A childhood friend found this disturbing 1956 photograph by the late Life Magazine photographer Gordon Parks on the Facebook page of the African-American history group BlackPast.org. She reposted it on her own Facebook page, and I reposted to to mine, adding, "It's worth remembering that this was less than 60 years ago." It didn't take long for Gus Reed to post this photo of the posh Hydrostone restaurant Epicurious Morsels, adding: 60 years ago there was a separate entrance for African Americans at the Birmingham bus station. 60 seconds ago, this was the wheelchair entrance at a restaurant in Halifax. One of...

05 February, 2014

Unintended Consequences Dept.: If next week's election turns into a Liberal sweep, as seems increasingly likely, there will be many, many new faces at Province House. All those new members will be required to find fully accessible constituency offices within one year, or forego reimbursement of their office expenses. Returning members have three years to comply. AMI, the accessible cable channel, has a nice video on the new rules: These consequences aren't completely unintended, of course, but at the time the new rules passed the House of Assembly Management Committee, few realized how many freshman MLAs might be arriving later this month....

02 October, 2013

The Nova Scotia House of Assembly Management Commission will meet Wednesday to clear up an injustice that should have been fixed decades ago. Its members will pass a new rule requiring MLAs' constituency offices to be free of barriers to wheelchair users. The commission reached all-party agreement on the change a month ago, but inexplicable last-minute foot-dragging by senior NDP officials threatened to deep-six the deal. Lobbying by the James MacGregor Stewart Society, a disability rights group,  embarrassed the government into action Friday. The new rule will come into effect after the election, at which time newly elected MLAs will have one year...

09 August, 2013

In a telephone interview moments ago, Jennifer Stewart, press secretary to Premier Darrell Dexter, said "there absolutely will not be an election called tomorrow." We were discussing election timing because of the danger that an early election call could torpedo all-party efforts to bring in new rules ensuring that people in wheelchairs can visit and even work in MLAs offices in Nova Scotia. More on that shortly....

02 August, 2013

The James McGregor Stewart Society, a small voluntary group with a single summer intern, has managed to pull off in a month what the Disabled Persons Commission of NS (annual budget: $600,000) and the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission ($2.1 million) have not achieved in the decades of their existence. It has surveyed the accessibility of MLAs offices throughout the province. The results will not be a source of pride for Nova Scotia or its legislators. The survey rated MLAs' constituency offices based on parking facilities, power door buttons, entrance accessibility, washroom accessibility, and proximity to accessible bus routes. Since accessible bus routes are...

05 June, 2013

Contractors belatedly install a wheelchair ramp at the Chickenburger outlet on Queen St. in Halifax Monday afternoon. Background here. Congratulations to Gus Reed for making HRM a little more inclusive than it was yesterday. The city insists that installing the ramp was a condition of Mickey MacDonald's "temporary" occupancy permit all along, but the chronology of events tells a different story. July 4 — Reed, who uses a wheelchair, meets with MacDonald to protest against the newly opened restaurant's inaccessibility. The owner is adamant that a ramp is not feasible. July 6 — Reed writes to Brad Anguish, HRM's Director, Community & Recreation Services, to complain...

27 August, 2012

Before the end of June, each year, Nova Scotia law requires the Chief Electoral Officer to a publish all the political contributions made in the previous year. For the years 2007, 2008, and 2009, Christine McCulloch complied with the law, posting the information to the Elections Nova Scotia website in a manner that was accessible, searchable, printable, and even, with effort, downloadable to a citizen's own database. This gave every citizen the tools to determine whether contractors who won big roadbuilding contracts, storeowners who won liquor commission franchises, or communications consultants (like me!) who were selected for Communications Nova Scotia's Standing...

05 September, 2011

Haligonian Warren Reed objects to the thoughtlessly patronizing word choices many journalists apply to wheelchair-users and those who discriminate them. In an email to two Chronicle-Herald reporters who recently wrote about separate cases of discrimination by Metro Transit and the Nova Scotia Justice Department against wheelchair users, he complained about three sentences in their stories: "The driver even called his supervisor, who confirmed that wheelchair-bound passengers are not allowed on [Bus No.] 60." "However, Sunday morning the driver said that he could get in a lot of trouble for letting wheelchair-bound passengers onto non-wheelchair routes." "Amy Paradis, 16, is quadriplegic and...

25 October, 2010

Haligonian Warren Reed has a sobering take on our discussion about potential "cures" for people with Down syndrome: I am still stuck on the Down Syndrome thread.  As Canadians with disabilities will tell you, Canada has a medical model of disability. The approach is, "let's fix what's wrong with you," rather than, "let's fix what's wrong with us." Hence the inaccessible buses, devilish sidewalks, and antediluvian building codes. The result is a hidden and large group of people who are disenfranchised, undervalued, ignored, and sometimes abused.  See the shocking account in Monday's Chronicle-Herald. One of my big defeats was an unsuccessful complaint...

11 December, 2009