Welcome to this session. My name is Paul Marshall and I am from Hamilton which is about 50 miles from Toronto here in Ontario. My presentation is about twenty minutes in length. After, I would like to have the rest of the time for discussions. Maybe we will break up into a couple of small groups and discuss the following few questions.

1. How do we develop a healthy and an individual which will grow and be integrated in the main stream of living life?

2. Is it the environment or who are involved with the person that creates a healthy self?

3. When we talk about fitting in the main stream of life. What are we really talking about and why do we do it?

4. Can we maintain access ramps to education, employment opportunities, housing etc? If we can’t maintain these access ramps than why do it at all?

5. What are the measurement poles that we use to provide this gateway into the larger community?

Where do I belong? The lines are not clearly marked!

The unreachable, becomes reachable with dreams and going the extra miles with group and personal commitment.

Living, with all of our being, has to be the most powerful and engaging activity that we can take part in. To wake up and to be able to welcome another day should jump start us to the point of being very excited about the day. Let’s get down to the basics of existence which  probably are: food, shelter, to love, to be loved and to have some kind of a purpose that will drive and motivate each one of us! Likely, if we keep this in view throughout our days, the lines will become clearer.

When we were young, we dreamed dreams of youth. Running and skipping over life’s roadblocks with ease. I am deeply convinced this is an universal childhood outlook as we dream our dreams of engaging in the unfolding of the years ahead.  As we grow, we find out there are countless alternative ways to cultivate and cut out an enriching environment for a lifestyle for ourselves. It isn’t a universal design nor should it be. It is home weaved, home made only suitable for me or you. I don’t think we can determine if any dreams are impossible and/or wasteful. Dreams are critical to life and to our wellness of being human. We need to dream dreams to cultivate an active and alive mind. Also, we need to dream dreams for expanding what we can do individually and what we can do publicly. Always dream dreams to find out what is possible and what is not possible. If you find an impossible dream, quite likely, it means it can be done with more energy and a more alternative way of coming at it. Almost always there is a side door or a back door to get things rolling or accomplished. Don’t be afraid to explore the unknown and always be ready to wrap, crop or cut ideas of information and design or develop your own personalized solutions. Being human, means, we have the capabilities to say, we want that, we don’t want this, we want this but we will make adaptations or we will change ourselves and come at from a new perspective.

In our early teens we develop our own individualism with wants, needs, hopes and dreams. We develop an independent spirit that is made up of the environment and people around us. We also, begin to cultivate our own humanity. Throughout life, it’s what sex we are, where we grew up, our skin colour, our capabilities, our education, the lessons we learn at an early age, the things that we observe and the list goes on and on. All these things mold us into the person that we are today. Tomorrow, each one of us will be different because of the impacts of today. Our own outlook on how we view and interact today and how we deal and learn from our yesterdays, all builds or destroys our tomorrows. Let me repeat that because I think it is very critical to get across for my own and your own existence and well being.  Our own outlook on how we view and interact today and how we deal and learn from our yesterdays, all builds or destroys our tomorrows.

My first question that I am going to ask you is how many of you in this room thought you were coming to a presentation or a workshop that would explain the lines between being disabled and being normal? If you did, I am sorry but to me, the lines aren’t that clear. There are no doubt huge differences between living as a person who just has some form of an outer shell disability and living with a so called normal outer shell. But so what! Individually and for the betterment for the world, we need to soar above.

I want to ask my good friend Laura Dixon up here for a minute. Now, I ask you, are we the same? You are probably thinking, Paul, you are really blind! Laura is a female and you are a male. She is married, I am single, she has a totally different way of viewing and coming at life, I do.  What you don’t know is, beyond our physical and how our lifestyles are so different, we have so much in common that it is pretty scary! We are both the same age; well she is a bit older which I won’t let her forget! We are both compassionate in what we do; we both are compassionate about the equity of improving the quality and standards of persons with disabilities. We both like gardening and the list goes on. Thanks Laura! Back stepping to where I was listing our differences. Did you notice that I didn’t list one of the major differences between us? She can talk and move without the limitations of having Cerebral Palsy! How could I not list this major difference! Just the same as I didn’t need to point out that we are opposite sex. It is a given, just as the same as our physical disabilities are.

How sad it is, you and I probably will go to our grave preaching the message. As countless others do, the message being, we are more alike than we are different

As the sunrise dawned today, in a real sense, our fingers are just on the door handle, inching it open to the bright future years ahead. We must ask ourselves what kind of a future do we want to create for us and in turn our community. We must be caring teachers who are guiding and fostering others and our own spirits into very positive uplifting channels that will give each one of us a spark that will inflame and unite.