Pre-Canada day

Yesterday we went to a pow wow in solidarity with protesters who have been camped out in front of our provincial legislature for the past four months; the Tespassers Pow Wow at the Justice for our Stolen Children camp. About 16% of the population of Saskatchewan identifies as Indigenous, while over 90% of boys and 98% of girls detained in the youth justice system are Indigenous. Between 66% and 89% (depending on where you get your stats) of kids in foster care in this province are Indigenous. Indigenous children are separated from their parents at alarmingly high rates. Institutional and individual racism, and a lack of understanding of the unfairness and inequality that a history of colonialism has created, are a huge part of the problem.

Grasping the magnitude of this problem breaks my heart. Canadians like to think of racism as more of an American problem than a Canadian one, but what I have seen is a huge unwillingness on the part of many White Canadians to acknowledge and address the issue. Particularly with respect to Indigenous peoples. 

So yesterday we celebrated “pre-Canada,” at an event highlighting the cultures of peoples who were here before settlers arrived. Maren was enthralled by the music and dancing, and danced along as much as she could. I hope that racism will be less of a problem in her generation, but the cycle is far from being broken.

A beautiful photo of the camp, taken by a friend.

 Meeting up with friends at the powwow, pretending to be cats.

Maren listening to music, with the teepees in the distant background.

And then today we celebrated Canada Day. I had mixed feelings about participating in the Canada Day festivities, but being completely comfortable, and completely consistent, is not really the point. And the particular way we celebrated was important to me.

Jeff, Maren, and I entered a 5K walk. For the first time, I entered a road race with my tricycle. I finished the walk in about 55 minutes,  and I was tired, but not wiped out for the rest of the day. It was 100% a success.



I have been working with volunteers from an organization called Tetra Society. They pair volunteers with knowledge about mechanics and making things, with people with disabilities who need adaptive equipment that is not commercially available. The volunteers have been working with me over the past several months to try to help me figure out a mobility aid that will work for me. Walkers, crutches, and manual wheelchairs don’t work well for me for various reasons - anything that requires me to use balance or certain kinds of coordination tires me out too quickly, my legs are stronger than my arms, and there are some major functional and safety issues with manual wheelchairs due to my lack of sensation on my right side. Power scooters work, but I don’t get any exercise. I wanted something that I could take in the car, could use indoors and outdoors, was seated, and provided a similar amount of exercise as walking. No commercially available options fit the bill.

We had meetings, brainstorming sessions, and I told them about all the things I have tried, and the problems with them. First they made a seated 3-wheeled kick scooter (adapted from a knee walker/scooter like people use after foot surgery), and I had super high hopes. But it didn’t work for me. I won’t go into the details of why it didn’t work for me, but it was an interaction between my limitations and the limitations of the device, and I was devastated. But the volunteers were unfazed. More meetings, more bainstorming, more fabricating and welding, and a second failure (I won’t go into detail on this either, but basically it was an attempt at making a walker with a seat kind of like bike seat). Then I took a step back, and thought about my trike, which almost worked in many ways, but not quite. What I thought were insurmountable problems with the trike, the volunteers had ideas for solutions to pretty quickly. They made some modifications and voila - I had a functional mobility device.

It has been pretty amazing. I can go for “walks” around the neighborhood, either independently or with other people. I can use it at work. And today I did a 5K, and Jeff was more tired out than me, which is how things used to be when we would go for long walks. It isn’t perfect, but it allows me to do things (with adaptations) that I used to enjoy, so I’ll take it :)