According to John Rae, it was 1975 when he jumped, feet first, into the world of legislative advocacy, community organizing, and activism in the blindness community, first with something called Blind Organizing Ontario with Self-Help Tactics (BOOST) which evolved into the Alliance for the Equality of Blind Canadians (AEBC).

Rae has lived all his life as a Torontonian, fighting human rights cases, and working as a civil servant, taking early retirement where he’s been able to focus on lending his knowledge, expertise, and lived experience as a blind man to various causes.

Today on Outlook, we talk to John about the importance for blind people to travel and experience the smells and sounds of other places, his educational journey from Toronto to Windsor, and how vital it is to have mentors who can show us the possibilities available to us as blind people as there were multiple career options Rae didn’t feel were accessible to him years ago.

He shares his thoughts on the variety of educational settings he went through, such as his time in both integrated settings and what were known as sight saving classes and at what was then known as the Ontario School for the Blind in Brantford in the 60’s.

We discuss the disconnect between the medical profession and its blind patients, the hesitancy to deal with politicians and how being seen in settings of all kinds is how we’ll finally be taken into account, and John’s issues with the dangers of eBikes.

There’s elections coming up in Ontario in 2022 and our issues need to be addressed, but how do we keep up the energy for advocacy? We look to the years of life experience John Rae has accumulated, the importance of finding balance and planning for the bigger picture.

The recent trucker convoys, taking over streets, this has had a clogging up impact on people with disabilities and with blindness specifically. As the pandemic begins to ease, all around us, John Rae is thinking about how we can “build back better” for everyone going forward here in Ontario, and in Canada and beyond.

Send John an email,

And check out an article from 1979 to get a glimpse into some of the history discussed in this episode:

https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1979/1/15/the-blind-speaking-for-the-blind