AlvinLaw_Promo7_FullIf that headline doesn’t make you take notice, huh?  But it is the truth! According to Celeste Orr, a PhD Candidate  at the University of Ottawa in the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies specializing in Disabiltiy and Intersex Studies (amazing this department even exists), people like me are peddling porn by achieving what we have in our lives. Referring to the late journalist and disability activist, Stella Young, who also regularly used the term “Supercrip”, Orr is suggesting that a video I am in, “The Real Superhumans” is nothing more than “Inspiration Porn”! Excuse me, let me take a breath and calm down.

Its kinda funny. My wife and business partner, Darlene, and I  just got back to Calgary from two blissful months at our cottage in Saskatchewan. It was an eleven hour trek and I drove a big SUV pulling a utility trailer with my right foot on the wheel and left foot on the gas…for eleven straight hours! That’s pretty amazing, huh? Not for me. That’s my “normal” but apparently, makes anyone without arms who can’t drive somehow more normal than me because I am a “Supercrip”. I hadn’t heard that one. I’d heard “Chosen One” before and had that label hung around my neck. Both terms point to references commonly used within Disabiltiy Communities and Scholarship as a stereotypical description of those who heroically “overcome” their disability. Whaaaaaat? These people are “jealous” of me! I HAVE NO FRICKING ARMS! Let’s allow that to sink in for a minute.

In 1987, I met Rick Hansen while he was on the tail end of his “Man In Motion” tour raising awareness and funds for the spinal cord research. He was wheeling through Regina on his way to Vancouver and the finale and I was the Master of Ceremonies for the official provincial welcome for Saskatchewan and I myself, was an actual celebrity. His tour was 26 months, through 34 countries and over 40,000 kilometres around the planet…in a wheelchair! When Rick was 15 years old, he was launched from the back of a pickup truck he was riding in (bad idea) when it hit a tree and he became a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down. He went through rehab, graduated from the Williams Lake, BC high school and then became the first “disabled” student to graduate with a degree in physical education from the University of British Columbia. He then won Canadian Championships in wheelchair basketball and volleyball. But he wanted more. He focussed on wheelchair track and field, and won 19 International Marathons, and three world championships. He competed in the 1980 and ’84 Paralympics winning three gold, two silver and a bronze in wheelchair racing. He was also a teacher and coached high school basketball and volleyball…the not handicapped kind!

Rick was also Inspired by another Canadian Hero, Terry Fox who lost a leg to cancer as a teenager then created the “Marathon of Hope”. Terry wanted to run across Canada, with an artificial leg, to raise awareness and money for cancer research and ended up losing his life after getter barely halfway. He is one of the most respected and honoured Canadians in history. Hansen created the “Man in Motion” tour and completed it on May 22, 1987 when he wheeled into BC Place Stadium in front of thousands of cheering admirers. The tour raised 27 million dollars for spinal cord research.

Apparently, according to Ms. Orr, Terry Fox and Rick Hansen are pornographers and supercrips! I’m not sure about you, but I am profoundly offended. Especially since, I am also now accused of the same thing. I refuse to print the commentary here but just Google the Ottawa Citizen and Celeste Orr if you like. Oh, by the way, Ms. Orr has every right to say what she is saying so therefore I have a right to vehemently disagree. Oh and also by the way…I am completely aware that disabilties are real. Accessibility is a real issue. Housing, poverty, employment, and on and on. But here is what I also strongly believe…these are ” Human Challenges”, not “Disability Issues”, but that’s the red herring. The world is far from perfect but it is all about the “chair” you happen to sit in!

Point Of View! It is a favourite topic of mine. Let’s try another very personal reference. I am a very proud father of my one and only child, son Vance. He was born in 1985 in Regina to me and my first wife, who I divorced in 1988. I became a single dad until I met Darlene in 1991 and Vance came to live with us full time in 1996. We moved to Calgary in 2000 and today Vance lives with a roommate in Calgary and is currently an unemployed power engineer. He has been perilously close to being homeless more times than we can count. Of course, he could always come “home” but my point is, he wouldn’t do that. He has too much pride and maybe even ego. Those elements have kept him afloat and thus my pride. So does that make homeless people “losers”? Of course not. It is “their” life path. We all have one.

I was born without arms in 1960 because of the morning sickness medication, Thalidomide. I was then orphaned at five days of age when my birth family signed separation papers and left the hospital without me. I have written these past two sentences thousands of times and not because I’m full of myself. Because it’s real! I was adopted by Hilda and Jack Law, who rescued me from the hospital and raised me in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. I learned to use my feet for hands, and by the way, there’s also thousands of people who have identical bodies to mine, and are foot users. Some of them paint, or not paint, drive or not drive, live independently or don’t. We all have a story. We all have a point of view. The common denominator in my home growing up and the home my wife and I now maintain is “Attitude”, but more importantly…”Positive Attitude”! Some people disagree and live a “Negative Attitude”. That is their right! I will respect that, but I won’t accept it!

I could get very pissy here and slam Ms. Orr and her like because frankly, they piss me off, but what else is new? In 1988, after meeting him as previously mentioned, Mr. Rick Hansen himself personally asked me to join his newly minted “National Access Awarness Week” organizing committee. Working hand in hand with the Canadian Government, the idea was to have a week in June where the entire country focused on awareness and education about disability issues and ironically, it was hoped the initiative would be “Positive And Constructive” because the nature of activists were acknowledged to be the exact opposite. I had  never really met the type because I wasn’t “Negative and Disruptive” so didn’t hang out with people like that, which by the way is a key element of my speeches to this day. In my first meeting with the committee in Ottawa in 1989, I got into a heated debate with a quadrapalegic government bureaucrat who was there representing guess who and we were discussing “tone”. I was arguing you “attract more bees with honey” and he strongly disagreed stating the deplorable lives of the clear majority of handicapped people in Canada, his expertise apparently. He got so mad at me he shouted across the board room table…”What did I know about being handicapped anyway?” Whaaaaaaaat? I state again…I HAVE NO ARMS!!!!!!!

So, I really wasn’t planning on starting my Monday on the first day home from paradise this way, but I just refuse to dismiss this kind of insulting article. Quite frankly, I am not impressed with the Ottawa Citizen either in deeming this appropriate writing. I get it though. They’d rather run an angry, hostile and disrespectful item to get attention and sell papers. That seems to be the way of the world these days. But not my world. Never has, never will. Now it’s your turn. What do you think?

If you haven’t already seen it, gone to my main page at alvinlaw.com and click on the Real Superhumans video and you be the judge…pornography, or inspiration?