in 1996, but he was never originally known as a disabled athlete like Hansen is.  The Man in Motion’s involvement indicated to the world that there would be no prioritizing of able-bodied athletes over disabled ones. The two games would co-exist together as two parts of the same event. In this way, Vancouver took a step towards equality that so many other host cities omitted.

Hansen was also front and centre as a member of CTV’s broadcast team in his regular ‘Difference Maker’ segment. The best of these was a profile of Alexandre Bilodeau’s brother Frederic and his impact on Canada’s first home-soil gold medal winner. It was distinctive for most because it showed how Frederic courage in dealing with his cerebral palsy motivated his brother to shoot for a higher level in Ski Aerials, but with Hansen at the helm there was also a change in presentation that’s rarely seen in mainstream media. When Hansen rolls in, we see him from top to bottom and not from the chest up to hide his chair.  Bilodeau’s CP gives him a speech impediment that would’ve been subtitled if the able-bodied media had final say, but here he can speak for himself.

Perhaps few people caught Chris Cuthbert issuing a challenge to Canada’s sledge hockey team following Canada’s gold medal win in Men’s Hockey: “Jean Labonte, get your team together.  Sledge hockey athletes, it’s your turn now.”

That mention was heard by over 94% of Canadians and though small, does wonders to instill the idea of an equal relationship between both events and their athletes.This has continued through the marketing campaign. The most popular Paralympic sports (mainly, Sledge Hockey and disabled skiing) have their athletes featured in spots narrated by Donald Sutherland just like the athletes of the regular games.

Let’s also remember that Vancouver 2010 marked the first time an athlete qualified for both the Paralympics and the Olympics. Don’t forget it wasn’t the IOC who ultimately prevented legally-blind cross-country skier Brian McKeever from doing his run, it was his own team who thought they could increase their medal chances with different athletes.

Sure the Paralympics may not have the audience numbers or the big broadcasting support, but as long as the attitude of the organizing committee, the volunteers and the media is that these are meant as a compliment to the main event and not a hastily stitched together addendum — the rest will surely come with time. After all, the entire disability rights movement has moved with baby steps, so why should this be any different?

By the way, those ridiculously cheap tickets are almost all sold-out. For all the concerns surrounding the traditional games, supporting the Paralympics means giving the world’s most undervalued minority a truly equal playing field.

Inside the new Canada Line SkyTrain cars.

This week, I’m coming to you live and on location from Canada’s Olympic city and the place of my birth. I’m fortunate enough to be staying at my father’s apartment across the street from the athlete’s village, so I’m literally in the center of the action.

I can see the environmentally friendly generator that turns the athlete’s poo into renewable energy from my window, and the Aussie’s Boxing Kangaroo flag that had Jacques Rogge’s panties in a bunch is still flying proudly from the windows of the Australian team’s condominium. But for all the ways THIS Magazine rags on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, (and we do rag) it seems as though these games are at least setting a new standard for one thing — accessibility.

Arriving here I got to ride what is arguably the crown jewel of the 2010 games’s legacy. For those who don’t know, The Canada Line expands the city’s SkyTrain system from downtown Vancouver into Richmond and ends at the airport.  Just having the system connect to YVR means getting into the city from the airport is leaps and bounds easier than it would otherwise be if you have an assistive device. It’s cheaper too. A wheelchair cab can run you various multiples of ten depending on where you live in the Lower Mainland, while a ride on the SkyTrain from the main terminal costs $7.00. (Although, a few extra coins than the rest of the line.) The signage at the airport and in the elevator clearly marks the path to the skywalk and into the station in big, bright yellow letters. Inside the train is where the Canada Line really earns its medal as the accessibility standard for similar systems.

In the past,  accessible spaces were usually only big enough for manual chairs to fit into and you had to flip up an existing seat in order to park inside. Now, there’s a space for bikes on one side of the train and a long space on the opposite side. It has a handrail and is designated accessible, so it can easily fit electric chairs, scooters and possibly a small all-terrain vehicle. It use to be that poles lining the centre of the cabin meant scooters and large electric chairs were forced to drive on and back off through the same door, but the train itself is wide enough that one could turn completely around in a circle without getting stuck or obstructing other passengers.

There’s only one aspect of the Canada Line that really bothers me. Thankfully, it is limited  to the airport station. The accessible gate that lets people with disabilities and people with strollers onto the platform cannot be controlled by the passenger. In an effort to control traffic, the passenger presses a button that signals a Translink employee on the other side of an intercom and they open the gate for you. Able-bodied passengers that don’t need the gate simply pass between two vertical metal poles without incident — poles that are too narrow for a large wheelchair, forcing those with disabilities to use the gate and rely on the employee.

Coming from a city where transit employees are known to sleep on the job, I can see a scenario where someone is coming home late and inevitably there’s no one on the other side of the intercom to help them. I don’t want to have to give some indifferent able-bodied union employee so much power over when and where I can go at such a crucial point in the process. I do not like to rely on people, when I think there’s a strong possibility they will let me down. I wish deeply that the aid of an employee was optional, so my freedom of movement wasn’t more restricted than other passengers, just because I needed to use the gate.

However, having people with strollers who need to use the gate may make officials much more vigilant than they would otherwise be if they were only dealing with people with disabilities. Besides, I have to remember that the Translink system has much more credibility with Vancouver’s disability community, thanks to how much they’ve done already, so I can’t automatically assume they’re going to screw it up and not be on the ball.

After all, the Olympics haven’t even started yet, and I still have many more venues to assess, including BC Place, GM Place (Canada Place) and Thunderbird Stadium. Once things have ramped up, than we will truly see how good VANOC’s accessibility plan is.

I have to point out though, over the weekend I walked without my scooter to the new Olympic Line Bombardier train, that shuttles passengers between False Creek and Granville Island, on the assumption that it wouldn’t be accessible and (oh, how jaded I’ve become) and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was. It’s nice to know there are still places in the world where officials anticipate the need, rather than react to it. I’m glad I can go home again and know accessibility doesn’t have to be a fight at every turn, it’s just second nature.

I've chosen my sport and you'll be glad you did too.

I’ve often complained here about how disappointing it is to see a general malaise of silent acceptance among Ontario’s disability community when those in power again brush our issues to the side, or only deliver half of what they’ve promised. A fully accessible province? Sure, you’ll just have to wait until 2024. Accessible streetcars? Of course, but the first model didn’t fit on the tracks and the second one won’t be here until 2012 at the earliest. Money from the government to offset the realities of my employability? Why yes, just don’t have over $7,000 in assets and please declare everything you make so that you remain dependent.

It isn’t just governments that we accept excuses and technicalities from — it’s businesses too. How many times have you asked somewhere why they don’t have a ramp or an elevator and they tell you it’s just too expensive to put one in? They could occupy a heritage building  or, as one planner at Toronto City Hall once told me, their building could’ve been erected prior to accessibility being put into the building code. Non-profits aren’t any better. Free the Children helps disabled children all over the world, but, at last check, their Cabbagetown headquarters is completely inaccessible. Do you really want to give such a hypocritical organization your “10 for 2010?”

Sure, these places bear the brunt of the responsibility, but they do these things because they know they can get away with them. Business owners believe that the disabled population isn’t a big enough market to be concerned about, yet disabled people in North America spend an average of $700 billion US a year. (The cost of the American bailout package). Still, when subjugated by these groups, most of us look the other way or smile and nod while we accept these excuses as yet another consequence of living with a disability. Until we feel like we matter, they’ll all keep rolling right over us, so I thought I’d make a list of  small resolutions every disabled  community member can do to reclaim their personhood, advocate for themselves and stir the pot for the betterment of us all.

1. Take up a sport I’m sure this seems as far away from balls to the wall activism as one can get, but there’s a reason so many newly disabled indviduals find solace in a sport after the trauma and loss of capability and independence. Sports are the one activity that have been perfected long enough to be seamlessly adapted and intergrated into disabled life like no other activity. They help reaffirm that as a disabled person you are still a relevent and contributing member of society who deserves to be listened to, which is the core belief you need if you’re going to raise a little hell.  Sports foster leadership qualities  and force independence and self-determination when your at a tournament with the team and have to take care of yourself away from your usual support system. Besides, the Paralymics are just around the corner and there are so many options: rugby, sledge hockey, skiing, snowboarding, shooting, tennis, wheelchair basketball, etc.
2. Get involved The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance is an organization chaired by David Lepofsky (The prominent disability rights lawyer) and all they do is hold Ontario politicians to account in fulfilling the obligations they set out when they signed the act into law. They write letters, they make phone calls and generally annoy the establishment with their unrelenting dedication to their cause.  Sure, they don’t get a lot of results and the responses they do get are filled with doublespeak and political spin that I suspect are dictated through pasted smiles, but I can’t help but think that’s because not enough disabled people have cared to add to the campaign.  They’d rather a courageous few do their dirty work for them. Did you know the TTC has an accessibility advisory committee? They’ve asked for our opinions before in improving their accessibility, yet they struggle to reach quorum.
3. Do not patronize inaccessible businesses This is probably the simplest thing we can do, but for me, as a person who can rise from the chair and walk, also one of the hardest. Even I choose to buy from a store I wouldn’t be able to get in if I couldn’t walk, I try to at least make a point of telling the clerk or manager that their stores are inaccessible. The better option though, is to show up and pretend you’re confined to the chair and watch the employees squirm. I’d recommend sending a friend in to point out there’s a disabled person outside who can’t get in and then proceeding to make the situation as awkward and embarrassing as possible for the employee. The hope is that having an inaccessible building becomes more inconvenient for them than having an accessible one.  But none of this works if disabled Canadians don’t get out and do things. I’m sure clubs don’t make their establishments accessible because they assume disabled people will just stay home. I’d one day love to see a group of disabled people growing in number and showing up at the same inaccessible place week after week until they can no longer be ignored. The more you stay home, the more you hurt the bigger picture for the rest of us.

I just hope that as disabled Canadians we stay engaged in our community in 2010 and we start believing that our issues are worth considering long enough to try and do something about them. When are we going to start lobbing those ideological pipe bombs at the able-bodied establishment?  We have to get out of the medical model mentality that says someone will come and rescue us from our circumstances. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. If you don’t, you just get wide grins, syrupy attitudes and a patronizing pat on the head.

Find out how to fight back against the TTC.

Last Wednesday, the following ‘letter to the editor’ appeared in Toronto’s Now Magazine:

Disabled stay home

I am a person with a disability who does not use Wheel-Trans, as others need it more and my needs have been better met by riding the subway, which is conveniently located half a block down my street. It’s the main reason I moved here.

The new fare increase (NOW, November 19-25) will limit my ability to access my city.

Those of us who are disabled do not get a fare rate reduction like seniors or students, and yet many of us live below the poverty line.

Adding insult to injury is the token freeze, which now means I either have to pay cash to get onto the subway or use up my precious energy going the extra distance to use another entrance. Merry Christmas to me!

How well Canadian politicians look out for the least among us. Hey, maybe this is their way of telling people like me to stay home?

Michelle Moore
Toronto

I feel Michelle’s pain. When I surveyed Canada’s public transportation systems for a 2006 article in Abilities Magazine, Toronto did much worse than anticipated for a major metropolitan centre with the highest disabled population in the country.  Since that article was written, a few more subway stations have become accessible, but there’s no visible progress on the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, as the clock toward the fully-accessible deadline of 2024 keeps ticking down. The AODA Alliance continues to make transportation recommendations at the government’s request. Even the long overdue accessible streetcars, scheduled to begin appearing in 2011, will be implemented on a incremental basis. It remains to be seen how accessible the planned York University subway extension will be.

As Michelle points out, the token freeze further squeezes the already dwindled resources of the disabled population. People with disabilities occupy the highest segment of unemployed persons in the world.  (Full disclosure: I write this blog for free) However, the token freeze doesn’t just squeeze us financially, like the fare hike, it also squeezes us physically. At many stations, the token activates the gate automatically making it the most accessible and independent way to get to the platform. Relying on cash is much tougher because many of the lanes are too narrow to get an electric chair or scooter up to the window. Many of the counters are too high to place your money on by yourself, so even if you wanted to pay — you couldn’t.

Combine that with the fact Toronto has not followed most civilized cities in the world, and instituted a discount program for disabled people and I feel well within my rights to actively con the TTC every time I use their services.  Why support a system, so ill equipped to support me?

The “Bad Man” Broverman Guide to Riding the Rocket for Free

1. “Friendlies” Get the right TTC employee at the counter and make like it’s a real struggle to pull out and count the change. Nine times out of ten they will wave you through, no questions asked, especially if your holding people up. **NOTE: Bus drivers will usually ask you to put your money away.
2. “Slight of Hand” Sitting in a glass box all day can get tiring. Take advantage of laziness, slowed reaction-time and the lack of a sight-line (thanks to mobility devices being lower than the counter) and deposit whatever change you have on hand. Make sure you group the coins together, dropping them fast and all at once into the box with your palm facing towards you.  By the time they count it, you’ll be long gone.  **NOTE: also works with foreign currency denominations that, from a distance, look similar to Canadian quarters.
3. “The Sneak” By far the most difficult technique, this one works best at rush hour. Find someone with a stroller (they will need to use the gate) and follow them close enough that when the attendant opens the gate you can sneak through before he can close it. You can also ask someone on the platform side to press the button for you. Most of them will assume you paid.

I can’t guarantee success, but these methods have worked for me and hopefully they’ll work for you. Remember, if you make a reasonable attempt to pay and can’t, there’s no harm in catching a break where you can.

Kevin McHale takes centre stage and heat for playing wheelchair using Artie Abrams. Image from The Fox Network

Sometimes it seems that no minority sits on a higher horse than people with disabilities—give an inch and they want a mile.

I bet that’s what creator Ryan Murphy,  executive producer Brad Falchuck and the rest of the creative muscle behind Glee thought, in their most private moments, once they started hearing the complaints from disabled viewers and those actors with disabilities still fighting to break through television’s representational barriers.

At issue is one character in particular, Artie Abrams. He is probably the most complex and nuanced wheelchair-using teen on television. I would hazard to say we’re finally seeing ourselves accurately and respectfully, not just represented, but legitimized on a hit television show.  Artie is fully realized, you might even mumble “reality” under your breath when no one was looking, if it weren’t for one major detail that has the activist and soapbox crowd among us up in arms. Artie is played by able-bodied actor, and former boy-band member, Kevin McHale. He is not a paraplegic and for those advocating for disabled talent in Hollywood, along with those who truly want to see themselves on television, this is yet another sign of Hollywood’s glass ceiling where disabled people are concerned.

It’s not like their concerns are unfounded. The stats, so often cited, come from the Screen Actors Guild [SAG] UCLA Study on Employment of People with Disabilities in the Entertainment Industry, commissioned in 2005. It tells us that 20% of the American population between the ages of 5-64 is living with a disability and yet, they are represented by less than 2% of the characters on television. Worse than that, only one-half of 1% of the words spoken on television are spoken by someone with a disability.

When I asked Adam Moore, SAG’s associate U.S. national director of affirmative action and diversity, last winter for my “Coming Attractions” article in Abilities Magazine, why this was the case, it essentially came down to an inability to prove discrimination was taking place beyond anecdotal statistics. Disabled performers don’t want to self-identify, for fear of being passed over in auditions, and producers are uncomfortable with keeping track of the number of disabled people on set (the way they’re required to for other minorities in the union) because they feel unable to tell what counts as a disability.  Their questions surround whether they should count invisible disabilities or temporary injuries. All in all, not having the proper information prevents SAG from doing anything on their own because they can’t prove it.  Even when they joined forces with American Federation of Television and Radio Artists [AFTRA]  and Actors Equity Association [AEA] at the beginning of the year for the I AM PWD tri-union campaign, the initiative has gone largely unnoticed by mainstream audiences and there’s no real visible employment spike to be found.

Right now, articles like this one from Associated Press have Glee in the employment inequity crosshairs. The barbs have already started flying, especially in light of the show’s recent disability-focused episode called “Wheels”.  Robert David Hall the chairman of the I AM PWD campaign, who is best known for playing C.S.I: Las Vegas coroner Al Robbins, had this to say to Associated Press.

“I think there’s a fear of litigation, that a person with disabilities might slow a production down, fear that viewers might be uncomfortable. All of that is nonsense, I’ve made my living as an actor for 30 years and I walk on two artificial legs.”

What Hall says is true; it also costs productions more to implement adaptations for disabled talent in some cases, but none of those reasons or excuses should be laid at the feet of Glee. If anything, Glee’s creative team did a better job striving to achieve employment equity and represent minorities on television than their critics in the disabled community did in assessing the validity of their criticism against the show.

Glee is a hit series working in the tradition of  High School Musical and Fame. It follows a fictional high school glee club through the ups and downs of teen life. It is known for mixing hit songs past and present into musical mash-ups and then giving them the full Broadway treatment. It also goes a step beyond: conscious of the fact that television has the ability to shape attitudes and perceptions, their creative team intentionally built a cast representing every culture and visible minority. There are white characters, black characters, Asian characters, gay characters, Latino  characters, Jewish characters, Christian characters, male characters and female characters. The principal of the school is not white, but South Asian, and, of course, there’s McHale’s character Artie as the person with a disability.

Falchuck told the AP that they did this to not just reflect the so-called “mainstream,” but to reflect America as it really is. Of course, critics can turn around and say that they aren’t really reflecting America because there isn’t a real disabled person in the cast. In the same article though, Falchuck does say that they did look at people in wheelchairs for the role of Artie.

“We brought in anyone: white, black, Asian, in a wheelchair,” Falchuck said.

Really, that’s all you can expect from casting directors. The disabled community is absolutely right in cases where disabled actors aren’t even allowed to audition.  Joanne Smith, former host of CBC’s Moving On, revealed in a recent Abilities article that some casting directors point blank told her they don’t want to hire people with disabilities because of a lack of talent or too much politics involved in the decision.  However, even Robert David Hall admits that you have to earn the role you audition for, disability or not.

“Society has had a telethon mentality for a lot of years. If we’re doing a story on Aaron, then we will play soft piano music and talk about the brave little writer with a cane—that sucks. The best way to avoid that is to always do good work. We’re competitive with the entire world and our job is to do the best work we can,” he told me when I interviewed him for Abilities last winter.

Even the most staunch disability activists don’t want to be hired to fill a visible minority quota. In the case of Artie, casting directors needed a triple threat performer. He needed to sing, act and follow choreography. In Kevin McHale, they found someone who could do all that and play an instrument as well.  “It was very hard to find people who could really sing, really act, and have that charisma you need on TV. It’s hard to say no to someone that talented,” Falchuck told AP and so far, he seems to be right. There are disabled people who can sing, act and dance (either in pairs or individually), but I have yet to find any disabled person who can do all three.

So while the casting directors need to give us a shot at auditioning, performing arts schools need to be willing to train us and agents need to be willing to represent us. That way, when when casting directors try to cast a disabled triple threat they might actually be able to find one.  When I say represent and train us, I mean not in a Special Olympics, everyone’s a winner, it’s enough just to participate, pat you on the head and give you a lollipop kind of way.  Not even in a segregated-under-one-roof, institutional, Famous People Players kind of way. There are a few organizations, like Lights, Camera, Access and Witt Entertainment Management Inc. willing to train and represent disabled actors, but both of these are small potatoes compared to the amount of professional talent with disabilities that needs to be out there to penetrate the market in big numbers.

Remember, just because a disabled actor with talent makes it through, even when they get a supporting and speaking role, doesn’t mean the creative team knows what to do with them. Vince Gilligan cast RJ Mitte in Breaking Bad in tribute to his friend with cerebral palsy, but after that stand-up move, the show has been on for two seasons and Mitte’s character hasn’t been given a significant storyline while everyone else in the principal cast has. Mitte has had his moments and he has had his scenes, but often he simply walks on set, says a line and walks off again—a clear indication that Gilligan doesn’t know how to write for him.

I’d rather have a non-disabled actor (who obviously takes the responsibility of playing a disabled character seriously) shown as a full  participant of the show, whether it be through a solo, playing a guitar, prominent roles in the choreography, or having a whole episode devoted to him, than have a truly talented disabled actor on set used as a token.  All of those articles that feature criticism from the disabled community over Glee’s casting, neglect to mention that they added a supporting role that is a person with a disability. Lauren Potter is an actress with Down’s syndrome who takes Quinn Fabray’s spot on the cheerleding team, but who isn’t given a free pass just because of her disability. Coach Sue Sylvester is realistically tough on her.

That’s another thing about Glee. In the “Wheels” episode, they dealt with disability issues in a tongue-in-cheek, but not mocking or stereotypical manner. They dealt with things like sex and disability realistically. (I have actually had to confirm the functionality of my penis in real life and I’m not the only one) It seems Kevin McHale appreciated how the show handled disability as well, as he told the New York Post:

“Going in, none of us knew anything about our characters so we kind of made up back stories for them, so when I read what happened to him, I thought it was very cool. And I love how they did it too, how his story fit into the context of the episode. It just kind of sums up ‘Glee’—you have this sweet story and then I say, ‘but I still have full use of my penis.’ That’s like a metaphor for our show.”

People seem to forget that it’s okay to have a sense of humour about disability.  Recently, deaf organizations have been squawking about how offensive the Family Guy Presents live special was for making fun of deaf actor Marlee Matlin. They seem to forget that the cast was laughing with her because she was in on the joke the whole time.

I often think that if disability organizations put as much effort towards creating and fostering disabled talent as they seem to in their whining and issuing press releases regarding injustices towards them, then casting directors may actually see a lot more talent with disabilities. People with disabilities need to start opening up about their circumstances. More people with disabilities need to pursue jobs in Hollywood, rather than avoid them out of fear. If you really have problems with the way the able-bodied world represents us on television or in any other media, maybe you should write a script, make a film or study acting. Who better to write dialogue for a disabled character than someone with a disability?

Watch the entire “Wheels” episode of Glee and tell us what you think.

“Somehow, way [in the] back of our first closet, we’ve built another one, and into it, we have shoved our gay deaf, our gay blind and our gay wheelchair cases.”

More than two decades later, the above is still very much the case. It puts LGBT people with disabilities in a painful and vitriolic catch-22:  They are rejected by an often vain LGBT community because of their disability, and rejected again by a judgmental disability community because of their sexual orientation.

John Killacky, a paraplegic, and Bob Guter, an amputee, know this position all too well.  As the two co-editors of Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories, they were no doubt inundated with painful stories of stigmatization. “Gay men with disabilities don’t fit the queer image of beauty.  In places where gay men congregate for erotic connection — like bars — we quickly get the impression that we’re not welcome,” Guter told The Washington Blade in 2004.

When Killacky was out with his able-bodied partner at the time, he told The Blade it was as if he wasn’t even there. “People leaned over my wheelchair and asked Larry,’How is he feeling?'” Apparently, the girls don’t have it any easier. “They think, ‘I can’t be together with a disabled woman because I’ll have to take care of her,'” Susan McDaniel Stanley, a lesbian with spinal cerebellum degeneration, told The Blade. Corbett O’Toole, a wheelchair user who runs Disabledwomen.net, told them it comes down to this: “The lesbian image is of a woman who can work and support her lover. If you’re disabled, it’s hard to be seen as sexual no matter how ‘out’ you are. If I’m in a bookstore, lesbians think I just need help getting a book off the shelf. They wouldn’t ask me out for coffee.”

One man from Long Beach California was so desperate to vent, he posted the following on the Long Beach Equality message board:

“I decided to finally come out of my shell after two years, be active in the community and socialize. What I have found is the moment I’m asked what I do for a living and I tell them I’m disabled, the conversation stops as if I have the plague…This has been coming from people who are so mad that they are being treated as a second-class citizens for not being allowed to marry, yet they treat people in just the manner they are screaming about.”

The disabled community and those who support it are just as dismissive to their LGBT brothers and sisters.  In her groundbreaking article in Abilities Magazine, “Nothing to Hide: Gay People with Disabilities Come Out of the Closet”, Anna Quon interviews a man who often rode the Handibus with drivers who refused to wheel him into gay bars to meet his partner in the 80s and early 90s. The homophobia among the disabled population continues.  In rehab, Killacky noticed that all the sexual health information was for heterosexuals and when he went to a conference for artists with disabilities there were no openly gay disabled people there and the  paraplegic comedienne made homophobic jokes.  Some people have gone as far as suggesting that the queer individual is just “confused” and what they believe to be their sexual orientation is really just a byproduct of the disability itself.  Gay disabled comedian Greg Walloch mocks this sentiment in hilarious fashion during his one man show F**k the Disabled!

However, the worst affront to the disabled LGBT community comes in the distinct lack of resources and support groups behind it, especially in North America.  The UK has done a much better job supporting the disabled LGBT community through Disability Now, their national disability magazine, and the columns dealing with the issue within. They also have one thing no country in North America has — a national organization for the disabled LGBT community known as Regard. Of course, that shouldn’t surprise anyone who regularly reads this blog. I’ve frequently mentioned how much better mobilized and aggressive UK disability activism is. The BBC supports LGBT awareness in the community with the Ouch! website and podcast, while the CBC’s Disability Matters column ground to a halt in 2006 due to budget cuts.

Speaking of Canada, typing “Gay and Disabled in Canada” in Google yields Quon’s article as its most high-profile result. No Canadian organizations, no Canadian groups and no Canadian websites, and while Quon’s article broke down the door, it is now well out of  date. Perhaps Canada’s last hope in dealing with LGBT issues specific to disability lies in Toronto’s famously progressive cooperative sex shop Come As You Are and its disability-friendly books, toys and workshops.

Those deaf and blind LGBT people Hannon mentions at the top of this entry did get their support groups in the form of BFLAG (the blind community’s answer to PFLAG) and RAD (The Rainbow Alliance for the Deaf). RAD is still around, but BFLAG is no longer in operation. To me though, it hardly matters because blindness and deafness often barely affect your looks, at least not in the jarring way a wheelchair can frequently diminish your prospects. Many hearing impaired and blind individuals admit they can “pass” for able-bodied in a dating environment.  To me, if any disabilities  deserve LGBT support, it’s those ones that are most noticeable. Yet, people with mobility disabilities have nothing recognizing their LGBT population. C’mon, even queer stutterers have their own LGBT organization before people with mobility disabilities. Guter and Killacky tried with their Bent Voices magazine, but even that ran out of steam. (The archives can be found here.)

Despite this lack of support or acknowledgement, gay people with disabilities still have to navigate these chilly social waters on their own, often forced to believe in their own potential as lovers when no one else will. When Guter fell in love with his college roommate, he found this out the hard way:

“He asked me, ‘Do you ever think you’ll find a man who will sleep with you?'” For Guter, that was the challenge that, he told The Blade, “mysteriously engendered hope.”  He responded, “Yes, if I find the right man.”

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) speculate on the future of their newly disabled colleague in "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency"--copyright AMC 2009

While most of Mad Men’s devoted fan base was surely whipped into a frenzy thanks to “The Big Reveal” this past Sunday, [Sorry folks, I’m going to be good and keep the spoilers behind the link] with only three episodes left this season, I’ve been noticing something other than the plot.

Technically, disability was introduced as part of the ultra-realistic, ultra-accurate Mad Men landscape in the very first season, when the neighbour kid is invited to Sally’s birthday party at the Draper house and this kid happens to be a polio survivor, walking around on old school forearm crutches.

Back then, viewers got a little taste of 1960s ableism when the mother hens started clucking around the kitchen counter: “Oh, how sad, a child with polio.”… “The father’s a real stand-up guy for sicking it out and staying with them.”…”I don’t know how they do it.” But, It wasn’t until episode 3.6 “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency,” when a British ad exec gets his foot run over by a John Deere during an office joyride, (don’t ask) that I really got the message that creator Matt Wiener was intentionally raising the issue as yet another cultural sticking point of the era.

Below is the scene in the hospital waiting room, once the bosses realize their rising star will have to have his foot amputated:

Joan: I’ll bet he felt great when he woke up this morning. But that’s life. One minute you’re on top of the world, and the next, some secretary is running over you with a lawnmower.

Don laughs.

The three British executives enter the hospital waiting room.

Saint-John: I’m heart broken.

Don: It’s a terrible tragedy.

Harold Ford: One that surely could have been avoided. Mrs. Harris, thank you for your quick thinking.

Lane Pryce: You may have saved his life.

Saint-John: Such as it is. He was a great account man. A prodigy. Could talk a Scotsman out of a penny. Now that’s over.

Don: I don’t know if that’s true.

Harold Ford: The man is missing a foot. How’s he going to work? He can’t walk.

Saint-John: The doctor said he will never golf again.

Harold Ford: I’m afraid we’ll have to reevaluate our entire strategy (referring to the reorganization of Sterling Cooper.)

Saint-John: Lane will remain here permanently.

Unlike many of the “isms” that Mad Men explores, ableism isn’t one where we can look back and see many inroads. I would guess there were just as many people who watched this episode, looked at their partner on the couch and said, “Isn’t that awful,” as there were those that said, “They have a point.  In the above fictional conversation, it’s suggested that the disabled man’s life is over because he can’t play golf and golf is everything in business. Well, once again, the truth is stranger.  Casey Martin is a pro-golfer who, in 2001, needed to sue the PGA for the right to use a golf cart on the PGA Tour because of his disability — that was in 2001, not 1963.

Normally, I wouldn’t spotlight a one-off episode tackling disability issues, (countless other shows have done that in the past) but the issue was revisited this week with the introduction of Don’s mistress’s brother, Danny Farrell, who feels socially shunned because of his epilepsy. His admission to Don that he’s not going to their destination to mop floors at yet another job, says it all: “People are nice enough at first, but when you come to [consciousness], having pissed your pants, people step much more gingerly.”

Anyone with a disability who has ever gone to a job interview, where perma-grins seem fused to the interviewer’s face and everything seems just a little too fine, will tell you they often wonder what those people say about them when they leave.  While there are laws now, meant to protect people like Danny from taking to the streets, unofficially, Danny’s reality of being bounced around by a society that doesn’t know what to do with him, is still very much alive today.

Ironically, 1963 was also a banner year in firming up the rights for people with disabilities. Prior to the year this season of Mad Men inhabits, things were still a lot worse.

Institutionalization was the “catch-all” answer for the severely disabled in the 60s, but at least in 1963, lead by the Kennedy Administration, legislative improvements were beginning in America. Some highlights from The Museum of Disability History Timeline can be found below:

1963

• Mental Hygiene Facilities Improvement Fund (MHFIF) bill submitted by Rockefeller and passed by the legislature to fund the construction of facilities through the sale of government “moral obligation” bonds. Re-payment of these bonds was relegated to the families of institutional residents. The ARC of Massachusetts rejected this plan, but failed in their attempts to change the legislation.
• De-institutionalization and community services for people with mental disabilities moves another step forward when President Kennedy calls on Congress for legislation to reduce the number of individuals under custodial care in institutions.
• The “Mills-Ribicoff” Bill amends the Social Security Act to assist states and communities in preventing and combating mental retardation by providing pre-natal care and services for infants born with disabilities.
• The Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Health Centers Construction Act was signed by President Kennedy, providing federal grants for building public and private non-profit community mental health centers.

The Simply People Festival shows there's still more to be done.

If the LGBT community can have Pride Week, complete with parade, then the world’s most undervalued minority — people with disabilities — can have at least one day to come together for disability pride.

That’s the idea behind Simply People.  Canada Wide Accessibility for Post Secondary Students [CANWAPSS] had its 6th annual Simply People Festival yesterday. It’s an opportunity  for Toronto’s disability community to gather under the shadow of city hall in Nathan Philips Square and listen to performers like Justin Hines or, as most people know him, “That guy in the wheelchair from the Ontario Tourism Commercial,” and bask in all they’ve accomplished — except Ontario has ensured they still haven’t accomplished much of anything.When David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act [AODA] Alliance and fellow disabled traveler, has to start his speech to those attending the festival with, “I’m going to give you good news, bad news and hopeful news,” you know that the disabled community is getting about as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield.

He was talking about the AODA. It’s that small piece of legislation the able-bodied population has largely no idea exists, which stipulates the province has to be fully accessible. If you don’t read past that sentence it is the good news he mentioned, but McGuinty runs Ontario like an infommercial so, “Some restrictions apply.” One of them being, and this is the bad news, that Ontario has until the year 2025 to get the province up to snuff when the law can actually be enforced.  Oh, and Lepofsky informed the attending audience that with five years already passed since  the law was enacted, the province is already behind schedule. If I live to 2025, I’ll be almost 40 and now with 100% accessibility even more behind schedule, who knows if any of us will live to see it.

His hopeful news was his hope that the larger disabled community would all get involved in pestering the provincial government even more than we already have, just to make sure our representatives stick to a commitment they already made. Well, as a member of the disability community, I am not a babysitter and I refuse to have a parent/child relationship with a politician. The most dangerous part of Lepofsky’s suggestion is that if this commitment falls through, disabled people may blame themselves and suddenly politicians can turn around and say, “You didn’t lobby us enough to make accessibility happen.” Whatever happened to doing something simply because it’s the right thing to do? Fundamentally, priority one of any government in Canada should be to  stay in line with our  Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Part of this general malaise for the causes of the disabled in Ontario, that puts any action toward improvement consistently on the back burner, is the fault of the disabled community.  Ironically, that was on display underneath the celebration Simply People was supposed to be.  Yesterday was supposed to be a celebration of disability pride, but there were too many empty seats to give you the sense that the majority in the community are prideful. If many of us won’t care to show up, there is no way an Ontario politician is going to care about our issues.

Looking to the stage, Justin Hines looks like a leader and a symbol of a person with a disability making a larger impact for all of us. The Justin Hines Foundation benefits people with disabilities. However, he is known to perform frequently at Hugh’s Room, one of the most inaccessible venues in the city and they don’t make it any more accessible for those times he’s performing. In fact, if you phone them up and ask them, they will tell you that they have no immediate plans for making the club accessible — yet, Hines performs there.

Also at the festival, Mayor David Miller emphasized that Toronto will finally get accessible street cars in 2011 as if he expected all of us to stand up and bow down.  Then my friend Saburah Murdoch turns to me and says, “In the 25 years I’ve lived in Toronto, I’ve never been able to ride a streetcar.”  I ‘m asking on what planet is waiting 25 years to ride a streetcar acceptable? Mayor Miller also pointed out that when Toronto’s media covered and debated the new streetcars, they neglected to mention that they were accessible.

If that doesn’t show that Toronto doesn’t give two shits about its disabled population, I don’t know what does.

Living in Ontario often makes me feel like I’m Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner and I’m the only one who realizes that there’s a world outside The Village that I’m desperately trying to wake others up to.

I grew up in Surrey B.C., a suburb of Vancouver, where much of the activism and political heavy lifting that Ontario is going through now, had already happened in the mid-80s. For much of my life, accessibility was simply normal and if something wasn’t accessible, Vancouver got right on that without so much of a hem or a haw. B.C. will be fully accessible by 2010.

Is it wrong for me to assume that Canada’s largest city and the province with the largest disabled population should be setting the standard, not getting its ass handed to it by a province on the other side of the country? Toronto has been established much longer than Vancouver and yet disabled Torontonians still have 16 more years of waiting to do.

I came here and suddenly, I had to get used to the new “We’re working on it” status quo. I meet frustrated disabled residents so used to waiting, that they’ve basically given up hoping for anything big in a timely fashion.  I saw it at The Simply People Festival: there were respectful claps, but there were no whoops and hollers. Just like the disabled community seems fine with waiting and nobody is willing to mobilize and get angry.

So before we celebrate disability pride, before we toot our own horns about how much we’ve already accomplished, why don’t we get something done for accessibility that won’t take 16 years to become reality.

Now it’s finally here (about to be released by Random House Canada Sept. 26) and it’s such a personal project for Brown (He has literally been preparing to write it for the 13 years his son has been alive.) that whether it delivers on a literary level (it does) seems like such a futile evaluation.

The issues raised in this book are much greater than that, and while the pathos, humour, unflinching honesty and neurotic eye-for-detail that Brown is known for are all here in spades, he never quite reaches the level of understanding of his son I was hoping for. Worse, he never allows himself a moment to relax, a moment to acknowledge he did the best he could with the circumstances under his control. Like all parents of children with disabilities, he is constantly measuring his son’s life and his own success as a parent by the various measuring sticks of the world, despite all the evidence he finds to the contrary. Brown’s son Walker has Cardiofaciocutaneous Syndrome (CFC) an extremely rare genetic diagnosis with only approximately 100 confirmed cases around the world.  At 13, that means that Walker’s cognitive abilities rest somewhere between 18 months and two years old. He is non-verbal, constantly hits himself, must be fed by G-tube and has seizures on a regular basis. The combination of these symptoms lead to questions about just how sentient he really is and put Brown on a journey to find the value of Walker’s life.

I realize I am both supremely under-qualified and ideally suited to pass judgment on Brown’s conclusions. While I could never imagine  the crippling physical and emotional drain Walker’s 24/7 care puts on his entire family, (Brown and his wife only started getting a full night’s sleep after they made the heart-wrenching decision to send Walker to a group home.) and my disability is nowhere near as severe as what Walker deals with, it seems to me that no matter how “normal” I am compared to Walker, my parents’ evaluation of my life comes down to how close to able-bodied I’ll be.

It takes Brown a long time to get over this notion when he looks at Walker. The family’s sauna is chocked full of occupational therapy toys and Brown admits that each one carries the hope that this will be the toy that snaps Walker out of it, or at least triggers some glint of comprehension within him.  Brown is constantly in pain over what he will never get from his son and what his son will never be. He barely takes the time to realize what he’s gained and when he does recognize it:

“Walker has made me realize that many of the rules we live by are simply made up.”

It’s only a momentary recognition, he is still doing battle with what he has lost. For every magical moment of calm he spends with Walker on his lap or  in the bath, he’s constantly reminding himself that it is only a moment and it will not last. He constantly undercuts his progress in understanding that Walker simply is. He never fully gives himself over to the moment, even though he knows he should. He acknowledges the lessons he has learned from his son without fully living by them.

Walker’s own barometer for success in life is simply love in the moment, time spent with his daddy or a stolen giggle, but Brown constantly puts the weight of the world on his own parental shoulders. In this way though, his job as a parent should be easier than the tasks set out for parents of able-bodied children. He has the capacity to keep Walker endlessly fulfilled just with his compassion and the secret “clicking” language they share. Walker doesn’t care about anything else, so why should he? It makes me sad knowing that many of the regrets Brown has over Walker’s life don’t need to be there. They’re of Brown’s own making.

Brown’s book needs to be read.  It hits on society’s urgent  need to reorganize our priorities and gets down to why “disability” makes us at once so uncomfortable and so at peace. Like any good journalist, he looks for the meaning of Walker’s life from many different points of view. There are those who come from positions of faith, positions of science,  and positions of raising CFC children of their own, but for everything these people tell him, his own skepticsm undercuts his ability to quell his restless mind. He doesn’t allow himself to think in terms of positive possibility without pointing out the the other hand immediately.

I yearned for him to feel better, especially when  the founder of L’Arche, a community where those with developmental disabilities live together with their able-bodied assistants, told him the following:

“We can spend a lot of time asking the wrong questions. The right question is, how can I help my son be happier? The wrong question is, is it my fault?”

But for every nugget of wisdom and strategy for finding perspective Jean Vanier gave him,  the conclusion of their talk (possibly because Brown is a committed atheist and resistant to leaps of faith) was the following:

“Look, I wanted to believe it: Every ounce of me knows my odd little boy can teach everyone something about themselves. Whether that will ever happen is another story.”

But just because Brown is still searching for answers doesn’t mean you should throw the baby out with the bath water. His book is like a Rorschach test, everyone who reads it will get something out of it.  These are all issues society is still wrestling with and putting his private self on the line to articulate them should be commended, otherwise they’d remain below the surface — festering until it’s too late.

Ian Brown discusses The Boy in the Moon with his wife Johanna Schneller TONIGHT!

Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009 7:3o p.m. (reception 6:30 p.m.)

Tickets: $5 (free with book purchase)

The Annex LIVE, 296 Brunswick Ave, Toronto

Dianne Trottier, a 33-year-old tenacious journalist killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street in her electric chair. CANADIAN PRESS/CBC

While cyclists in Toronto rallied to remember Darcy Allan Sheppard, the cyclist killed after allegedly being dragged along Bloor St.  by a car driven by former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant, another car accident was causing comparative degrees of outrage at the eastern edge of the country…

and this one embodies my worst fear.Toronto resident Dianne Trottier was described as  “feisty” and “outgoing” whether she was chasing down a story as a producer for CBC News: Around the World, or chasing accountability when it came to disability issues. While crossing a crosswalk in Fredericton, New Brunswick on Aug. 29,2009 in her electric wheelchair, she was hit and killed instantly by a hit-and-run driver.

While it has me shaking my head that this senseless tragedy was made worse by a driver who was cowardly enough not to stop and face the music, I found myself knowing full well that this could have just as easily been me. It was a deep-in-the-bones realization.  The type that strikes you in the middle of the night as a single-digit-age kid, when it suddenly dawns on you for the first time that one day, any day, by virtue of the fact that you are a living being, you will die and there is nothing you can do about it. I’d call it a kind of out-of-body chill.

Trottier’s death just reaffirmed something I’ve always felt with some certainty since I moved to Toronto in August 2003. If Vegas odds-makers were taking bets on the circumstances of my death, the line on “Getting Hit by a Car While Navigating a Crosswalk” has got to be 2:1. After all, I’ve had so many close calls already.

I’ve lost count of the number of times a car has turned into the middle of the crosswalk, while I’m half way to the other side and the walk sign is on. So many times I look up only to find some dumbfounded, apologetic driver behind the wheel, while I’m thinking about lodging my cane through his windshield.  What about those times a car has sped through the crosswalk without looking back as I’ve already started my journey. Luckily, they’re close enough to shave the hairs off my chest, but that’s all. Had I been going just a little bit faster, I could have been the next casualty, just like Dianne.

Patience is a virtue, but so few drivers actually use it. Combine that with the fact that scooters  and electric chairs are silent, have low visibility and are lower to the ground than a bike or a pedestrian and you have a wicked recipe for street pizza. Don’t even get me started on what happens in cases where the battery happens to be low on power—that’s when you really start to put your life in God’s hands. Plus, just because cars yield for you on one side of a crosswalk, doesn’t mean cars in oncoming lanes won’t try to overtake them. My friend told me this is illegal, but you wouldn’t know it on Toronto’s streets. What about the guys who force pedestrians to bob and weave between the cars because some driver finds himself parked in the centre of the crosswalk? Some drivers even make it worse by backing up into the car behind them to try and let you through, only to exacerbate things thoroughly.

I’m so afraid, that when crossing the street with able-bodied people, I find myself on the inside lane. I figure the more able-bodied pedestrians I can put between me and oncoming traffic, the better the chances a car will hit them first and their bodies will shield me slightly from impact.  So if you’re walking with me and I let you step off the curb first, it’s probably because I’ve set you up to be my sacrificial lamb in case of emergency.

I learned pretty early on that sometimes survival of the fittest doesn’t necessarily refer to physicality.

While cyclists fight for more bike lanes and respect on Toronto roads, unless something in Toronto traffic changes, the next time you see me I may be splayed out between the yellow lines under a white sheet.