The Hockey Sweater Challenge

As we await Game 6 tonight of the Canadiens - Tampa Bay playoff series, I figure now is as good a time to launch my Hockey Sweater Challenge, to help raise money for my participation in the Drop Zone Challenges in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.

This challenge was actually inspired by the friendly wagers mayors of Montreal and Ottawa had during Round 1 of the playoffs this year.  Having grown up in Montreal, the Canadiens are my team.  Always have been...always will be....which made me a popular guy as I wheeled around the streets of Ottawa, where I now live, rocking my Canadiens jacket.

I remember the first time I was at the old Forum.  It was actually for a wrestling match, and while I can't necessarily remember who was on the card that night, what does come to mind is the feeling of walking through the Canadiens bench and touching the bar behind the bench, as our seats were right behind what would have been the Canadiens bench.  (Thank you Ronald Cory for giving me your seat...which I guess tells you how long ok this was.)

While Ottawa may be my second favorite team, growing up in Montreal, I have to admit I have...at times...been a little hard on the Toronto Maple Leafs...and maybe...just maybe...have poked fun of them.  I think the best way I could sum up my feelings for the Maple Leafs would be with Roch Carrier's clasic, The Hockey Sweater.  (If you never heard it or watched it, it is a great little story.)

 

The Challenge

So there has been a lot of trash talk over the playoffs as to who has the classiest fans.  So here is the hockey sweater challenge.  As mentioned above, I will be celebrating my 40th birthday by participating in the Drop Zone Challenge in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal to raise money for Easter Seals and send a child with special needs to summer camp.  Whichever city I raise the most money in, I will rappel wearing that city's team jersey in all three cities.  Let the generosity and fun begin and #GoHabsGo!

To donate, click on the city in which you would like to donate:

Montreal               Ottawa               Toronto

How a man in a wheelchair has a midlife crisis

In September, I will be turning 40.  Traditionally, that is when men have their midlife crisis, get a young girlfriend and a sports car. Since sports cars are not wheelchair accessible, I had to come up with something else.*  I got it...rappel off a building. Oh wait...I did that already...twice.

In 2009, I participated in the Drop Zone Challenge, a fundraiser for Easter Seals, in my hometown of Montreal.  The objective is to raise a minimum of $1,500 (the cost to send a child with special needs to summer camp).  Given I had a fear of heights and mobility limitations, rappelling off a building was an interesting way to spend an afternoon.  That being said, the experience was so great decided to do a second attempt, albeit in a wheelchair, in 2010.  (I used a manual wheelchair.  Using my power chair would probably not have worked well.  At a point, gravity kicks in.)

Me making my way down the side of the building in 2009.

The wheelchair rolling down the side of the building in 2010...coming in for a landing.

So what can I do that is special to mark this milestone?  Clearly, the only solution is to rappel off three buildings. 

In September 2015, I will celebrate my 40th birthday by participating in the Drop Zone Challenges benefitting Easter Seals in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. I challenge people in these cities to join me in participating, or invite you to support me in my quest by donating in the city of your choice (Click on the city to go to that city's page.):

Montreal               Ottawa               Toronto

I also invite you to follow my journey on our Facebook page - Because Sports Cars Are Not Accessible.

Thank you for your support.

Michael Lifshitz
Illumabilities

* While the sports car is not accessible, I am still open to the younger girlfriend. If interested, feel free to contact me. **
** Just kidding. ***
*** Unless you are game. ****
**** I think I have taken the *s joke as far as I can.

Missed opportunity for integration and learning acceptance?

As I prepared to head off for lunch on Easter Sunday, I noticed a tweet about a church in Jacksonville, Florida that hosted an Easter Egg hunt on Saturday for special needs children.  (See the original article here.)  When I saw the story, I could not help but wonder why there would need to be an Easter Egg strictly for children with special needs.  The objective was to highlight to parents that the church had programs for children with special needs.  A representative from the church stated that "We've been hearing a lot of families saying 'We haven't been to church in years and we just didn't you guys had a class that our child could come and be part of it'."

While I can appreciate that perhaps children with learning or developmental disabilities may require additional attention in some programmimg, I can't help but feel like an Easter Egg hunt would not be an opportunity to bring together children of all abilities, so they could learn and grow together.  Through playing together, the children could learn they are actually not that different, because after all, who does not like chocolate? :)

A lifetime of acceptance

Over the last little while, I have noticed a growing trend that in addition to the U.N. International Day of People with Disabilities, there are stand alone days of awareness for a variety of disabilities.  I can appreciate that every disability has its own challenges, but why just one day?  For example, March 21st was World Down Syndrome Day.  It was the occassion for people to post memes on Facebook and declare how beautiful every life is, such as:

March 25th was National Cerebal Palsy Day, and April 2nd is Autism Day.  There is even a day for rare diseases/disorders.  All these days are good and create awareness.  However, my question is does it really bring us closer to a world where people with disabilities are fully accepted and included in society?   If every life is beautiful, why are there still countries where children with Down Syndrome are placed in orphanages?  

Admittedly, maybe the answer is to start with one day.  However, here is to hoping that we will get to a time when people with disabilities will not be accepted and celenrated for their beauty just one day a year.

Adaptations that make sense

As I wheeled back to my car after seeing a friend perform at a local venue, I was so amused as I wheeled by a Wine Rack store here in Ottawa that I had to snap a picture.

 

I will give them credit for putting a button on the door, but probably it would make a lot more sense without the two steps in front.  I would love to say this is an oversite, but I have seen a number of examples where there is a button on the door, with steps to get in.  Could they not have made a slope to the sidewalk to allow wheelchair entrance?  Why have the button on the door?  Are there people who get up the two steps and say "What??? Now I am supposed to open the door???  This is ridiculous!!".  I guess one could make the argument that they are trying to prevent people in wheelchairs from drinking and driving.  (Note: For those who come up to me at a cocktail with me sitting in my wheelchair and tell me "Careful...you are not supposed to be drinking and driving...ha ha ha.", that is not original.  I have heard it before.)

I think my favorite is a couple of hotels I have stayed at over the years in Toronto.  The first hotel had four entrances and each one had a button on the door, which again I will not critic them for doing.  The odd part was that one of the doors with a button led out to a staircase.  Apparently that was the built in amusement ride that came with my hotel reservation.

The other hotel was a smaller boutique hotel.  As I pulled up in the Wheel Trans bus, we noticed there were two steps to get in, with of course a button on the door, but a sign saying disabled entrance in the alley way.  Probably makes sense.  Send the people in wheelchairs into the side alley.  How big a degenerate would a mugger have to be to mug someone in a wheelchair?  The interesting part was that the door in the alley way did not have a button to open it.  You had to buzz to get someone to let you in, which was good because you needed the person to move the extra luggage, because of course the hallway leading from the disabled entrance is where you should store people's luggage wen they are leaving.

While some adaptations may not make sense, there are some businesses that get quite creative with making the best of the facilities they have.  I think the most creative one I had seen was a Second Cup at the World Exchange Plaza here in Ottawa.  I entered the store via the entrance in the mall and noticed that there was about five steps going up to where you place your order.  The counter to place your order was on one floor and the place to sit and eat was on another.  I then noticed a disabled symbol on the table next to the stairs.  While my initial reaction was that it was just another bizarre adapation, I then realized it made sense.  The reason why the table was reserved for someone in a wheelchair was that there was a buzzer to ring so that the person behind the counter could come and take their order.  While it may not be ideal, I did find it was a great example of making an effort to work with the facilities you have to be more accessible.

What were some examples of good and bad adaptations you have seen when it comes to making locations more accessible?  Feel free to share in the comments below.

Adding disabilities to the diversity discussion

Adding disabilities to the diversity discussion is the goal of Tiffany Yu.  At the age of 9, Tiffany was injured in a car accident and would spend three weeks in the hospital after breaking a couple of bones in her leg and suffering brachial plexus palsy, severe nerve damage in her right arm.  While the bones in her leg healed, she still does not have use of her arm.

In her senior year at Georgetown University, Tiffany was participating in a conversation on diversity as part of her Resident Assistant training.  She could not help but notice that nobody was talking about disabilities.  She wanted to get people of all abilities talking and thinking about disability by fostering an ongoing conversation about it, in the same way we talk about gender and race equality.

Tiffany's vision would become reality, when she served on a student panel at the "Accessing Differences: New Politics and Pedagogies of Disability", a conference at Georgetown University.  Tiffany presented the idea for a program to encourage discussion about disability, and received overwhelming support for the idea from the audience.  With a little more work, in Spring 2009, Diversability was launched at Goergetown, with a two part goal of a) wanting to raise disability awareness on campus and b) wanting to reshape current conceptions of what it means to have a disability. 

Diversability continued to flourish up until last year, becoming an organization officially recognized by Geourgetown University's Student Activities Commission.  The conversation at Georgetown continues today, although without Diversability.  Tiffany believes it is time to bring back Diversability, beyond campus to the community at large, and she is starting in her current home town of New York City.  The mission is to raise awareness and reshape conceptions, and currently, Diversability is doing this by hosting events and other programmering and partnering with other organizations in order to get more people talking and thinking about disability.  As Tiffany notes, everyone needs to be involved in the conversation for society to change attitudes. 

The first event Diversability will be holding since their relaunch is Diversability: An Evening Celebrating Diversity & Disability.  For those not in New York City, participants will be able to watch the panel discussion via live stream.  People are also invited to take their pledge, promising to support efforts to make society more inclusive and fight discrimination against people with disabilities.    I have taken the pledge.  Won't you join me?

Word vs. attitude

March 4th marked an annual awareness day for the Spread the Word to End the R-Word campaign. The campaign, which runs all year, encourages people to take the pledge to stop using the r-word, which is retarded.  The initiative is a good one, as the word is offensive and has become very insulting to people with intellectual disabilities.  However, I have often wondered if changing words really makes a difference, if we do not change attitudes.

Over the years, there have been various words to describe people with disabilities.  There has been crippled, handicapped, disabled, physically challenged, differently abled, person with a disability and perhaps my personal favorite, exceptional person or person with exceptionalities.

I think we can probably all agree that crippled is offensive.  The challenge (pardon the pun) with the term handicapped is handicapped means put at a disadvantage, which would only make sense in certain circumstances.  Admittedly, there are some circumstances, such as if I were to run a marathon, where I would be at a disadvantage.  However, that does not apply to every circumstance.  I haved always found the word challenged odd, because we all face challenges in life.  If we all face challenges, then that means we are all challenged.  If we all are challenged, then where the heck am I going to park?

While not a big fan of political correctness, differently abled would probably be somewhat more accurate, because for the most part, we can do most things, maybe just differently.  That being said, it is somewhat of a strange term as we all have our own unique abilities and our own way of doing things.   However, I think the most bizarre term is exceptional people or person with exceptionalities.  While I appreciate the vote of confidence, that is a lot of pressure to live up to.  Furthermore, while I am certainly proud of many of my accomplishments, we have gone from one extreme to another.  As opposed to assuming that there is nothing a person with a disability can do, we have gone to the other extreme of a person with a disability can do no wrong, and everything they do is remarkable, because of the disability.  Why not simply evaluate the person as an individual, as you would anyone else?

In 2006 the Federal government in Canada came out with a guide indicating the proper terminology to use.  The idea was, for example, I was not an amputee but rather a person with an amputation, because I am a person first, and the amputation does not define me.  Don't get me wrong.  I appreciate being considered a person.  However, having lived in Montreal at the time, my thought was that I have gone from being an amputee who could not get on the Metro system to a person with an amputation...who could not get on the Metero system...which sort of begged the question would it not have been more helpful to scrap the guide and put the money into putting elevators in the Metro system?

Here's my issue.  If someone were to say they cannot hire me because I am disabled, challenged or a person with a disability, or if a girl were to say I cannot date him because he is disabled, challenged or a person with a disability, the end result is the same.  So perhaps we should focus on changing attitudes instead of words, because I tend to go by Michael as opposed to a generic label.

  

Act instead of an act

Earlier this week, Ontario announced they will be reducing enforcement of the Accessibility for Ontarians With Disabilities Act (AODA).  Since I relocated to Ottawa from Montreal in December 2013, I have been somewhat intrigued by the AODA.  While I appreciate the sentiment of having people with disabilities fully included in society, I am not sure if this piece of legislation is the way to go.

The announcement that the government is reducing the enforcement of the Act is the first issue.  What good is a law if it is not going to be enforced.  Furthermore, setting up a hotline to report violators of the act only works if something is going to be done about complaints.  For example, I once reported to the Ottawa police a scam phone call I got.  I was told that if I wanted to report it, there was a federal agency that handled all complaints about scam phone calls.  When I went to file a report with the federal agency, the info said they don't have resources to investigate all reports, but that I should contact my local police.  And that my friends is why there are so many scams out there.  Nothing is done to stop them, so they may as well continue scamming people. 

The AODA aims to have Ontario fully accessible by 2025.  Considering that it is long over due, should we maybe try for something a little sooner?   One thing I will applaud the Act for is the requirement to train employees, and I would suggest this should be expanded to schools as well so we can start sensitizing our young people.  Part of the challenge in making a truly accessible society is the negative stereotypes that exist about people with disabilities, and educating people is the best way to eliminate negative stereotypes.
 
My final issue with the AODA is it is focused on businesses that have 20 or more employees.  I can appreciate that the Act is focusing on larger companies as the cost of making accessibility modifications may be too great for smaller businesses, which brings me to my point.  Instead of spending resources on creating legislation and attempting to enforce the act, perhaps encouraging actions would be the way to go.  Very often, the greatest challenge is simply getting around to restaurants and places around town, which are often small businesses.  Instead of creating extra burden and paper work for businesses, why not create programs where businesses can apply for funding to help them offset the cost of making their businesses accessible?  This would lead to action, instead of simply creating more paper work and legislation.   Then we hopefully could begin to move to a truly accessible province.

The perceived "burden" of disabilities

I am always amazed when someone offers their sympathy over my disability, largely because I never really saw it as that big of an issue.  While disabilities present challenges, I truly do believe that we all face challenges, mine just get me better parking spots, which given the deep freeze we have been having, is actually kind of nice.   To be honest, if I look back over my life, the most difficult part of having the disability was people's attitudes and prejudices towards people with disabilities.  The reason I say that is for operations, there are pain killers, or as it became more difficult for me to walk longer distances, I got an electric wheelchair so I could still get around.  However, there are no adaptive devices to help with stupidity and ignorance.

A couple of stories I have seen online the last month have made me think about what really is the true "burden" of disabilities.  The first article was a story about a woman with autism who had posted a Facebook comment directed to anti-vaxxers.  Her comment was:

“It never ceases to amaze me how scared anti-vaxxers are of autism.  How they have no idea how completely ridiculous and offensive they are being I will never understand.  They rather have dead children than have children like me and that just makes me sad, especially since that fear has absolutely no basis and puts so many lives at risk.  I think about my mom and dad saying and doing the things they do and I feel very defeated and worthless. I can’t imagine how the autistic children of anti-vaxxers feel!  But, fine. If they want me to be a monster, I’ll be a monster. Rawr, anti-vaxxers. Rawr.”

She has a point.  I remember a conversation I had with Daniel, the person who used to repair my artificial leg.  He had lost his leg to cancer and I was telling him how my girlfriend at the time's uncle had gangrene in his toe and was refusing to have it amputed as he did not want to give up his toe.  Now leaving gangrene untreated can result in blood poisoning and death, and Daniel and I concluded that, while admittedly we hadn't tried the death option (although having beaten cancer 7 times Daniel had certainly come closer than I had), living as an amputee seemed like a far better alternative.  While I can appreciate it is difficult to deal with and accept the loss of even a part of a limb, is it really better to risk your life than deal with losing a part of a limb?

The other issue that made me consider the perceived burden of disabilties was the story of a couple who had a baby with Down syndrome.  A woman had given birth to a child with Down syndrome, and the hospital had given her the option whether to keep the child or have the child institutionalized.  The initial story was that the mother had wanted to give up the child and told the father that if he wanted to keep the child, she would file for divorce.  The father decided to keep the child, and was heralded as a hero.  Now admittedly, when I first read the story, I had not realized this was in Armenia, not in Canada, as in Armenia, giving up children with disabilities is common practice as there are not support systems for parents.  And since the story first surfaced, there are conflicting reports about whether or not the mother really did give the father the ultimatum of giving up the child or their marriage, or if the father just decided he was going to take the child to his native New Zealand and raise him himself.  Regardless of that, the issue I found most surprising was people's reaction to the story, with some seeing no issue with it.  One friend on Facebook commented that giving up a child at birth was no different than aborting a pregnancy and it is a parent's right if they feel they cannot raise the child, to give the child up.

Here is my issue with this mentality.  I fully support a woman's right to choose and to decide on whether or not to keep a child, either during the pregnancy or at birth.  The issue I have is when the deciding factor is whether or not the child has a disability.  What does this say about our society?  It's as if we are saying "Sorry...this one is defective.  Can I exchange it?  Are their refunds?"  And what is the time limit?  Is it like a sweater...30 days with a receipt...which I assume would be the umbilical cord?  When I challenged my friend on this statement, his comment was there is no limit and at any time people have the right to give up their parenting responsibilities, which brought me to 2 conclusion: 1) Perhaps this friend should not have children, as I can imagine the first time the kid doesn't eat his or her vegetables, he is running for the door, and 2) Maybe this explains why divorce is so common.  If things get difficult, run the other way.  (That may be why I have to face my challenges...I can't run...but I digress.)  While I recognize there are challenges to raising a child with special needs, if our solution to facing challenges is to walk away, what does that say about us?  What happens if, heaven forbid, our child gets sick later in life?  What is that cut-off point where we say ok I am in for the long haul?

The other response I found interesting was a comment on a Huffington Post Canada article about the story.  A woman commented why are we so quick to judge the mother or Armenia, as it was not that long ago that people with disabilities were institutionalized in Canada.  Seriously?  By using that logic, it is ok to mistreat women, first nations or minorities because hey, we used to do that.  Progress as a society means that we have moved past mistakes of the past, and we should strive to continue progressing, and encourage other countries to progress as well.  (NOTE: Yes I realize we still have work to do on women, first nations and minorities right, but I believe we are sophisticated enough that we can call BS on all forms of oppression and discrimination at the same time, because wrong is wrong.)

What I would suggest is that the burden of disabilities is society ourselves, but the good news is I would suggest there is a tool to overcome ignorance...and that is education.  For those out there with loved ones with a disability, or if you yourself have a disability, speak up.  Do not accept people's preconceived notions of what people with disabilities can do, and do not let others define your future or your loved one's future, for allowing that to happen would be a true burden.