5th Annual Disability Pride Celebration in Toronto

TORONTO — To mark the 5th annual disability pride celebration in Toronto,
Simply People: Celebrating Our Lives & Identities, hundreds will gather at
Nathan Phillips Square on July 22 from 5:30PM to 9:00PM. This free outdoor
event is open for all to attend (rain or shine) and the guest speakers will
include the Honourable David C. Onley, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario,
Toronto Mayor David Miller and Toronto City Councillor Adrian Heaps.

The evening will be filled with live performances and guest speakers. There
will be many display tables by various organizations/groups, along with an
experiential learning workshop by diversityworX.

On stage, performers with/without disabilities include: Humorist Libby Thaw,
Country Music Singer Christina Doyle, Comedian Nick Reynoldson,R&B Singer
Shel-B, DJ Ro, Comedian Andre Arruda, Fire & Black (band) and Pianist JP
Pampena (accompanied on guitar by Raj Tribhuwan).

“Our vision is to bring as many people together to celebrate our lives and
identities, in an inclusive environment of positive synergies and attitudes
of being proud,” says Uzma Khan, one of the founders and the lead organizer
of this year’s event.

“The bonds that we have created over the past several years have assisted us
in reaching this huge milestone in the disability rights movement,” says
Julia Munk, another founder of this event.

This event is brought to you by Canada-Wide Accessibility for Post-Secondary
Students (CANWAPSS) and friends of CANWAPSS, including LinkUp Employment
Services, Abilities Arts Festival, VoicePrint, Easter Seals Canada (Access 2
Entertainment) and diversityworX.

ASL interpretation, attendant care and transcription services will be
available onsite.

For more information about this outdoors event, please e-mail the organizers
at simplypeople@canwapss.com.

5th Annual Disability Pride Celebration in Toronto

TORONTO — To mark the 5th annual disability pride celebration in Toronto,
Simply People: Celebrating Our Lives & Identities, hundreds will gather at
Nathan Phillips Square on July 22 from 5:30PM to 9:00PM. This free outdoor
event is open for all to attend (rain or shine) and the guest speakers will
include the Honourable David C. Onley, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario,
Toronto Mayor David Miller and Toronto City Councillor Adrian Heaps.

The evening will be filled with live performances and guest speakers. There
will be many display tables by various organizations/groups, along with an
experiential learning workshop by diversityworX.

On stage, performers with/without disabilities include: Humorist Libby Thaw,
Country Music Singer Christina Doyle, Comedian Nick Reynoldson,R&B Singer
Shel-B, DJ Ro, Comedian Andre Arruda, Fire & Black (band), Inertias Course
(band) and Pianist JP Pampena (accompanied on guitar by Raj Tribhuwan).

“Our vision is to bring as many people together to celebrate our lives and
identities, in an inclusive environment of positive synergies and attitudes
of being proud,” says Uzma Khan, one of the founders and the lead organizer
of this year’s event.

“The bonds that we have created over the past several years have assisted us
in reaching this huge milestone in the disability rights movement,” says
Julia Munk, another founder of this event.

This event is brought to you by Canada-Wide Accessibility for Post-Secondary
Students (CANWAPSS) and friends of CANWAPSS, including LinkUp Employment
Services, Abilities Arts Festival, VoicePrint, Easter Seals Canada (Access 2
Entertainment) and diversityworX.

ASL interpretation, attendant care and transcription services will be
available onsite.

For more information about this outdoors event, please e-mail the organizers
at simplypeople@canwapss.com

July 11, 2008

Hundreds to gather at Nathan Phillips Square on July 22nd at the 5th annual disability pride celebration in Toronto

TORONTO—To mark the 5th annual disability pride celebration in Toronto, Simply People: Celebrating Our Lives & Identities, hundreds will gather at Nathan Phillips Square on July 22 from 5:30PM to 9:00PM. This free outdoor event is open for all to attend (rain or shine) and the keynote speakers will include Toronto’s Mayor David Miller and Toronto City Councillor Adrian Heaps.

The evening will be filled with live performances and guest speakers. There will be many display tables by various organizations/groups, along with an experiential learning workshop by diversityworX.

On stage, performers with/without disabilities include: Humorist Libby Thaw, Country Music Singer Christina Doyle, Comedian Nick Reynoldson, R&B Singer Shel-B, DJ Ro, Comedian Andre Arruda, Fire & Black (band), Inertias Course (band) and Pianist JP Pampena (accompanied on guitar by Raj Tribhuwan).

“Our vision is to bring as many people together to celebrate our lives and identities in an inclusive environment of positive synergies and attitudes of being proud,” says Uzma Khan, one of the founders and the lead organizer of this year’s event.

“The bonds that we have created over the past several years have assisted us in reaching this huge milestone in the disability rights movement,” says Julia Munk, another founder of this event.

This event is brought to you by Canada-Wide Accessibility for Post-Secondary Students (CANWAPSS) and friends of CANWAPSS, including LinkUp Employment Services, Abilities Arts Festival, VoicePrint, Easter Seals Canada (Access 2 Entertainment) and diversityworX.

ASL interpretation, attendant care and transcription services will be available onsite.

For more information about this outdoors event, please e-mail the organizers at simplypeople@canwapss.com.

If you love the sound of planes, trains and automobiles…you will love my personal memoir of transportation called My Story of Transportation. It can be bought at http://stores.lulu.com/kakonged. Click on the link below.

my-story-of-transportation

Here are four pieces of the artwork I did for a website I had called “Salon Utopia” that I did as part of my graduate studies at Concordia University in Montreal.

Betsy was the receptionist of the virtual Salon Utopia

Example of people talking in online forum

Portrait of myself as a baby

Example of people who would come to virtual Salon Utopia

In the early 1980’s, when I was 10 years old, things changed at my school with the arrival of a new vice-principal. At O’Connor Public School in Toronto, Mr. Goldberg set up a close-circuit television studio. The show the students and Mr. Goldberg produced was called OCTV News.

In a small room of the school that used to be the teachers’ lounge, coffee makers and plastic cushions were replaced by an anchor’s desk and a camera as big as me. A few grade five students, myself included, rotated through the various production jobs. Sometimes I was the sound engineer, which meant putting the needle on the Beatles song, “Here Comes the Sun” – our theme music. Sometimes I was the announcer, which meant telling Angelikki to show up to the Peter Pan play rehearsals. She was playing Peter, and I was Wendy.

One “International Day,” we had to bring a dish from our heritage to be sampled by other students. Mr. Goldberg forgot it was International Day and didn’t write anything into our scripts about it for the OCTV News. That day I was co-announcing.

“Susan and Eric, just ad-lib about the International Day after the news,” Mr. Goldberg said seconds before we went on-air.

After the news, Eric asked me what dish I had brought in and I told him “matoke” – a common Ugandan meal made of steamed and mashed green bananas.

“Where is Uganda?” Eric asked.

“In Africa,” I said.

“Oh, Africa! I thought they ate people there, I didn’t know they ate food!” Eric said.

I almost burst into tears.

“I think there’s a lot you don’t know about Africa, Eric,” I said. “My uncles, aunts and cousins who still live there don’t eat people.”

“Well what is Africa like?” he asked.

I had only been to Uganda as a baby; I was born and raised in Canada.
My father came to Canada on a Commonwealth scholarship. When he returned to Uganda for a new job with a new wife and baby (that was me), Dictator Idi Amin was in power. We all escaped the country with only our lives.

I told Eric - and also about 500 other students who were watching OCTV - everything I knew about Uganda. I told them stories about my family who lived in a brick house, not a grass hut; who drove cars, not camels, and who ate matoke, rather than people. The response was phenomenal. Scores of students wanted to know more. They had questions, many of which I could not answer. I asked my teacher if my father could come to class and talk about Uganda. Soon afterwards, Dad was standing at the front of the class with my globe piggy bank, rattling change as he turned it to point out Uganda.

My father said we fed those students with knowledge of African people. I guess we did feed those kids at O’Connor a lot more than matoke.

Music to My Ears

Filmmaker Mikel Guillen is in production of a new project called “Music to My Ears.” It is being shot in Toronto. The film is in French and Guillen and I sat outside a marché to find out more about his film.

The best way to quit smoking is not start in the first place. It saddens me to see other people smoke around me – even more so than smoking myself. I guess there are worse things some of these people could be doing.

YouTube has become an important part of my teaching plans. There was a time when I would rely on DVDs and videos to give a visual element to my classes…however, more and more, YouTube has become important.

There are so many things you can show on YouTube that is easily accessible as long as you have an Internet connection in the classroom that is less cumbersome to find with DVDs and videos. This does not mean that DVDs and videos are something I would ever completely stop using in the classroom, they have just been minimized.

Now I see that it is possible to view uncut music videos on YouTube. Of course, for any teacher choosing to show something as this in the classroom, they would have to make sure that the content is appropriate for the class. Pre-screening of anything that is going to be shown in the class is extremely important to avoid embarrassing situations.

Sometimes I have had moments in the classroom where my students are the creators of videos on YouTube. This is always fun to do to get a chance for them showcase their work. The classroom then becomes like a mini theatre and all the students get a chance to see the work of their peers. This also works when doing blogs, podcasts and video podcasts as well. Airing the material in the classroom is like broadcasting in a small way. The students I teach in media need to get used to having their work on display and open to comments and critique.

All this to say that the technology that exists in classrooms now a days is wonderful and I feel so fortunate to have access to it. Classrooms really have changed a lot over the years. In my day, I was not even sending out e-mail to my professors – I did not even know what it was when I was in undergraduate classes.