• City Hall
  • Province House
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Investigation
  • Journalism
  • Commentary
  • @Tim_Bousquet
  • Log In

Halifax Examiner

An independent, adversarial news site in Halifax, NS

  • Home
  • About
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Commenting policy
  • Archives
  • Contact us
  • Subscribe
  • Donate
  • Manage your account
  • Swag
You are here: Home / Featured / DisabilityX: “people telling stories to illuminate their lives so we can see the commonality in all of us”

DisabilityX: “people telling stories to illuminate their lives so we can see the commonality in all of us”

January 28, 2019 By Jennifer Henderson 1 Comment

Left to Right: Paul Vienneau and Will MacPherson Brewer (town crier). Doug Rafuse and Kelly Leblanc in background. Photo: Jennifer Henderson

Part performance and part town hall meeting, “DisabilityX” attracted more than a hundred paying customers at The Bus Stop Theatre last week. If the laughter and applause that greeted the half-dozen performers is any indication, this first sold out event will not be the last. And it will need to find a larger, wheelchair accessible venue for the show in 2020.

“DisabilityX is people telling stories to illuminate their lives so we can see the commonality in all of us,” said Paul Vienneau, the Master of Ceremonies who presided over the evening from his wheelchair at centre stage. A crew filmed the event as part of a documentary about his successful crusade for a legislated Bill of Rights to improve accessibility to government services.

But while Vienneau has been a tireless advocate pushing both HRM and the Province to make transportation and housing more accessible for growing numbers of deaf and disabled people, the evening was more celebration than soapbox.

“We all know someone with a disability,” said town crier Will MacPherson Brewer who opened the evening with an enthusiastic announcement. Will was born with Down Syndrome. “It isn’t an abstract thing. It affects us all.”

Vienneau then introduced a friend whom he joked plays wheelchair basketball even worse than he does. (Tip: Don’t play this game unless you are very fit and aggressive). Eric Payne may or may not be much of a basketball player, but he could have a future in stand-up comedy. Payne has a prosthetic leg as a result of a motorcycle accident when he was 39. The former Navy man drew some knowing chuckles with his anecdote about working for Veterans Affairs in Charlottetown.  Co-workers repeatedly wanted to know “what they should call him.” An amputee? A disabled person? “Call me Eric,”he said. “Just call me Eric. That’s my name.”

Payne says he does not feel disabled and he resists being labeled. “I call you guys bi-peds,” he quipped. “Sometimes I see that look. People are looking at you and they are wondering what happened to you. Then they imagine what it would be like if it happened to them, and they are scared shitless!”

Adam Pelley is a writer and in his past life, a pro wrestler known in the ring as “Rockapelley.” In a dramatic spoken word performance, Pelley talked about moments of glory as a high school athlete, feelings of inadequacy at being cut from the team, and drifting into drug abuse followed by treatment for mental illness at the Abbie Lane hospital. “I wrestle with schizophrenia as I wrestle with the City: you can call schizophrenia my tag team partner,” Pelley read from his work.

One of the purposes of Disability X was to act as a “show and tell” for how to make events inclusive. A silent, short film about The Halifax Explosion was produced by people in the deaf community to help hearing people understand their world. As each storyteller came forward, an American Sign Language interpreter appeared beside them. A computer-assisted program projected their words in bold typeface on a screen behind the stage. The Facebook group is DisX Halifax.

Bedford native Robert Hessian suffered a life-altering brain injury in his late teens while playing hockey in California. His family was told he would not come out of the coma. But Robert did survive. He told the audience the next 10 years “was a long hard road back to something that resembled normal.”

Hessian spent time at the Nova Scotia Rehabilitation Centre. He had to learn to walk and talk again and that experience led him to attend university and tour facilities all over the world to learn how he could help others. Today he is the full-time caregiver and personal trainer for Doug Rafuse and Kelly Leblanc, adults with brain injuries who appeared onstage beside him.

Hessian has spent his last 25 years living and working with Doug Rafuse in the house Rafuse owns outside Windsor. Doug suffered a brain injury in a car accident that left him relying on a wheelchair and in a nursing home for decades. The 64-year old Rafuse uses a computer to communicate. Robert read aloud part of a letter Doug had written for the event:

“Robert and I work on my recovery every day. I have lost almost 100 pounds and with his help, I now walk everywhere. In 2000, I graduated high school with my equivalency. It isn’t easy but it has been worth it.”

Eighteen months ago, Kelly Leblanc also checked herself out of the nursing home where she had been living. (Hessian does not believe brain-injured people are likely to recover in long term care facilities). Like Doug, Kelly has made remarkable physical progress. The middle-aged woman has also lost more than 100 pounds. Her goal is to walk, and under Hessian’s intensive daily regime, she is now able to stand and navigate her way to the bathroom.

“We need to find a better way to support people with physical and cognitive disabilities,” Hessian told the crowd to warm applause. “Doug and Kelly are testaments to what is possible with hard work and proper support.”

Eric Payne is blazing a trail at the Nova Scotia Community College where he is currently enrolled in radio/television journalism. There is nobody quite like him…a point which emerged frequently throughout the evening.

A young woman in her 30s named Megan asked if anyone had any “tips” for dealing with the shame that accompanies feeling different or “broken.”

“We are all ‘broken,’” replied April Hubbard, one of the DisabilityX organizers. “I see broken as a badge of honour. It leads to things I would never have expected. We need to see and embrace it as an opportunity.”

Brave words. Even braver words by author Arundhati Roy ended a presentation by Alex Kronstein, an advocate for people with autism. Kronstein quoted Roy saying: “There’s really no such thing as ‘the voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”

For those who prefer to be heard, Disability X is helping to pump up the volume.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Abbie Lane Hospital, Adam Pelley, Alex Kronstein, April Hubbard, DisabilityX, DisX Halifax, Doug Rafuse, Eric Payne, Kelly Leblanc, Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), Nova Scotia Rehabilitation Centre, Paul Vienneau, Robert Hessian, The Bus Stop Theatre, Will MacPherson Brewer

About Jennifer Henderson

Jennifer Henderson is a freelance journalist and retired CBC News reporter. email: [email protected]

Comments

  1. Alex Kronstein says

    January 29, 2019 at 3:20 am

    Great piece, Jennifer. I should clarify though…..when Arundhati Roy says “the preferably unheard”, she does not mean people who prefer not to be heard. She means people whom the rest of the world prefers not to hear from.

    Log in to Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Mo Kenney. Photo: Matt Williams

Episode #18 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne is published.

Mo Kenney’s new record Covers is a perfect winter companion — songs from across the rock spectrum that she’s pared down to piano or guitar and turned them into sad ballads. She joins Tara to talk about choosing and arranging them, and opens up for a frank discussion of the alcohol dependency it took a pandemic for her to confront. Plus: Movies are back (again).

This episode is available today only for premium subscribers; to become a premium subscriber, click here, and join the select group of arts and entertainment supporters for just $5/month. Everyone else will have to wait until tomorrow to listen to it.

Please subscribe to The Tideline.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

About the Halifax Examiner

Examiner folk The Halifax Examiner was founded by investigative reporter Tim Bousquet, and now includes a growing collection of writers, contributors, and staff. Left to right: Joan Baxter, Stephen Kimber, Linda Pannozzo, Erica Butler, Jennifer Henderson, Iris the Amazing, Tim Bousquet, Evelyn C. White, El Jones, Philip Moscovitch More about the Examiner.

Sign up for email notification

Sign up to receive email notification of new posts on the Halifax Examiner. Note: signing up for email notification of new posts is NOT subscribing to the Halifax Examiner. To subscribe, click here.

Recent posts

  • City lawyer wins fight with Halifax Water over pipe under her property February 26, 2021
  • 10 new cases announced in Nova Scotia: new restrictions imposed in Halifax area February 26, 2021
  • You should get a COVID test, even if you have no symptoms February 26, 2021
  • What does a recovery of the tourism industry look like? February 26, 2021
  • Councillors approve staff plan to reduce — but not eliminate — use of pedestrian push buttons February 25, 2021

Commenting policy

All comments on the Halifax Examiner are subject to our commenting policy. You can view our commenting policy here.

Copyright © 2021