Reflection

I started using Facebook live from my balcony as a way to include people in sports and music going on at Lansdowne Park. Then it turned out people enjoyed it even when nothing special was going on.

I’m a night owl and before I go to sleep I will go live and just leave the video running on the city lights (it maxes out at 4 hours). Some people tune in as it is like watching the aquarium channel – but it’s also a way to view a sunrise.

My view does not capture sunsets, but depending on the weather, there are “sunrise reflections” that can be quite beautiful. I almost did not see this because it was at the end of a video when I had gone out for the day – fortunately I did take a quick scroll and found a remarkable sunset reflection that developed over about a 2 hour period, which I condensed into 60 seconds. The last 20 seconds is amazing. Enjoy!

PS: It’s also interesting to watch the cars on Bank Street (bottom left) or even people coming and going in the windows of the theatre (bottom right).

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2016

This silly little app did a pretty good job of capturing some key themes from 2016 – each individual photo might not be an actual “top ten memory” but they all represent aspects of my life with others and my journey as a person. I go deeper below!

The launch photo is a very appropriate tribute to how the Grey Cup Champion RedBlacks (and Fury, this should be an interesting year!) and living at Landsdowne has become such a feature of our lives. I can’t imagine living anywhere else! Watch this video closely (about 20 seconds in).

I can’t believe this happened in 2016, it seems so long ago. The Algonquin College Public Relations students hosted a series of events through their Dreams Worth Living campaign and raised over $25,000 for LiveWorkPlay. Their energy was contagious!  There’s probably a Dreams Worth Living metaphor about the wonderful lady I’m standing with there.

The Dow Honda, Kanata Honda, Star Motors golf tournament for LiveWorkPlay. My usual insistence on a unique photo caught my teammates in a not quite ready position.

This also feels like ancient history, perhaps because the experience was a bit of a blur at at momondays Ottawa back in August. There are different opportunities in life and you have to try them out to see if they might be for you. The motivational speaking circuit is definitely not my thing, but I was grateful for the chance to try it out. I will definitely continue to do public speaking that hopefully helps motivate people, but speaking (or listening) for the purpose of motivation itself is not for me. I do get why there is a strong community of people who can’t get enough and appreciate what they do.

There’s a recent memory! Festive Family Feast 2016. This is my kind of vibe. I’m very fortunate to be a part of it all.

An increasingly common but highly appreciated phenomenon: visitors from out of town who just want to learn more about what LiveWorkPlay is going and how they might bring some of it back home with them. After some intense chat at the office we headed down to Landsowne to capture some local colour.

What a fun night. I was exhausted as it was just about my busiest week of the year including out of town travel, but there is nothing like The Headstones at Barrymores and old friends. A night I won’t soon forget because I thought I’d somehow messed up getting the tickets (these shows are always sold out for those who don’t  know) but Dean and Sean were totally understanding, right up to the moment when we sheepishly handed over the ticket receipt to the door man, who waved us right in (turns out they don’t use tickets, they just keep a record of online purchases). Jen was in a great spot upstairs (Barrymores is an old theatre converted to a night club) but came down to the mosh pit with us for a great photo taken by a helpful stranger. Yup, 48 years old, and right in the middle of it.

I sometimes get invited to events on Parliament Hill and it’s not really my world. But there are often familiar faces and I’ve learned to not worry about feeling left out. If you know 6 people in a room of 100, between reconnecting and perhaps helping with interconnecting, the time will fly by and you’ll have fun and feel good!

Haha it figures this photo got in there. On a hike with Julie and Marie and I wanted to jump off this log (you can’t see it but it’s pretty high off the ground). I hurt my foot really badly when I landed. But I borrowed a page from my father in law and it did indeed go away about 9 weeks later.

Wow, the Ottawa Valley Tours motor coach trip to Cape Cod with my roommate Phil. It’s suitable that the photo is in a totally non-glamorous location because frankly that’s where most of the good times happened. Phil was also a huge part of this highlight moment.

Yup, I liked a lot of other people’s stuff. I think the benefits of Facebook far outweigh the negatives, but I understand why it’s not for everybody. It never feels that way to me, but I can see why it is painful overwhelmingly to some.

Great mix of people in this closing photo that represent how my personal and professional interests often collide. Again, this is something I find mostly positive, but I am sure others would be horrified at how my worlds collide 

Thanks for a great year! See you in 2017!

The Inside Scoop: LiveWorkPlay Awarded $125,000 in New Leaf Community Challenge

What an experience! Julie and I have done many presentations before, including as paid presenters, once with an audience of about 1,000 people. That’s certainly a lot of pressure. But it’s certainly a very different thing to be pitching for $125,000 and the charity and cause that’s been a huge part of your life for more than 20 years is the potential beneficiary!

You can view the presentation yourself if interested, so I just wanted to share a few interesting insights or observations beyond what you can see from the live video, for those of you who might find yourself involved in these types of events.

The first is that to be concerned about technology and logistics is not the least bit foolish. For example, I had to completely reformat and re-embed all of the videos in our presentation the day before the competition, as for whatever reason they would not play for the organizers (despite having tested on multiple computers on my end). Also our timing was significantly off because we had not anticipated the audience would engage in sustained applause at any point in the middle of the presentation – this is great but it took about one minute out of our allotted time and resulted in a snap decision to completely skip over one of the slides. A great decision as we finished in exactly 20 minutes.

The day of the presentation (too late to do anything about it) the organizer laptop (which had consolidated all of the finalist presentations) was set for the old 4:3 aspect ratio instead of 16:9, so several of our slides were somewhat busted, with text that wrapped in unexpected places, or text boxes that appeared to be exploding. Add the 4:3 and 16:9 discussion to your list of tech checks! I think I would even consider turning my slides into image files so they can only be stretched but not broken (when the laptop in use is not in my control).

The setup was best suited to using the fixed podium microphone, but there were two of us and I’m significantly taller, but you can’t be yanking a mic up and down in a timed presentation, so I just stooped…my neck still hurts. And although I didn’t need to look at my notes very much (it looks like I’m doing that all the time) it was difficult to stoop forward and hold my head up at the same time.

The audience membership made a huge difference to me. Julie’s parents and my father were in the audience, as well as a strong contingent of our staff team, several volunteers, three individuals we are involved in supporting, and quite a large number of family members of people we support. I was not really expecting that and it was a difference-maker. I hugged most of them on the way into the amphitheater and I’m not really much of a hugger, so there you go, at 48 years old and having talked about these issue my entire life, a little reassurance and a reminder of what it’s all about still doesn’t hurt.

The question and answer was an interesting and challenging element. I’ve been on live panels and done hundreds of media interviews, but that’s not the same as a group of civic leaders acting as a jury who have read your written proposal in advance and come prepared, taking very seriously their duty to award the money as best they can.If you’ve watched Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank, I daresay that non-profit competition is much more difficult. If you are pitching in for-profit, you never have to worry about appearing that you are too successful or too capable. In the charity sector we’re not quite there yet – while the logic should be the same – charities that are good at what they do should attract additional funds to keep on doing it, and get funding to simply do it more – it doesn’t really work that way.

Funders (private, government, and non-profit) and public perception both remain attached to the idea that charities should not be “too successful.” But really, if they are using the resources to deliver efficiently and effectively on mission outcomes, whether or not they “need” funds to “stay afloat” should not be how we determine who gets funded. In this atmosphere of impact and social change (with charities being gradually understood to have the role of facilitating change and not just running programs to keep their budget going) charities that deliver need to be rewarded, and not made to feel cautious about their success in making communities stronger.

The New Leaf Community Challenge is of course a part of the solution to this problem, because it does encourage this focus on “how are you changing the conditions in society that determine this problem” and not just “what do you do to make life less hard for marginalized people.” As a society we need to address BOTH simultaneously (feed starving people at the same time as we try to make sure nobody is in position to starve, for example).

In the LiveWorkPlay world of supports and services for people with intellectual disabilities, the prevention and social change aspect of solving problems is definitely well behind other sectors, and in fact, the entire dialogue makes most traditional agencies uncomfortable. But that’s OK, it still needs doing. We can’t solve the problem of people being excluded by investing further in excluding them (which is what we get from group homes and day programs, the dominant paradigm).

With this in mind, although the $125,000 is more than welcome and will be put to excellent use, the opportunity to showcase LiveWorkPlay on the leading-edge of the charitable sector (and really, we think of ourselves increasingly as being a community benefit organization not a social services organization) is greatly appreciated. Thank you to the Community Foundation of Ottawa for making this happen and for making these sorts of bold moves to get people thinking and talking about innovation and social change.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year from Julie and Keenan!

This is a digital copy of our annual holiday newsletter! It actually reads pretty good as image files if you click on the images below (they’ll be a little bigger for reading than if you try to read them right from the blog). But you can see the newsletter in its intended form as a PDF file by clicking here. If, like a lot of people, you aren’t big on text, scroll down for photo collages!

Book release: The Courage to Fail, the Will to Succeed: Twenty Years of the LiveWorkPlay Experience 1995-2015

I’m thrilled to announce the formal release of the book The Courage to Fail, the Will to Succeed: Twenty Years of the LiveWorkPlay Experience 1995-2015 (available in hardcover, magazine, PDF, and audio formats!). In words and pictures the book chronicles the history of the LiveWorkPlay organization from the days leading up to its formal incorporation to its current state as a leading-edge charity contributing to positive social change in the Ottawa area and beyond.

I’m grateful to Al Condeluci PhD for providing a meaningful foreword to the book on short notice, and also sending me a recording for the audio version. There wasn’t a lot of time for editing and I appreciate the assistance of Allison Moores among others who managed a quick turnaround on various components of the book that were thrust in their direction.

As the book hopefully communicates effectively, like just about everything that has to do with LiveWorkPlay that has my name on it, these outcomes are only made possible by the contributions of many others. From my life partner Julie Kingstone who is also my partner in Executive Staff leadership at LiveWorkPlay, to so many past and present volunteer members of the Board of Directors, to the staff team including those who have moved on, to our volunteer team now over 150 strong, and most importantly to our members – the people we serve – and their families, thank you for your trust and for the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to this world.

It has been a tremendous 20 years and I truly believe we are at this very moment the best we have ever been and there is plenty of upside yet to be realized!

There’s Nothing Like Winning! RedBlacks Defeat Alouettes: Time To Turn The Page!

Hank never needs a reason to smile, but he sure earned a big grin last night!

I am sure more than a few of my readers will be confused by this edition of my blog, since they are probably used to hearing from me about various social issues related to disability advocacy or other serious topics. Truth be told however, I got my start in blogging (before WordPress and before the word “blog” was in active use) writing “Tales from Section G” where I attempted to detail the fan experience of every Ottawa Renegades game. My attempt at sports journalism is good for a chuckle or two but it’s also I think a pretty accurate reflection of what it was like for fans on the roller coaster ride that was the Renegades franchise.

I put these up at halftime. Does this mean I should take them down and put them up again during halftime of every away game?

I did not reinstate that effort (and I’m in Section D now with my wife, father in-law, and friends Mike and Karen) when the Ottawa RedBlacks took to the field because I opted for Twitter and Facebook instead. It’s not an intentional secret, but it probably comes as a surprise to some that I’m the owner of the Ottawa RedBlacks Football Fans page and the @RedBlacksCFL account on Twitter, which now has a somewhat astounding 3500 followers. The figure is obviously not up there with Lady Gaga, but given I don’t have the time to keep up with the account on a daily basis, it just means that a lot of people enjoy my pithy style of gameday tweeting (I don’t take any guff from local nasyaers or trolls who support other teams, and I am not afraid to discuss urinal shortages or the shortcomings of visiting fans).

July 18, 2014 Home Opener. RedBlacks 18, Argos 17.

Full disclosure, my wife Julie and I are “all in” for the RedBlacks and with Lansdowne more generally. We loved most of the OSEG plan from the moment it went public, and ended up purchasing a small condo in The Rideau, which overlooks the field (if you are on that side of the building, which we are). It will be ready in November, and since October we’ve  been renting in the other Lansdowne condo “The Vibe” so we have experienced a real taste of what life is going to be like around here, and so far it’s just what we hoped it would be.

With that background out of the way, let me get to our opening game of the 2015 regular season, the June 25 victory over Montreal. We had a very busy day at LiveWorkPlay including an early evening commitment so we watched from home, and I can’t lie, we were both extremely anxious. There are (or hopefully we can soon say “were”) a lot of self-defeating Ottawa fans who can’t shake the PTSS (Post-Traumatic Sports Syndrome) of the debacle of ownership and management that gave us the mostly terrible teams on the late-era Rough Riders and the Renegades.

I know it was just a 20-16 season-opening win, but I urge you, turn the page. The entire background I provided here is not irrelevant to what is happening with the Ottawa RedBlacks, it’s directly related to our future as a quality long-term franchise. The team is part of a bigger plan, with local ownership that has a real bank account, and with experienced head office staff that have absolutely nothing to do with Lonie Glieberman or Horn Chen.

I’m no expert myself, but a lot of Ottawa fans are new to the CFL (and that’s great!) and it might have been difficult to understand the challenges facing the RedBlacks in their inaugural season. The short version is that you need quality Canadian players as part of your team, and there is huge demand for the relatively short supply. This was just one of the factors that contributed to a starting season with an offensive line that as a collective was simply inadequate.

The impact of that is often also poorly understood, as evidenced by way too many fans who came to the conclusion that Henry Burris had suddenly and inexplicably become slower and inaccurate overnight. When your offensive line can’t do their job, it’s almost impossible to have a running game. When you can’t have a running game, defenders can ignore that threat and come after your quarterback. This means receivers don’t have time to finish their patterns because the quarterback can’t wait long enough to throw the ball, and you tend to get a pretty ugly result. On top of that, we have to face facts: there’s a reason we have close to 100% new receivers this year. Marcus Henry was pretty reliable in 2014 but there wasn’t a lot to be said for the rest of the receiving squad (understanding there were injury issues as well).

Like a lot of fans, dad Kingstone and I went with 14 in recognition of our inaugural season. Based on game 1 of 2015, wearing the number of Abdul Kanneh is a great choice!

After a seemingly rough pre-season in 2015 and a shaky start to the first half of the game in Montreal, the negativity came quickly, and my urging of PATIENCE was not taken all that well initially. But by the time the game was over it did earn me a free beer from one of the many fans that gladly owned up being a bit quick off the mark in calling for Burris to experience mandatory retirement.

You can obviously read detailed accounts of the game from many expert sportswriters so I’ll leave that to them, but let me leave you with a few quick thoughts about why this opening game victory is worthy of attention and should give impetus to leaving our PTSS Rough Rider and Renegades fears in the past where they belong.

Beyond the obvious that we’ve got exceptional new talent, be it examples like Chris Williams with receiving and kick returns, or SirVincent Rogers sealing off the left side of the line in a style that humbled Montreal pass rushers and run-stoppers alike, there are two more general points that I’d like to emphasize. And I’ll tie it in to our old PTSS issues with hopes that it does support moving on.

Crompton in pain after another hard hit!

Our history against Alouettes comes down to this: they out-coach us and beat us up with their physical play and nasty (dirty?) attitude. We turned the tables on Thursday night, on both counts. I am not sure which is the more impressive accomplishment. It deserves equal billing but let me start with the physical play.

The Montreal dressing room was black and blue last night and they were close to asking Jason Maas to leave the RedBlacks coaching staff to suit up for them at QB. Crompton was pummeled back there, and he’s certainly a tough dude, but his replacement LeFevour is known for his physical play, and he was quickly knocked out of the game too. Never doubt the depth of Montreal football teams, because their last resort Brandon Bridge is no joke and probably has a future in this league. But the way the RedBlacks defense was playing, he might not have lasted an entire game either!

Chevy puts the pedal down!

The toughness was not limited to defensive players. It seemed to take some time for him to warm up after the unfortunate end to his season last year with a broken arm on a colossal goal-line collision, but Chevon Walker brought speed and power when it was needed most, sealing the deal in the 4th quarter with some big runs. There has been some questioning of whether he is “the guy” at running back, and he will hopefully continue his great play and put that to rest. If not, we have other talent, but personally I like Chevy and I think with the improvements to the rest of the offense. he’ll shine.

I thought fan support last year was actually quite outstanding, even after we fell out of playoff contention. But there are still a lot of “whiners in waiting.” Maybe they thought football in Ottawa would never work and they want the glory of predicting failure. Maybe they fought against the Lansdowne redevelopment and are still holding out hope that it will some how end up as an ugly piece of pavement again. Whatever is motivating this dwindling group of pessimists, I urge them to consider giving it up and enjoying the exciting game of CFL football in one of the best stadiums in one of the best urban parks in the league. Have some hometown pride and enjoy the success!

“They will have real work for real value” or “How can we begin the end of sheltered workshops for a better society for all?”

The recent media attention (see Ottawa Citizen articles 1–2–3–4 by Chris Cobb and an editorial) given to the pending closure of the OCAPDD sheltered workshop at Tunney’s Pasture in Ottawa exposed the general public to a hidden world that has been right in their backyard (and in the backyard of many communities across Ontario).

In the United States the controversy over sheltered workshops and sub-minimum wage page for workers with intellectual disabilities has generated national attention through the practices of Goodwill Industries

I have watched the media as well as regular citizens try to sort through the conflicting and often inaccurate information. It would be funny if the takeaways were not so tragic.

OCAPDD is a provincially funded agency, but the main activity of their sheltered workshop program is paper sorting, and that activity has been fuelled by a federal government contract that was to have ended this month.

Instead of developing a transition plan for the 50 individuals over the past two years (the approximate time since the ending of the contract was known) the sheltered workshop participants were instead thrust in front of the cameras, and their tears (based in completely rational fears) produced results. Minister Poilievre announced a snap decision to continue the contract, emphasizing that “nothing has changed.”

What a pity.

After all, we are talking about a 40 year old institutional model of service, and we are talking about paying people with intellectual disabilities $1.25 so we can all have our paper sorted more cheaply than if it were done by citizens who are not exempted from labour laws through a questionable dodge that sheltered workshops are “training programs.”

From the federal report: “Employers take seriously their responsibilities to include workers with disabilities in the workforce, and are eager to learn how they can do better.” Are we seeing leadership from the federal government itself – as a significant employer – on this issue?

I assert that training programs that can last forever are really more like “holding tanks.” You can have holding tanks that are “nicer” than other holding tanks, but it’s not real work if it’s not real pay, and we have to start having open and honest conversations about what these sorts of peculiar arrangements really say about Canadian society and how we value people with intellectual disabilities.

If, as is quoted in the Minister’s statement, he believes this is about “real work for real value” it is easy to take from this that he believes the work to be real, but the value of $1.25 for a worker with an intellectual disability is appropriate.

Then again, I don’t think that’s what he means.

There are those who have enjoyed bashing the federal government for their own purposes, but the legacy of the Harper government as regards disability issues is actually quite strong, and in particular with respect to encouraging employment. That’s what makes their handling of this situation all the more peculiar! I suppose a misreported story that results in thousands of angry voters spending their weekend demonizing you for putting disabled people out on the street could be strong motivator to work quickly now and think deeply later…

That it is only the federal government that has come under scrutiny in this situation is an incredible tactical and strategic win for those who actually operate the program. The federal government is the contractor, not the operator of the program or the funder of the program. Not that this exempts them from accountability, I point it out because the feds are not the closest to the situation, they are not forcing the agency to sign the contract, and it’s not actually their mandate to provide direct social services to these individuals.

OCAPDD receives about $24,000,000 every year in funding from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, which includes funding for the two staff members who supervise the paper sorting program participants. The organization has been applauded in some quarters for the “victory” of “keeping the program open” but others wonder if this was not the time to apply the same significant resources to a different outcome.

There is a lot of collateral damage as well as a result of the way this has played out in such a clumsy fashion. Here’s my quick list:

Matt was not supposed to walk or talk, and in his final year of high school, he was also getting the advice that he would not be able to work. But someone forgot to tell his employer!

• Misinformation (that went uncorrected) asserting that the $1 wages help protect the individuals from losing their disability pension. This is completely false, and what tacticians spinning this angle either failed to consider (or just don’t care) is that right now some parent of a young person with an intellectual disability who is about to graduate high school now thinks paid employment is not an option because their ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) will be taken away. Totally, utterly, false. But the damage may be done and irreversible. It took about ten years after the ODSP system changed in the 1990s to convince job-seekers that they would not lose their benefits. Undoing that progress to any degree is a shameful and unnecessary outcome.

Click on the image to link for a keynote presentation about how to support a welcoming community for individuals with intellectual disabilities

• Portrayal of the individuals in the sheltered workshop as incapable of other life outcomes. There is actually no assessment tool that can determine who is capable or incapable of a life beyond a segregated environment. In my own personal and professional life I have known many people labelled as “unemployable” who went on to have real jobs for real pay. Employers decide who can work, not social services agencies. There seems to be some confusion about that! In my experience, probably the last people you want involved in assessing possibilities are staff who spend their lives managing holding tanks. It’s not that they are bad people (their jobs are relentlessly routine) but they are not tasked with seeing possibilities, and the sheltered workshop environment tends to make people increasingly incapable, Seeing what “could be” from their perspective is often very difficulty. They tend to adopt a very protective attitude about what “the community” can offer.

• Another argument made for sheltered workshops is that it is a place to go all day every day. This is true! Full-time employment is difficult for many job-seekers to find, with or without a disability label. But we don’t take non-disabled people who aren’t working full-time and put them in a holding tank, right? The Ottawa community has a lot to offer when we aren’t working. Citizens with intellectual disabilities need support to do the same things as other citizens do, not a disability-only systemic construct to “keep them busy.” In most cases they will need support to achieve this outcome, and that’s just fine. It is not free to operate sheltered workshops, so we need to shift our resources towards person-centred, assets-based, community-focused outcomes.

Sheltered workshops in Ontario are going to close. They are closing in most provinces in Canada and increasingly across the United States, where the path to adjudicated justice is somewhat less complicated. But must we wait until a court tells us to stop doing harm? Cannot the sector and those agencies closest to this population and their families lead the change, rather than be dragged?

Time will tell.

A recent interview where some of these themes were discussed