“When I was a little girl, I used to dream as a man, because I wanted to do things that women didn’t do back then such as traveling to Africa, living with wild animals and writing books," said Dr. Jane Goodall. "I didn’t have any female explorers or scientists to look up to but I was inspired by Dr. Dolittle, Tarzan and Mowgli in The Jungle Book — all male characters. It was only my mother who supported my dream: 'You’ll have to work hard, take advantage of opportunities and never give up,' she’d tell me. I’ve shared that message with young people around the world, and so many have thanked me, and said, 'You taught me that because you did it, I can do it too.'"

(Jane's quote is excerpted from a 2018 op-ed with Time magazine.)

March - It’s a lot of things really. It’s another Mixed Bag, a Mid March Mixed Bag, along with it being a St. Patrick’s Day Monday special when we aired live and we on Outlook are also still celebrating Women’s History Month.

We’re looking back and reflecting on what was the five year anniversary of the start of the “stay at home” orders and lockdown and the start of Covid. Speaking of medical things, and spring, sister/co-host Kerry shares facts about the lotus flower and its symbolism of rebirth in nature and science, which leads to celebrating March being Kidney Health Month as she and her dad recall the rebirth and fresh start of the kidney transplant Kerry received from him, a rebirth of sorts. Kerry shares a health update with her kidney and levels being as stable as ever.

Kerry in blue and our International Women’s Day edition guest Jane Piper in red, like the Radio Western sign in the background, brother/ally/co-host Brian starts the second half of the show reading the Be My AI image of the two ladies posing in the lobby of the studio after, as we like to take photos with our live and in-studio guests when we are lucky enough to get them, as we look back on the previous week’s episode and the discussion with restorative justice activist Jane. We’ve managed to post the actual photos even with the accessibility issues that come along with social media these days.

The second half is dedicated to what’s going on in politics, both provincially and nationally as we share concerns about our premier receiving a third win last month, even with his silence and lack of action on matters concerning the disability community. Last week’s guest Jane spoke a lot about accountability and the lack of it in our society, these actions or lack of that politicians often are modelling and still being voted in by those who don’t consider marginalized populations.

Also, we finish up talking about the Canadian Disability Benefit set to come into effect this summer and a federal election on the horizon, we share more about the CDB and provinces like Ontario which has not yet promised not to put in clawbacks and Alberta which has put in the barrier of clawbacks to the already set provincial benefits. Organisation Disability Without Poverty is working to pressure politicians to live up to the promises to combat disability plus poverty across the country.

“Green alligators, long neck geese, chimpanzees..

We begin the show with a song about these animals, including the ones Jane Goodall worked with, the featured woman in history for the month of March and finish off talking the spring promise of an upcoming baseball season.

Today though, we’re unfortunately celebrating St. Patrick’s Day without our Irish co-host Barry and Oyster the guide dog with us live, but they’ll be back, but so we’ve started off the show with a silly song from our childhood - The Unicorn Song, The Irish Rovers version proving that spring is on it’s way to green things up in honour of our Irish connection. We love all things Ireland, but we at Outlook are Canadian and proud to be so.

https://www.disabilitywithoutpoverty.ca