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Vancouver Sun

March 13, 2010

No sugar-coating for disability exhibit
Co-curator's trip out west parallels struggle to overcome obstacles in Out from Under

PNG / Catherine Frazee had to take a train through the U.S. to get to Canada because VIA Rail was unable to accommodate her and her wheelchair. Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann, Vancouver Sun

 

Out From Under: Disability, History, and Things to Remember
When: Open daily Mon to Fri, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sat and Sun, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., until March 21.
Where: University of B.C., Robson Square
Tickets: Free

For disability rights activist Catherine Frazee, the personal overlaps with the political even when she doesn't intend it.

That happened with Frazee's recent journey to Vancouver from Toronto for Out From Under, a unique exhibition on the social history of disability in Canada.

As one of its three curators, she felt it was important to be here for the exhibition's opening during the Paralympic Winter Games.

Frazee, the director of Ryerson's Institute for Disability Studies, can't fly for medical reasons having to do with living with spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic neuromuscular disease characterized by the degeneration of the motor neurons. When she travels, she is accompanied by an attendant and Patricia Seeley, her life partner.

The only option for her was to take the train.

Frazee was willing to make sacrifices to travel out west, such as sleeping in her electric wheelchair. She can't be separated from her wheelchair, which is uniquely customized to her body's needs. At times, for example, she has to tilt it slightly back to help with her breathing.

When she contacted Via Rail, she was told that she and her wheelchair had to travel separately.

"There was a failure to understand the intimate relationship between me and my chair," Frazee said in an interview.

"It might be an exaggeration to call it a form of life support, but it is pretty close. To be separated from my chair for four days was impossible. So we attempted to cajole, persuade, challenge VIA to find ways to solve the problem, to make it their problem and not my problem, but we were unsuccessful."

Like anyone faced with a roadblock, she decided to find a way to go around it. Everyone advised her to go south to the U.S. where Amtrak has sleeper cars adapted for people in wheelchairs. Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, the U.S. public transportation system has been required by law to provide physical access for disabled passengers.

From Toronto, Frazee and Seeley drove south to Chicago where they got on a train that had a railcar with an accessible room. They travelled across the U.S. to Seattle, where they rented a van with a ramp and drove north to Vancouver.

The irony of not being able to cross the country for a disability exhibition during the Winter Paralympic Games wasn't lost on Frazee, one of the country's most articulate advocates for the rights of the disabled.

"I felt a kind of sadness," Frazee said.

"The railway is such an integral part of the Canadian identity, I was looking forward to crossing the country and going to Vancouver. There was something magical about that. I felt a loss. But nevertheless I was very, very glad to get here."

On her journey across the U.S., Americans were constantly surprised that Frazee couldn't travel across Canada by train.

In Chicago, they got a little surprise before heading off on their cross-continental trip. The porter brought Frazee and her partner a little bottle of Amtrak champagne so they could toast the 1990 ADA, whose long title is "An Act to establish clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability."

"It was a lesson," Frazee said.

"In many ways, making a journey in this way may ultimately help raise awareness of the issue and help us get further reform in this country."

The reform Frazee refers to is an integral part of the story of the exhibition Out from Under at Robson Square.

The exhibition's unique idea was to organize history around 13 groups of objects that represented the untold political, social and personal stories of the disabled.

There's Mae Sophia Brown, for example.

In 1972, she became the first deaf-blind Canadian to earn a university degree when she graduated from the University of Toronto. The exhibition includes her brailler, a typewriter-like office machine she used to type out braille.

I couldn't help but marvel at how she typed out the equivalent of the 26 letters of the alphabet with only nine levers. Close by is her wristwatch. On its face, beside the Arabic numerals, are their equivalents in raised braille dots. Because the glass cover is open, it made me think of Brown herself opening the cover and feeling the time.

Another person I'd never heard of is Rev. Roy Essex.

His daughter Sheila caught polio and was facing a future in hospital should her chest-sized ventilator or cuirass break down and leave her unable to breathe.

He brought her home to be with her family and one day, the ventilator broke down as predicted. Essex found himself talking to the U.S. manufacturer, who helped him repair his daughter's cuirass by phone. He then spent the next 30 years as a volunteer servicing and repairing ventilators for the Ontario March of Dimes.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the exhibit to look at is called Naming, which is all about how language is used to classify and marginalize.

It includes a poster from a 1924 public education exhibit by the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene.

Influenced by the western world's eugenics movement, the committee used words such as "idiocy,"

"Mongolian imbecility," and "moron" to classify people and legitimize their forced confinement.

"Disabled people today remain wary of powerful people with good intentions," the exhibition says. "Wouldn't you?"

The exhibition also includes the best audio tour I've ever heard.

Designed to explain the exhibit for people with intellectual disabilities, it's clear, informative and straightforward without being condescending. It's formatted as a discussion with Jake Anthony, an autistic actor from Vancouver who is terrific.

The exhibition had its premiere in 2007 at the Abilities Arts Festival and was then showcased at the Royal Ontario Museum a year later.

Out from Under is social history by disabled people. It isn't history by victims, although it doesn't in any way sugar-coat what people with disabilities have and continue to experience.

It's history by a feisty, outspoken group of Canadians who refuse to stay forgotten.

"We felt as curators," said Frazee, referring to to Kathryn Church and Melanie Panitch, "and our contributors felt this, that it was really important to bring to the surface those stories, not to make everyone feel bad, but to make everyone realize the incredible resilience of disabled people, of what we have survived, shared.

"That is a very important part of declaring our place and demanding respect for what we have endured."

kevingriffin@vancouversun.com

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