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In this 69th Triple vision show, recorded this past August, we turn our attention to snow sports and the annual Ski For Light (SFL) events in Canada and the US. In this episode we talk to Chris Gould, President of Black Hills Ski for Light, as well as our own Sylvia Jonas who is the Black Hills blind representative for the event. The South Dakota SFL has been taking place since 1979 where its debut featured 31 participants and about the same number of volunteers. Now, 47 years later, it draws between 100 - 150 participants and about 200 volunteers! Sylvia and Chris talk about organizing and taking part in the four-day extravaganza featuring, to name a few of the activities, cross-country and downhill skiing, sit skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, and even ice-rink bumper boats! This season the Black Hills Ski for Light is taking place between January 24-28, 2027 and you can now register at bhsfl.org. Canada’s own SFL will be held in Canmore, Alberta, between January 24-30 2027, and registration is also open at skiforlight.ca. "You can find people from all occupations. I have met students, there’s a school for the blind in North Dakota and they bring a lot of participants. There are professionals. You meet people from different countries, from Norway, from England, from Canada. There are people coming from all over and they’re all just incredible people."

In our 68th episode the Triple Vision team changes its focus somewhat to start telling personal stories of Canadians who are blind or visually impaired. In this first episode we highlight the life and music of Lucas Haneman and his band the LH Express. From Ottawa, Lucas has been playing guitar since he was six years old. In his own words, his life has been “all music all of the time”. Lucas is now joined in his musical journey by his wife, Megan Laurence, and the two, under the name LH Express, have put out 4 studio albums, with a 5th due in October. Listen to this episode as Lucas talks about his musical life and his dedication to his family. You may also be surprised about what LH Express actually means. “If you want to be a musician you have to really, really love it” says Haneman. “You have to kind of eat, sleep, and breathe it. Sometimes it has to keep you up at night. For me it was just all of those things. Ever since I could start making money, even a small amount of money playing live, it was always the thing I wanted to do.”

In this 67th podcast we continue our discussion with blind Americans who share with us their lived experience. Christine Grassman, a conflict resolution specialist living in Virginia, gives us a candid interview of what life has been like for her. She has a fascinating story of being, essentially discriminated against, in one of her first full-time jobs, before landing on her feet with the Randolph-Sheppard program. Throughout the podcast Christine shares her life experience as a wife, mother, dragon boat racer, First Aid Instructor, author, and target shooter. She discusses the limitations of the Americans with disabilities Act. She recounts situations where interactions between blind Americans and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have led to one death and several injuries. "I would say that its extremely unlikely that most people would think the same about any other marginalized group. And say, oh well, of course they are good at that particular job because they are working with their particular group, or where their interest lie, or whatever that happens to be. And so, we as people with disabilities really have a hard time breaking out of that whole system where we’re kind of marginalized into particular jobs and particular sectors of employment."

In this 66th episode of Triple Vision, the team talks with Jeff Tom, a retired lawyer for the California legislature, and past President of the California Council of the Blind. Jeff is also a current Board member of the American Council of the Blind, and the Chair of it’s Advocacy Steering Committee. For some time now Triple Vision has wanted to know about some of the differences in advocacy and social participation in the US compared to Canada. Now seemed like a perfect time as blind Americans are facing down a federal administration which has it’s sights on rolling back diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. This episode is being hosted between Karoline and guest host Sylvia Jonas, Sylvia herself having been born and raised in California, and now living in Canada for the past 15 years. Tune in for an interesting look at the history of blindness advocacy in the United States, and the current pressures that that advocacy is now under. “Clearly in the united States, for a long, long time, interest group politics has been the way things get done. Interest group politics within the two-party system construct does promote the ability for all groups, if they can advocate harmoniously and really get themselves together to make a difference, especially around the margins”.

In this 65th episode the Triple Vision Team tackles the complicated issue of Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID. In 2021 Canada’s parliament revised its MAID legislation to allow for MAID in circumstances other than a death being foreseeable and imminent. As a result, MAID is now available to Canadians who have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition", which can include a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability. This change has opened the doors to many ethical discussions about possible implications for the disability community. We invite Dr. Mahadeo Sukhai into a conversation about this. Mahadeo is well qualified on this topic as Chief Operating Officer of IDEA - STEM, an organization which focuses on accessibility and inclusion of persons with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health care. He is also an Adjunct professor in the School of Medicine ophthalmology at Queen’s University, as well as faculty in the Business Administration Technology program at Ontario Tech University, and in Inclusive Design at OCAD University. "If we believe, in the disability community, that we have a right to oversight of our own bodies, then we have to acknowledge that if someone’s been given all of the information they need and this is a choice that they choose to make, we as a disability community can’t object. We can say, are we sure that there’s been appropriate levels of information provided. We can say, are we sure that there’s been appropriate consideration for all of the barriers and how those barriers exist and how those barriers play into lived experience. But ultimately, if we’re sure the person is making a choice, and its their choice to have made, we can argue with the outcome of the choice, because it might not be what we would choose, but we can’t necessarily argue with the fact that they have the choice."

To start 2026 the Triple Vision team speaks with Mike Morrice, the disability and Inclusion critic for the Green Party of Canada. Mike was the Member of Parliament for Kitchener Centre between 2021 and 2025 when he pushed hard on behalf of Canadians with disabilities to ensure the Canada Disability Benefit would become a reality. In this month’s podcast he talks with us, a day before the federal budget dropped last November, about how disappointed he was with the eventual benefit, as well as the Liberal Government’s track record on disability, climate change, and commitment to alleviating poverty in Canada. “The fact is that it’s expensive to leave people in poverty. The health care costs, any number of different societal costs, are significantly higher wen society, or a country, chooses to leave people in poverty. That’s what’s being done, disproportionately, when it comes to the disability community. I think it’s an embarrassment that, in a country as wealthy as ours, that we are not doing better by the disability community, and economically. It disadvantages us as a country.”

In triple Vision’s 63rd episode we tackle the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion. President Trump’s second term has placed DEI under attack in the United States, and there are rumblings of discontent in Canada around the practice as well. To answer some of the questions around this, Karoline and Peter speak with Varsha Naik of the Regional Diversity Round Table (RDR). Located to the west of Toronto, RDR’s mandate is to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion amongst some of the largest organizations in the area. WE ask Varsha what is the continuing value of DEI in the face of cutbacks to immigration, as well as where is accessibility in this conversation? “We are creating a lack of acceptance. We are creating a polarization in our communities. We are creating communities where hate will fester. We will be looking at an eventual violent society and that’s not where we want to go.” Please join us for this exciting and stimulating episode of Triple Vision!

In this fourth and final episode for Disability History Month, the Triple Vision team talks with Ma-Nee Chacaby about her book "A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa Cree Elder". Co-written with Mary Louisa Plummer, the book won Canada Reads 2025 as the "one book to change the narrative". In this compelling podcast Ma-Nee talks about why she wrote the book, and the values which are important to her, including taking care of the land and the importance of telling your own story. She also talks about her long journey of discovery of who she is as a two-spirit person. "I also wanted First Nations people to start writing their story. Lots of people in this planet – I’m not blaming anybody – but lots of people in this planet always say things about First Nations people, when they say things about the way we live our lives, and who we are. So I always say, you know you should write your story. Just tell the truth, what it was like when you were growing up". Don’t miss Ma-Nee telling it exactly the way it is, and when you need more, be sure to pick up her book!

In this third podcast in Disability History Month, Triple vision contributors Vic Pereira and Diana Brent discuss the autobiography "Stars Come Out Within" by the much loved Canadian children’s author Jean Little. Little wrote over 50 books, many of them dealing with the topic of disability, writing about the topic long before writers began to treat kids with disabilities as their own persons, with their own agency. Born with a visual impairment herself in 1932 in Japan, Little struggled all of her life to fit in – caught between the worlds of the sighted while not quite fitting into the community of individuals with vision loss. Despite her struggles, however, she left behind a treasure trove of published works which include novels, picture books, poetry and short stories. Little identified with the 19th century poet, Emily Dickinson who wrote the poem which starts with, "We grow accustomed to the Dark" and contains the title of her book "Stars Come Out Within". "We do develop strategies, and we do learn what it is like to live as someone with partial vision or totally blind - as where someone who shows up for an event and puts on a blindfold they don’t know the strategies that we’ve developed or what we’ve learnt to do. She touched upon that, that she is going to learn how to do it so she realize that there are ways to do things. They might be slightly different. They might not be the same. I think she learnt that from her students."

In this second podcast for Disability History month, and Triple Vision’s 60th episode, host Hanna Leavitt speaks with Miguel Agayo of the Accessibility Hamilton Alliance about the book “The blind Mechanic”: The Amazing Story of Eric Davidson, Survivor of the 1917 Halifax Explosion”. Written by his daughter, Marilyn Davidson Elliott, the book is a biography of a pioneering Haligonian who defied all expectations to take up car mechanics. In 1917 Eric was two years old and playing in front of the window of his Halifax home when two ships collided leading to what at the time was the world’s largest non-nuclear explosion. Approximately 2,000 individuals were killed, and 9,000 injured. Eric was one of 37 people who lost his vision that day. He went on to attend the Halifax School for the Blind, but unconventional, he defied all expectations of him becoming a washing machine repair man and followed his father and brothers into the field of car mechanics. He worked as a mechanic in Halifax, Toronto and Ottawa and lead the way in breaking the stereotype of what blind Canadians are capable of. Join Hanna and Miguel as they discuss the historical context of the Halifax explosion and the extraordinary life of Eric Davidson in this month’s podcast. "He continually took the engine apart, and put it back together again to create a mental map of what goes where. He also experimented by disconnecting a part, listening to the engine, feeling its vibration. … He would listen to find what made that noise, what made the vibration, what made that smell."

September is Disability History Month in the city of Hamilton. This September the Triple Vision team is collaborating with the Accessibility Hamilton Alliance and students from McMaster University to bring listeners a podcast per week focussing on disability history as told through books. In this first podcast Ruth Vallis talks about her book Love is Blind which details her life as one of the first eight students to be integrated into Toronto’s regular classrooms in 1969. She then goes on to talk about her education in England as a physio therapist and her working life at the top rehabilitation clinic in Toronto. "maybe someone who could see could look around and see what is going on here, not for blind people. So that was very, very challenging. And it almost overcame me. I almost wanted to not live anymore. But suddenly I got a grip and things got better. By the time I graduated I could have stayed living in England." Triple Vision especially wants to thank Tim Nolan, director of the Accessibility Hamilton Alliance, and the students who helped out with preparing and editing these podcasts – Ava Antolic, Enya Lee and Amy Jun. Thank you very, very much! We literally could not have done this without you!

This is the second part of a two-part series where the Triple Vision team and members of its advisory committee sit down with Angela Bonfanti, the new CEO of CNIB to talk about where the organization is going. We get into the topics of the high unemployment rates of persons who are blind, deafblind, and partially sighted, and how the organization’s come to Work program is trying to address this. Angela also spends some time talking about the importance of integration, indicating that “We can do more together than apart”. Finally, she hints that CNIB is changing its approach to technology. "At some point we were trying to create the technology, then buy the technology. I think those days are done for us. I think where we want to be right now is in the tech training and the tech testing area. I think that is going to remove many more barriers for the community that we serve."

In a two-part series the Triple Vision team and guests sit down with CNIB’s newest Chief Executive Officer, Angela Bonfanti, to talk about what CNIB is, and where it is going. In August 2024 Bonfanti became the organizations’ first female leader. In this first of two podcasts the team brings in two members of its advisory committee, Marcia yale and Vic Pereira to help guide the discussion. We have a frank conversation with Angela starting with the TV podcast that was pulled down two years ago, and then we move on to other issues such as whether CNIB is an organization of the blind or for the blind, and what is the future of the Toronto hub. "I think that the sentiment was that this was not the full story, that it did not give us an opportunity to give the audience the facts, and that there was a focus on the numbers alone during an exceptional year. We felt from what I remember, just that it was really unfair."

In our episode 56 the Triple Vision team turns its attention to an issue which it has been wanting to highlight for some time now, the increasing rates of guide dog refusals in Canada. On December 21, 2024 Jessica Rathwell tried to board a bus from Surrey BC to Kamloops to meet her family for Christmas. To her shock the bus driver refused to let her board because she said that Jessica had not given the bus company 48 hours notice, that the bus was full and they needed to block off 4 seats in advance to accommodate her. Jessica literally took a stand, refusing to move and holding up the bus for an hour in order to demand that her rights be respected. For that she has been banned from the bus company for life. Despite over fifty years of guide dog legislation and human rights jurisprudence, many Canadian guide dog handlers are saying that guide dog refusals are getting more numerous, rather than less. Through Jessica telling her story the Triple Vision team starts to unpack this deteriorating situation of guide dog access in Canada. "The only reason I left was because she told me, calmly, that I should so I did. I went with them and they put me in the back of their car like a criminal. They didn’t cuff me, but they put me in the back, so I now know what the back of a cop car looks like."

This month the Triple vision team has fun with one of our favorite podcasts, Happy Hour! In this episode we set aside some of the thornier issues about living with blindness in Canada, and tell stories about the lighter side! With guests Kaye Leslie, Sylvia Jonas, Vic Perera, and Triple Vision members Charlie Ayotte, Karoline Bourdeau and Peter Field we relax over a beverage of choice and talk about guide dogs, guide dog schools, travel, trains, and the good, if somewhat misguided, intentions of strangers. Somewhere in the midst of all of this Charlie even talks about what its like to be in the middle of a terrorist attack! So join us in this fun and relaxing trip around the lighter side of blindness. So cheers to happy hour, and have one on us!