In a brief ceremony outside City Hall this morning mayor Mike Savage handed tireless poverty activist and Nova Scotia Advocate reporter Kendall Worth a scroll in recognition of his receiving this year’s James McGregor Stewart Award.
Tireless activist and frequent NS Advocate author Warren (Gus) Reed will be the focus of a webinar on human rights and disabilities in Nova Scotia.
Wonderful news, we are so pleased that Nova Scotia Advocate journalist Kendall Worth won this year’s James McGregor Stewart Award, recognizing high achievement by a Nova Scotian with a disability!
Joey Delaney, the Nova Scotia citizen who suffered terribly as a consequence of being inappropriately warehoused at the NS Hospital, was awarded a mere $100,000 by NS Human Rights inquiry chair J. Walter Thompson. After all, he found Joey Delaney “so disabled that payment to him of a very large sum will not have a greater impact on his life than a moderate sum.” Such ableist reasoning makes Warren (Gus) Reed very angry.
Warren (Gus) Reed: “I’m gonna go ‘way out on a limb here and venture to say that none of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commissioners is a person with a transformative disability. The odds are in my favor. Very few people with disabilities are appointed to Nova Scotia’s 135 Agencies, Boards and Commissions (ABCs).”
Warren (Gus) Reed; “I wonder when Strang got hand washing religion. Four years ago, wheelchair users asked Strang to weigh in on enforcement of the province’s food safety regulation requiring “washroom facilities for staff and washroom facilities for the public available in a convenient location” in restaurants. He was indifferent:”
Warren (Gus) Reed is still waiting for the province to follow up on the September 2018 NS Human Rights Decision that restaurants must provide wheelchair access to washrooms. A recent case of Norovirus while traveling in the US made the risks wheelchair users are exposed to all the more real.
Accessibility advocate Warren (Gus) Reed on the importance of not giving up when bureaucrats and politicians feed you a steady diet red herrings.
Jen Powley. a tireless advocate for disability rights and housing for people with disabilities, has been presented with the 2019 James McGregor Stewart Award. Jen is a tireless activist for the right of persons with severe physical disabilities to live independently, rather than in nursing homes
Gus Reed is not happy about government inaction after the Human Rights Commission decision that Environment must enforce the requirement that restaurants provide accessible washrooms.