Just Something that Ticks Me Right Off!

Okay, so this isn’t a story about ODSP. I have been sick for about a month and it has not been a time when I have been interviewing people about their contributions. Just the same this story is in the same vein and it’s about how contribution is so frequently thwarted by all the tangential screw ups of the service system and the people who are trying to do “good”.

This particular “John” lives in a supported living service near the St. Lawrence Market area of Toronto. I met him approximately a year and a half ago when he first came to a visual arts program designed for people who have very limited use of their bodies and especially people who do not speak. John fits both of these criteria.

Even though John struggles to be understood, using a combination of pointing, grunting, smiling, head nodding, a voice producing machine, and a word book, it is clear that he has a remarkable amount of courage in regards to being out in the public and getting around. On more than one occasion he has arrived by subway and bus even though he was uncertain of the route and the overall trip would take him nearly two hours. He seems to be relatively comfortable getting people’s attention and simply letting them figure out what the problem is and solve it with him. In this way he gets himself from A to B.

Nevertheless John frequently does use Wheeltrans. After all this parallel transport is designed to be able to be booked on a regular basis to go to the same place at the same time each week, giving the user an accessible and reliable means of transportation to his or her choice of participation.

Or so you would think.

Laser Eagles, the art program, used to take place in an Etobicoke Community Health Centre. At the end of the summer we moved to a nearby drop in facility as the community room of the CHC was frequently booked during our time slot.

Now understand this. We are artists. Yet because of our inability to access other facilities usually used by artists – both physical and financial inaccessibility – for six years we have relied on weekly three hour slots booked in health service related rooms to do our painting. Thus our “disability” yet again outweighs our other characteristics. Imagine being an artist and having only three hours a week when you could do your work?

Be that as it may, John, and other artists who use Wheeltrans, have frequently had to wait another two hours for their return bus. The pick up time is 3pm but for the internally motivated, unobvious reasons known only to dispatchers (if even them) John’s bus is never reliable for his return trip. In case you think this is peculiar to John, there have been at least three artists in the last six years who have quit the program because they could not tolerate the unpredictable waits. Just so you really get the picture, some of these artists would be returning to their support service residences during rush hour, which would extend their trip by another hour, which would mean they would arrive home three hours later than expected, which would mean that they would not get their dinner meal. On more than one occasion a Laser Eagle volunteer has gone to feed somebody a meal.

When we moved to the drop in centre John’s bus suddenly became very unreliable again. This is a common tendency of Wheeltrans when you change your drop off and/or pick up address. The trouble is there is nobody around at the drop in centre on a regular basis from 3-5pm. So suddenly John was no longer welcome because the drop in centre cannot take responsibility for waiting with him, neither can they legally leave him alone, although he would be happy to wait by himself.

Now this is something that Laser Eagles can figure out. We’ve done it before. But this is not how the service system approaches a real problem. Rather than finding someone to wait with John it was announced that he should not come to the drop in centre. Fortunately John doesn’t get messages he doesn’t like and he showed up anyway today, and his return bus arrived on time – thank God.

I hope you get my point. When it comes to being labelled disabled there are innumerable barriers to contribution. John has thrived as an artist. Over a very short period of time he has gone from having his “tracker”, (a volunteer who supports the artist to produce his work), do all the brush handling to holding his canvas in his lap and using his brushes in his own hands. He has gone from using only paint-by-number canvases to designing his own scenarios. His current tracker is a young man who is deeply moved by the opportunity to support him to paint and figure out his transportation issues.

I get angry – hot under the collar – when such obvious effort and inspiration is thwarted and undervalued. In the mid seventies the province spent 21 million dollars to create Wheeltrans. It’s been spending millions ever since to keep up a poor and ineffective parallel service. Why can’t John and others like him have a public system that actually works? Is he not a member of the public? John would take the subway if any of the subway stations near the Laser Eagles location were accessible. Why not?