Getting your first guide dog is a challenging, exciting, life changing thing, as the two of us both know very well. We find out about this and more from this week’s guest on Outlook.

Jinnie Saran has been a youth representative and now mentor, with an organization out of British Columbia, Canada known as Blind Beginnings, along with her work with the Camp Bowen Society.

Today we speak with Jinnie about how she researched and chose The Seeing Eye (the oldest guide dog school in North America), on the lack of representation in literature and media which has Jinnie exploring her options studying English/creative writing/journalism/history/editing, and on matters surrounding diversity and identity as we grow into who we are.

During June and Pride Month, pride and this discussion has us exploring intersectionality, with one of the members on the recent panel, “In Their Own Words,” from our recent Canadian Federation of the Blind convention. Finding pride in living as blind people and in our own abilities takes time and effort, but Jinnie is a part of Blind Beginning’s Limitless podcast and all three of us agree that it’s better to ask “how can each of us do the things we want to do” rather than stopping at “can’t”.

“No” to limits and “yes” to a greater level of representation and accessibility, nothing stopping our latest Outlook guest from doing all the things.

Follow Jinnie on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/jinniesaran

Learn more about Blind Beginnings and both the Limitless podcast and blog where Jinnie is a contributor on their official site:

https://www.blindbeginnings.ca

Find the other Blog posts Jinnie writes for Camp Bowen here:

https://cobd.ca/author/pl-6019e53f1304e70012154dd5/

In the month following our 2021 first ever all virtual Choices and Goals Canadian Federation of the Blind Convention, we’ve been hard at work to bring together the highlights of this year’s event.

This week on Outlook, we continue with Part II, with us two, continuing on as the MC’s). From the weekend of convention, finishing off on May 1 where we led a diverse session day, full of insightful speakers (Natalina Martiniello from Braille Literacy Canada, Ben Fulton on housing discrimination, Doris Belusic and Kerry on The Blind Canadian, etc). In this episode of Outlook we share people’s big plans and ideas looking to the future for a better Canada for its blind citizens.

Listen to Part II with another door prize draw with a humorous element (awkward), some truly touching moments of our co-host/sibling relationship demonstrated from over the weekend, and a banquet lineup of speakers (CFB President Mary Ellen Gabias, NFB Rep Scott LaBarre), all highlighting, through shared experiences, the themes of making choices and the setting of/carrying out of goals.

From the awkward moments, to the touching ones, to the truly profound - all this was at the heart of the entire 2021 Canadian Federation of the Blind convention.

To learn more about the people and presentations featured on this episode, check out the convention webpage. Also included are imbedded YouTube videos from the event.

https://www.cfb.ca/save-the-date-2021-cfb-national-convention-choices-and-goals-april-30th-may-2nd-2021#

Videos can also be found directly from our YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/CFBdotCA

In the weeks since our 2021 first ever all virtual Choices and Goals Canadian Federation of the Blind Convention, we’ve been hard at work to bring together the highlights of this year’s event.

This week on Outlook, we begin with Part 1, with us two as the mc’s from the weekend of April 30th, welcoming a diverse two days of sponsoring companies and insightful speakers.

Door prizes (read with the help of an OrCam), accessible tech presentations (Canadian Assistive Technology, HumanWare), and the adrenaline filled few days of panels on intersectionality and parenting..

Listen to Part 1 with the exhibit hall presenters, funny mishaps of an all virtual Zoom convention, all with the theme choices and goals and the diversity we are talking more about across Outlook episodes. We also feature clips from speakers and organizations who have appeared on Outlook in the past (NNELS, Talk Description to Me, CNIB monopoly report).

Find out more about the presentations and speaker’s featured on this episode by taking a look at the convention page here:

https://www.cfb.ca/save-the-date-2021-cfb-national-convention-choices-and-goals-april-30th-may-2nd-2021

And we’ll be back, next week, with Part 2 of an extraordinary weekend including news of what the Canadian Federation of the Blind (CFB) and its flag ship magazine (The Blind Canadian) have been up to, about the value of braille literacy with Braille Literacy Canada (BLC-LBC), and a lawyer’s story of housing discrimination towards him as a lawyer with a disability. Not to mention our fabulous banquet to round out the festivities. Stay tuned.

This week, on Outlook, we spend the first half of the show sharing our own, personal thoughts on the recorded presentation from the recent Canadian Federation of the Blind convention we featured last week. In the second half, we feature another inspiring presentation from the convention; a panel Kerry put together called Diversity and Intersectionality: In Their Own Words.

At our 2021 first all virtual National Canadian Federation of the Blind CFB’s Choices and Goals Convention, back on May 1st, Daryl Jones (with expertise in economics) presented a report he’d put together on a topic we’re not so sure Canada is ready to hear but we are done being silent on.

The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) has been around for over 100 years now and has been developing a monopoly all across services and programs and products for the blind, all while we who are blind in Canada feel less heard and more and more misused as charity cases, requiring large amounts of sympathy and even pity toward us, in order to keep the donations coming. We want better for ourselves and our future than being in a parent/child relationship that’s terribly uneven.

The first half of today’s show is us talking about the changes we’d like to see, for all blind people in Canada and how the CNIB has a systemic issue of misrepresenting blindness as a sad state of affairs to the public. We know progress doesn’t happen overnight, but we’re hoping to see a change going forward.

The second half of today’s show is a replay of another session from our recent convention, a diversity panel called “In Their Own Words” which consisted of three panelists who came together to speak about their other intersectionalities, and how those crisscross with the blindness we all have in common. Talking more openly about what makes us “us," as individuals is the kind of progress that makes inclusion a reality.

So check out both halves, both topics as they mean a great deal to us here at Outlook.

With any thoughts on either of these subjects, you can always send us an email. We’re always happy to have an open and honest dialogue with listeners. So feel free to send us a message by emailing [email protected].

And along with listening to last week’s episode where Daryl presents the report, you can read the full paper here:

https://www.cfb.ca/blind-canadian-december-2020#monopoly

Special episode of Outlook today and we’d appreciate it, more than usual, if you’d listen and then share this one around. This week’s episode is full of facts and figures most Canadians and others don’t realize, many others don’t think should be said out loud.

At our recent, 2021 first all virtual national Canadian Federation of the Blind’s Choices and Goals convention, Mr. Daryl Jones (sighted ally) presented a report he’d prepared. It was one of the highlights of the event, judging by the questions that came in after from conference attendees, but we knew it could also ruffle some feathers.

Titled “CNIB: Canada’s 100-Year Monopoly”, finally, someone has done his research, helped give backing to how it feels being blind in Canada today. Mr. Jones has laid everything out, all the reasons why many of us believe the current system for supporting the blind in Canada is not working. It’s not easy for many of us to say it, to pretty much rock the boat when many do depend on the present situation, but a monopoly isn’t good for anyone this organization is meant to serve.

This report is something too, a glimpse for the sighted population, to really listen and learn how it really is for Canada’s blind population. And so we’re presenting Daryl’s presentation on the report, along with a question period at the end, where several blind Canadians make their own thoughts known, adding to a chorus of voices we hope will be heard.

To read the full report, go here:

https://www.cfb.ca/blind-canadian-december-2020#monopoly

The two of us at Outlook took a week off, for an excellent reason, to MC the 2021 Canadian Federation of the Blind Convention. This year, our theme was Choices and Goals and this theme has felt rather fitting in these strange times, us hosting from home in our first all virtual convention weekend, April 30th to May 2nd.

We’re back, this week with an all new show, as we return to one of our mixed bag episodes, a May Mixed Bag with the two of us, talking our first vaccines and what it takes to plan and execute an online event, with a wrap-up on the first four months of 2021 and what we're both lookking forward to now that convention is behind us for another year.

To quote our sister sibling on this week’s episode of Outlook, to describe her brother, she says:

“He’s the self starter of self starters.”

We like to ask this question, to describe the other sibling, on each April’s Sibling Month shows. We would say that about them both, as we wrap up our month of celebrating sibling pairs who are both blind, as we two sibling hosts are as well.

Maggie and Erik are friends of ours we’ve known for almost twenty-five years, from summer camp to guide dog school in the 90s.

On this episode we talk about our memories of a camp for blind children in northern Ontario, about growing up in a big family with much younger and sighted siblings, and about the stresses put on the two of them, both blind in the family, bouncing around from public school to a school for the blind. We talk bullying, missing home and family, and about how to find happiness and fulfillment in a world where blindness and the blind, both treated with kid gloves most of the time, makes it difficult to find a way in the world.

From fear of dogs to fatherhood, check out this final sibling series episode of April for all this and more and we’ll return with Outlook, again, in May.

Last but not least, consider checking out the first “virtual” convention of the Canadian Federation of the Blind happening from Friday, April 30 to Sunday, May 2. You can read through the full agenda and find more info at:

https://www.cfb.ca/save-the-date-2021-cfb-national-convention-choices-and-goals-april-30th-may-2nd-2021

Attending a residential school for the blind and deaf-blind, seeing hide nor hair of your family over nights, until the weekends came.

Check out our third week of sibling stories, tales from pairs of siblings, both blind with our discussion with Rob (second Outlook appearance) and his sister Jackie.

We discuss their age gap and what that meant for their sibling bonding, about their experiences attending W. Ross McDonald School in Brantford, here in Ontario. We talk Rob’s musical instruments and playing through the floor of the same apartment building they both live in to entertain his big sister.

We talk Dharma & Greg, Hamfest and amateur radio, and the many transitions in life and what it means to have a sibling who gets it.

What is too young to send your child to boarding school anyway? Music and TV were important, have been important outlets for these guests we’re speaking to this week.

Follow Rob’s dream for an inclusive musical hub with his website:

https://www.themelodychamber.com

And his Facebook music page can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/robctg

No one messes with my sibling but me!

This week, on Outlook, it’s the second week of April and our Siblings Series shows featuring sibling pairs who are both blind and the above line sums up the lovely sibling bond vibe that our latest guests illustrate with ease.

Jessica and Zoe are Mexican-American, blind siblings, from Texas. Jessica loves tea and Zoe plays a flute on air during our interview.

Also, Zoe shares with us her story of coming out as trans gender and Jessica’s thoughts on what it was like to watch her sibling finding a way through it all.

Fighting one day and “thick as thieves” the next. That is what it’s like to have a sibling and us four siblings have a lot in common, starting with our eye condition. We discover this connection and more in this week’s episode.

It takes two: best sister in the world or a kick in the head in the womb.

This April, on Outlook, we’re doing a series on sibling pairs who are blind such as us two hosts indeed are. April 10th is National Sibling’s Day and our first pair in the series are twins Jessica and Jocelyn Gladysz of British Columbia.

We asked each sister to describe the other and the answers were both sweet and fun, along with their lively descriptions of growing up in a small, remote B.C. town and trips into Vancouver to ride the Sky Train, the creative projects they came up with on cassette as kids, and their mission, as adults, to help other people feel less alone and to realize one’s capabilities and potential.

Growing up, they’d describe themselves as “misfits,” but they know they’ve been lucky to have each other to lean on. They now live on Bowen Island and they speak to us this week about the ways they express themselves with song and the plans, in the works, to provide the kinds of supportive camp experiences that shaped and continue to shape who they are and the work they do.

To register/donate to their virtual talent show, go here:

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/pacific-training-centre-for-the-blind-society/events/a-salute-to-summer/

And for more info on Camp Bowen and The Pacific Training Centre for the Blind, check them out at the following links:

https://campbowen.ca

https://bowenislandcentre.ca

https://ptcb.ca