Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

The past few days I have been busy preparing to head out of town (for real) early Thursday morning. The taxi is scheduled to pick me up at 5:15am! I am flying to Smithers to present on civic engagement and the importance of accessible transportation at SPARC’s “Let’s Talk Access – Community Dialogue on Accessibility in Rural Communities” to be held at the Hudson Bay Lodge.

The SPARC Board of Directors (I’m the Treasurer) then meets on Friday and Saturday morning. We also tour a First Nations’ village in Hazelton. I fly home on Saturday in time, hopefully, for our martial class at GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre.

I’ll be sure to post about my adventure. I’m curious to see accessible washrooms in another corner of the province!

In the meantime, please continue casting your daily votes so that I may be paid to blog for a year. It would be awesome to have 6000 votes upon my return home!

Catch y’all next week (once I catch up on my sleep)!

Sam Sullivan,
Mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia
(Photo credit: National Film Board of Canada)

Broadcast Premiere

Citizen Sam – Official Selection at Hot Docs 2007

Sam Sullivan was a local curiosity, the quadriplegic Vancouver city councillor in a pinstripe suite with a pipe dream of leading his shattered right wing party back to power. Then he decided to run for mayor.

As the campaign begins, Sullivan admits to giving addicts money to buy crack and heroin. His opponents call him a do-nothing politician, and a nut. The media write him off, while everyone tiptoes around the issue of his disability. Blending the rough and tumble of the campaign trail with tender moments from Sullivan?s personal life, Citizen Sam is equal parts love story, thriller, comedy and confessional.

October 7, 2007
10 pm ET/PT (repeats at 1am)
CBC Newsworld

Also available from the National Film Board

(Photo credit: Diego RB)

Hi and welcome to the Readers’ Café – a place to gather and to share. With miserable weather outside, tonight we are inside at Restaurante Maria MataMouro in Pelourinho, the old historic center of Salvador, Brazil. (If you have a photo of a favourite café that you’d like to share at a Readers’ Café, please let me know.)

Please join us and help yourself to a warm beverage of your choice. Then sit back and join in the conversation by posting comments below. Hit your internet browser’s REFRESH button to see new comments as others join in the conversation. All that I ask is that you respect others and keep it relatively family-friendly. Also, keep in mind that this is a public space, so share what you feel comfortable sharing publicly.

Yesterday I shared how Valeria Maltoni’s relatively short list of professional women bloggers has morphed into a supportive and inclusive online community. I love how a seemingly small action has snowballed into something larger than imagined. You never know where putting an intention into action will lead you or how it may benefit others.

Today’s conversation starter is:

Do you have a similar story where one action morphed into something larger than you ever imagined? Or, do you have an intention you have been meaning to act up; on, but need a little nudge in the right direction?

A few weeks ago, I shared the magical W-List, which began as a list of powerful PR and marketing professional women bloggers compiled by Valeria Maltoni and to which other bloggers have added, including Liz Strauss at Successful and Outstanding Blogs adding me. Since then, the list has taken on a life of its own, with results including a continuing conversation and meme, a wiki page, and a Facebook W List Group (registration required).

Sunny Cervantes, Confessions of a Marketing Addict, and Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing Blog, sparked a way to add value to the growing community: support and promote women bloggers by featuring a W List blogger each week on Facebook and discussing the blog. Sunny calls this “Sort of like Oprah’s Book Club except it’s our blogs.” The woman profiled then chooses the following week’s blog. How awesome is that! And what a great way to build community using social media!

Sunny kicked off this latest addition to the W List by profiling the Left Thumb Blogger. With so many truly amazing women bloggers that she could have chosen, I am sincerely humbled that she chose me. Being included in this community fills me with a feeling of warmth. Thank you, Sunny.

But, my intention of this post is not to boast about being the first blogger profiled on Facebook’s W List Group; but, rather to encourage you to take action on your ideas. You never what your idea may grow and evolve into or how it might impact others. What began as a relatively short list of powerful PR and marketing professional women bloggers has morphed into a supportive and inclusive online community. How powerful is that!

What idea have you been delaying taking action on? Who might be positively impacted if you were to take action? You’ll never know until you take action, so…go take action! And then join us tomorrow right here for Readers’ Café at 4-7pm pacific time to share the action you took and what further steps you plan to take.

In two weeks, I’ll be flying to Smithers for the Social Planning and Research Council’s (SPARC) board meeting on October 12th and 13th. I have also been asked to speak about my lived experiences around community involvement and transportation at the Accessibility Dialogue on the Thursday.

When the topic was given to me, a flood of memories came to mind about how Mom would toss my red manual wheelchair into the car and off I’d go to my weekly Brownie meetings or on a weekend family camping trip or down to the stables to go horseback riding.

When I got my first electric scooter back in Grade Eight, it was a new sense of independence for me. I no longer had to rely on others to push my wheelchair. I was so excited about the freedom to go where I wanted, whenever I wanted! It meant that I could go to my friend’s house around the corner by myself. And, Mom was still able to disassemble it and lift the parts into the van.

While at university, there became a need for me to have a more powerful scooter to get safely around campus. The scooter gave me greater independence in the sense that I could go further on my own. But, that independence came at a price. My Mom and friends could no longer easily toss my scooter into the vehicle like they did before.

Darrell and Glenda wheeling around False Creek, Vancouver, BC

Now, with my outside scooter, my world has shrunk to the accessible bus routes and Skytrain lines. I’d love to go horseback riding again, but there isn’t a Skytrain station within close proximity to the riding stables. I’d love to try sit-skiing atop Whistler Mountain, but the mere thought of trying to arrange transportation for both Darrell and I zaps my energy!

Drafting my speech for the Accessibility Dialogue, I realized how transportation for those with mobility disabilities actually entails two components: getting from Point A to B, and getting around once at B. And, unless you have the financial means to buy a lift-equipped (and, in our case, a chauffer), these two components are interrelated, often with a trade-off between the two. Also, that combined transportation can greatly impact one’s involvement in the community.

My greatest sense of freedom (other than being atop of a horse) is scooting down the sidewalk, in total control of where I am going, with a contagious smile across my face….until I run out of accessible sidewalk!