Disability, Mothers and Organization: Accidental Activists

 

Paulette Berthiaume, Audrey Cole and Jo Dickey are chronicled in Melanie Panitch's new book Disability, Mothers and Organization: Accidental Activists.  

Mothers of children who have intellectual disabilities become accidental activists.

 

 When Audrey Cole first joined her local Ontario Association for Community Living in 1967, she had no idea that her actions would lead her to play a defining role in amending the Canadian Human Rights Act. Originally, her reasons for joining the association were personal.  She was raising a young son who has a disability and her own fight for his inclusion sought her to seek out people dealing with the same problems. Joining her local association at a time when the Canadian government was crafting human rights legislation, Cole became very aware that disability was not included as grounds for discrimination. Outrage at the gross inadequacy of the bill prompted Cole to tackle the issue herself.  Through her local and provincial association, she crafted a resolution urging the Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL) to make representation to ensure that the bill was amended to include disability. Her efforts resulted in a change to human rights legislation to include disability, which later influenced the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This “accidental activism” is one of three examples cited by Melanie Panitch in her book, Disability, Mothers and Organization: Accidental Activists.

In her book, Panitch chronicles three of the founding mothers of CACL, whose struggles for their own children’s rights led them to fundamentally altering Canadian society as a whole. “The concept of activist mothering when applied to disability fits very well,” says Panitch, who wrote her PhD on the subject.Panitch says her interest in the topic dates back to the 1970s, when she was a volunteer with the Ottawa Association of Community Living.“When working in Community Living I was particularly interested in how mothers became activists even though they didn’t necessarily start out that way,” explains Panitch.“In the beginning, they were just having a family.  When disability entered the picture just to do their mothering work, to be a mother meant that they had to fight for everything.” Panitch also goes into great detail on the establishment of the CACL from its grassroots organization to its establishment at the national level in 1958. 

CACL will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this November in Ottawa.

Panitch is the director of Disability Studies at Ryerson University.  Disability, Mothers and Organization: Accidental Activists is now published (Routledge, 2008).