Outlook on Radio Western

From one president to another. Doug Lawlor has become President of the Canadian Federation of the Blind. This week on Outlook On Radio Western, we speak with Lawlor about this new position and the responsibility that goes along with it, including his recent first-time experiencing a National Federation of the Blind national convention where he had an introductory meeting with the NFB’s president Mark Riccobono.

On the show, we hear about all this, but we begin by hearing about Doug’s childhood in Newfoundland, the trauma of being sent to a school for the blind in Halifax at just six years old, and how it was for him to go from integration to segregation and back again.

From Newfoundland to Halifax, and from Kingston to Louisiana. Doug Lawlor has traveled, using his skills and available technology and he joins us on Outlook in his newest role, always willing to figure it out as he goes.

President of the Canadian Federation of the Blind is no different, but what is next for this Canadian blindness organization?

To learn more, check out the official website:

https://www.cfb.ca

We’ve known of this particular guest for years, through a friend, but now we welcome Victoria Francis as a friend of ours on the show after meeting her in an airport flying home from Orlando, Florida.

This week on Outlook we speak with Francis about her experience coming here as a little girl, her parent’s determination to give her and her twin brother every possible chance as blind people, and their time in both the integrated and segregated education systems once they arrived.

Victoria shares with us about her first snow experience as a child, after being born in Qatar and the benefits and drawbacks of a school for the blind like the one she attended in Brantford. She also shares about her college experience and now life in the working world.

Her ongoing work learning as much independent cane travel as possible has continued to challenge her, but her story is one of part of a close immigrant family and she has come a long way since coming to Canada in the nineties and now living on her own in Sudbury, the largest city in northern Ontario.

Jewelry isn’t only about what visually glitters and sparkles: both jewelry and braille are tactile experiences.

Our latest guest tells us about her more than a decade in the accessible jewelry and accessories world, after studying music and theatre and working in assistive technology roles, leading to the role of accessibility advocate alongside.

Laura Legendary is the founder of Elegant Insights Braille Creations and tells us about what true accessibility means to her, along with her road from grief and the special braille keepsake someone gifted to her when she was going through loss, and now we speak with Laura to highlight the connections in losing a loved one and losing a sense, both things we can learn to adapt to with time, support, and the right tools.

Along with descriptions of some of the products she creates and a few upcoming seasonal promotions, Laura tells us about how she sparkles and assists others in how they can find that sparkle for themselves. Legendary is a people person, businessperson, and our guest on Outlook this week.

To shop Elegant Insights Braille Creations:

https://elegantinsightsjewelry.com

Check out the Fashionability Channel (blog and podcast) where Laura has teamed up with UK fashion blogger Emily Davison to share their fashion and style tips for all:

http://www.fashionabilitychannel.com

For more jewelry education, design, trend, and style information, you can find Laura’s Sparkle On Blog here:

http://elegantinsightsjewelry.com/sparkle-on/

Or else there’s Legendary’s other blog, the Accessible Insights Blog, which provides information on products and services for individuals with low or no vision:

https://accessibleinsights.info/blog/

Find her on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Elegant.Insights/

And on Twitter and Instagram: @ ElegantInsights

On Outlook this week, we’re talking disability pride during July’s Disability Pride Month.

Whether it’s us starting out the show talking about Brian’s recent musical practice with an old friend and society’s devaluing of music as an art and a skill, a skill many people with disabilities have. Or our recent guest, H May, whose short film Awaiting Tiresias highlights discussions of the continuum of both blindness and gender and the illustration of intersectionality with Hannah, a black and enslaved woman who had a disability in the 1800’s.

While we may not have a guest this week, it’s a themed episode of our regular Mixed Bag Monday shows, with an explanation of how Disability Pride Month began. With that, we’re sharing quotes from figures throughout history, organizations, acquaintances and friends, in the wide range of opinions on what it means to feel pride in living with disability or not.

Kerry feels that the opposite of pride is often shame and that’s something she sometimes struggles with. Brian wants us to become comfortable and confident in the use of the word “blind” to describe our disability, as the best way to arrive at feeling pride in who we are, instead of feeling shame for what we can’t control. This is the difference in the medical vs the social models of disability.

Pronouncements aside, disability Pride Month puts a focus on attempts to find pride in ourselves as people with disabilities (marked with a literal disability pride flag first created by Ann Magill in 2019), in how we can be proud of who we are, despite what we’ve been told and gone through. And in all we’ve contributed and continue to offer the world, that we’re valued as human beings.

Throughout this episode, we shared a wide array of viewpoints on whether to celebrate being disabled. If anyone has any feelings on how to better feel pride in being disabled (if you think Disability Pride Month should or should not be celebrated), or if you have any possible Outlook t-shirt design ideas, always feel free to email us: [email protected]

Check out the article quoted in this episode from The New York Times by friend of the show M. Leona Godin:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/16/opinion/blind-ableist-language.html

And listen to our recent appearance on the AT Banter podcast which we highly encourage you subscribe to here:

https://atbanter.com/2022/07/06/at-banter-episode-292-brian-and-kerry-kijewski

“Even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then”

—Medical technician from Awaiting Tiresias

Awaiting Tiresias is the short film, loosely based on our guest’s story of disability and gender, this week on Outlook On Radio Western.

Dr. Heather(H) May is a director and professor of theatre at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. May shares from their recognized platform of privilege as a white faculty member on the lands of the Haudenosaunee and on the intersectionalities of disability, gender, and race among other identities.

Who is this Tiresias character anyway?

On the show this week,, we discuss that along with retinitis pigmentosa (rp) and the complicated business of both diagnosis and accommodation, the spectrums of blindness and gender, and how it was to create the audio descriptions for the multiple projects through theatre and filmmaking.

May (they/them) describes themself as: Scholar, artivist, professor, director, collaborator, dreamer, and true believer in the power of theatre to transform lives.

Go here to view Awaiting Tiresias, the short biographical film we discuss on Outlook:

https://vimeo.com/719429242

And to find out more about them, Awaiting Tiresias, and other projects such as a retelling of the classic Hansel and Gretel fairytale and a series of puppetry skits about the 2020 US elections, go to H’s website:

https://www.drheathermay.com

It’s graduation season and our guest this week is a recent Masters of Counselling Psychology graduate at University of Victoria in British Columbia on Vancouver Island.

We met Kyla Berry when she attended the 2022 National All-Virtual Canadian Federation of the Blind Convention in May and invited her on Outlook.

On the show this week, we talk to Berry about how she became interested in counselling, coming from a biology background at home. We hear more about what two out of three on this episode have, an artificial eye. Guess which two.

We learn about Kyla’s years of study, about the options and accessibility at a smaller program and campus, and what she wants to do with her degree going forward.

So much to learn from her and plenty more left to get into on future episode appearances with us. Kyla Berry brings us along on the upds and downs, but we didn’t even get time to go too far into her other medical conditions, but as school is out for summer in most places, it’s important to remember that many students manage to get through their education while living through/with multiple medical emergencies and chronic conditions, no matter how long it takes.

We’re back for a Mixed Bag Part II with all variations of Father’s Day, already halfway through 2022.

This week on Outlook, we talk bat caves and finding braille at the ROM, yet not on university bathrooms, and the complicated business of the travel urge,

Kerry tells of a new author friend named Nicole who visited her and Brian and Kerry together read a statement by Penny Leclair (a guest from last year) on June being National Defblind Awareness Month.

Kerry also shares about some of the presentations at the recent Virtual Braille Symposium put on by Braille Literacy Canada.

Right around what is the longest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere, on seasons and friends, old and new.

Check out Kerry’s Story featured on the Kidney Foundations’ website:

https://kidney.ca/Support/Kidney-Community/Stories/ON/Kerry-s-Story

And check out Nicole’s website for her book:

http://emptyuterus.org

It’s been a while since our last Mixed Bag Monday episode with only us two, but we’re back again with our mixture of topics.

On Outlook this week, we talk unforeseen poles leading to ambulance rides and stitches, reflecting on our experience of kidney failure with a recent study on childhood medical trauma done out of the B.C. Children’s Hospital, and continual election day inaccessibility during Ontario’s June 2nd’s provincial elections.

(Also, there’s talk of Luminato Festival Toronto. It ends after a two week run, but there’s always lots of interesting arts and artist info available anytime.)

All month long, (all of 2022 actually), Kerry will be spotlight celebrating marking her 25th year with a kidney from our father so stay tuned for more to come. While we’re realizing more and more the impact medical treatments have on children, including us at those early ages, organ transplant has made both our lives way better.

Here’s a link to the study we speak about in this episode:

https://bcchr.ca/news/mental-toll-organ-transplant-children-and-families

And check out Luminato Festival’s website:

https://luminatofestival.com

June is Father’s Day month in North America, but this year is a special one - featuring a father/daughter connection like no other.

This week, on Outlook, we speak with our father, for his debut on the show, as June 5, 2022 marks 25 years since he gave a kidney to Kerry when she was a teenager.

We discuss themes of ancestry and family with our father, Bob, whose parents were immigrants/settlers in Ontario, Canada after World War II.

Our father has always instilled in us the value of family and knowing where we come from. This week, we hear from him about being raised by immigrant parents, being the youngest brother and son, and about how the start of his partnership in marriage happened with our mother, how they’ve been a team ever since, like when they discovered their two youngest children had been born with a genetic eye condition nobody saw coming.

So when we were both diagnosed with kidney disease in our youth, both our parents stepped up to donate a kidney and his is still working as Kerry’s kidney, a quarter of a century later.

So join us to hear about the kind of solid man and provider our father has always been and his outlook on what his parental role has been, along with the things that have made him who he is. It’s a celebration of fathers for the month of June.

And also check out this archived interview we did with his other half, our mother, for Mother’s Day back in 2019:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2019-05-13-mothers-day-feat-our-mom-janet/id1527876739?i=1000488226654

Singer/song writer and author Heather Hutchison now, will think of herself during the toughest moments of these last few years, as if it were another girl entirely:

“She’s been so mean to herself for so long. And if we talked to our friends the way we talk to ourselves, we wouldn’t have any.”

It’s been six months since we spoke with Hutchison about her memoir, released a year ago: Holding On by Letting Go.

Since then, the January 28 release of her new EP, If I Could came out, a sort of companion to the book, a soundtrack to the memoir and her experiences in a psychiatric hospital during Covid.

During Heather’s second time appearing on Outlook, we discuss her presence on TikTok since the release of her book, on the creation of If I Could and its four songs (+ one radio edit), and the great need for more self compassion for us all.

At one time, Heather thought she was done making music, but after everything she would go on to write about in Holding On by Letting Go, she would again one day find herself sitting down at the piano. Join us this week with Hutchison as she performs two of the songs found on this EP live from her piano and her Vancouver Island home studio, live into the Radio Western studios.

Find more about Heather, social media links included, by visiting her at her website:

https://heather-hutchison.com

And check out Heather's new EP, If I Could, on all streaming services or purchase on Bandcamp. Nothing beats supporting new music and if you buy from Bandcamp you'll receive a sample from Heather's memoir which was the inspiration for the EP:

https://heatherhutchison.bandcamp.com