We went to a Zoom meeting where Makers Making Change were presenting. It was amazing and helpful. Their web site is:https://makersmakingchange.com/
“Our guiding vision at Neil Squire is to achieve economic and social inclusiveness for all people with disabilities. To support this vision, Makers Making Change leverages the capacity of community based Makers, Disability Professionals and Volunteers to develop and deliver affordable Open Source Assistive Technologies.”
They have a catalogue of devices for disabled people but also they help with making things to solve a problem. The prices are much lower because you only pay for materials and shipping costs. Go and check it out!!
April is an important month for people of many different faiths. We wish everyone a Happy Easter (Christian), Happy Pesach (Judaism), Ramadan Mubarak (Muslim), and Happy Vaisakhi (Sikhism).
April is also Christine’s birthday month – we wish her a very Happy Birthday on April 28!
She would be happy to get email birthday wishes from her friends in the Bliss i-Band!
In the beginning the sunflower was a very tiny seed,
But in the soil it started growing quickly
And so it was with me, too.
When I got to learn bliss symbols
I wanted to talk a lot.
I think it is the same for many children
Who cannot talk with their mouth.
I did not understand those who asked:
Was it hard being a child?
Because when I was little
I didn´t know how it felt talking.
When I look back in time
I feel like a sunflower
Because I like to learn the bliss symbols quickly.
Now the Sunflower has started to flourish
It is the same with my life.
Sunflower was written by Leo Leppälä, from Finland. He shared his poem at our Canadian Faces meeting on March 27 with the help of Gitta Lönnqvist, his speech therapist and Bliss instructor when he was younger,
Leo wrote Sunflower in 1993 when he spent 2 years in Sweden at FURUBODA. At that time, Leo used the Finnish BLISS MASTER software. Leo has written many poems in Bliss since then and has published a book of his poems.
The version that appears below was made with BLISSONLINE (with Swedish glosses).
We thank Leo for expressing his thoughts so well in Bliss!
From Leo’s friend,Gitta Lönnqvist
It was nice to see Sunflower on the web! I only just the other day learnt that sunflower is the national flower of Ukraina. I hope it gives the same strength to the people in Ukraina as it has given to Leo!
film (cylinder + camera [enclosure + light {eye + sun}]) + pencil: film on which images are drawn
Julie Millar and Shirley McNaughton have had some fun looking at the ways in which Blissymbols have been animated through the decades. They have chosen three examples and made three short videos to demonstrate them. Enjoy!
Playing with Blissymbols
This video (3:48 minutes) is taken from the film, “Mr. Symbol Man”, produced by The National Film Board of Canada and Film Australia in 1974. It shows children playing with felt Blissymbols at the McGill Family Centre before being shown the film “Symbol Boy”. After seeing the film, one little girl is asked to name the felt symbols. See how many symbols she learned, just though seeing the film once!
Learning with Bliss
This video (2:17 minutes) is taken from the film “Take the Time”, produced for Rogers Community Mississauga Productions in 1995. It includes the Blissymbols for seeing, talking, hearing, walking, being introduced, followed by and Shayne Dennis using the combine strategy when communicating with his teacher, Barbara Rush in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Music with Bliss
This video (2:23 minutes) is taken from “Celebrating 50 Years of Bliss” produced by Blissymbolics Communication Institute – Canada in 2021. It shows Blissymbols accompanying the “Blissymbols Alphabet Song”, animated by Julie Millar and sung by Aaron Lightstone. Julie is editor of narrative videos produced by Blissymbolics Communication Institute – Canada, through funding by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Resilient Communities Fund 2021. Aaron is music director of the Bliss I-Band, a project of Blissymbolics Communication Institute – Canada.
March had at least two special days, Rebecca’s birthday and St. Patrick’s Day.
We want to wish Rebecca a very Happy Birthday!!
Carolyn wrote: I remember my father had a St. Patrick’s Day tie that he wore every March 17. One of my brothers had one also. They were funny to look at. I like the song group called Irish Rovers. I bought a necklace of shamrocks to wear on St. Patrick’s Day. Wearing something green for St. Patrick is a tradition for a long time.
I have a good friend who is of Irish heritage. His ancestors emigrated to Canada from Ireland in the 1840s and settled as subsistence farmers along the Ottawa River north of Renfrew. So, St. Patrick’s Day was very special for his family when he was growing up. It is also his sister’s birthday. On the day, it was a combined celebration with Irish Stew and a birthday cake with green icing. His dad used to like to play fiddle music records and Irish Rovers that day, which his family felt was right because his dad’s birthday was March 19. My friend’s name is Patrick (I should ask if he is named after the day!), and his tradition is to keep thirteen different types of Irish whiskey and he always makes it a point to sample some “nectar of the gods” on St. Patrick’s Day.
Samantha wrote: My dad is 29 on the 17th of March and has been for the last 30 years. So, St. Patrick’s Day is always fun at our house. He is Scottish, so he likes scotch whisky to Irish whiskey. This is Jayme and I getting into the spirit!
By Samantha Millar and Carolyn Henry
with assistance from Julie Millar and Glynis Henry
On March 27, the global Bliss community joined Chris White for his 50th episode of Canadian Faces to talk about Bliss and music in the lives of our Bliss community.
Canadian Faces is a live-streamed show, hosted by Chris, featuring video interviews and performances with Canadian singer-songwriters and other folk/roots musicians.
Here’s the link to the March 27, 2022 ‘Canadian Faces’ show.
There were many people from around the world. As one member, Joe Jessop, said it was “like traveling on Zoom”. We agreed with Joe that it was so interesting hearing from different people. There were people from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Brazil, as well as our home country, Canada. We talked about the early days of Bliss and how the Bliss language has positively helped the lives of many of us. Some of us have used Bliss to become writers and poets! Music is very important to many of us and Aaron Lightstone, our music director, shared some videos of the Bliss i-Band. One of the songs was our first collaboration with a musician – who was Chris White. We showed the video of the Bliss i-band playing his song, Follow Your Bliss together with him. Another video we shared was “Take the Time”, with lyrics by Kari Harrington, who was at our meeting.
Many people, like we did, talked about how we used Blissymbolics when we were young.
We also told the group that there is a Blissymbol for ‘hope’ on Snake Island (just off of Vancouver Island, Canada) in honour of the hope for peace in Europe.
Here’s is what one of the group who erected the sign told BCI:
We erected the sign on Snake Island on Sunday March 6th
Our Snake Island is located in Nanaimo British Columbia Canada
We see this as a sister Island to the Snake Island in Ukraine that was shelled by the Russian Navy.
Interestingly enough we also have two ex Canadian Naval Warships that lie peacefully next to snake Island as artificial reefs and recreational dive sites. One is the former Saskatchewan cold war era destroyer escort and the other the Cape Breton a world war 2 victory ship.
The message of HOPE in Blissymbolics has already had people very curious. Asking what to the “letters” mean?
We tell them the story of Charles Bliss and that the letters mean Hope in an international language
Most importantly the Hope can be whatever the person reading them wants to hope for
Hope to end this war
Hope for peace
Hope that we begin to realize that attacking innocents can no longer be tolerated and we need to move forward as a global society to leave this behaviour in our past
Thank you again and kindest wishes to all of you.
Robert Wolanski
By Samantha Millar and Carolyn Henry
with assistance from Julie Millar and Glynis Henry
Comment from Audrey King
March 31 2022
Thank you for writing such an excellent article about our day with Chris White. It was amazing to see ACC users from all around the world and made us all realize how important it is to be able to communicate with each other, regardless of traditional languages.
Great job of com uniting Samantha, Julie, Carolyn & Glynis and everyone else involved.
We had such a happy (but bittersweet) zoom gathering on Sunday January 30!
A group of friends and colleagues met to celebrate the retirement of Barbara Collier – to wish her well as she returns to Ireland with her husband, Bill, and they begin the next chapter in their lives.
Barbara’s sisters, Geraldine, Rachel, Ruth and her brother, Peter, were with us at the zoom meeting, to celebrate Barbara’s return home to Ireland in February, after 4 decades in Canada. Barbara’s sister, Liz, was unable to attend. Geraldine spoke on behalf of all Barbara’s siblings and their families, in expressing their pride in her accomplishments. Barbara and Bill will be living in Dalkey, Co. Dublin, Ireland.
How fortunate we have been to have Barbara’s contribution to the lives of AAC users across Canada! Her strong advocacy work for more inclusive communication access legislation has been powerful! Barbara leaves a wonderful legacy through her founding and nurturing of Communication Disabilities Access Canada (CDAC) and establishing two new groups to take on aspects of CDAC’s work – The Canadian Communication Access Alliance (CCAA) and Communication Access to Justice (CAJ). Her influence on legislation and the future impact it can have on the lives of those with a communication challenge will be felt far into the future.
Hazel Self who began working with Barbara in the establishment of CDAC back in 2001, said this at our celebration:
As I reviewed the annual reports of CDAC I was struck by the breadth of activity… nothing was too big or too small for Barbara…her vision embraced all of life yet remained focused on human rights and the true definition of communication as being a 2 way process, with the concept of authentic communication as being generated by the individual, with and without support…..input from CDAC was shaping the ODA and the Accessible Canada Act. …In 2018 CDAC was invited to appear before the Standing Committee on Human Rights, Skills and Social Development and Status of Persons with Disabilities; here Barbara was responsible for having Bill C81 amended to include communication as a priority area of focus in the Accessible Canada Act…..all this from her bedroom office…
We were fortunate to have had Barbara’s bright star shining in the AAC universe for so many years – working steadily to improve the lives of those with communication challenges.
Through the combined efforts of Julie Millar (videography) and Moshe Fisher-Rozenberg, (arranger of ambient music by the Bliss I-Band) and my design, we produced a Bliss vignette, as our tribute.
We can see Barb’s determined spirit and her enjoyment in sharing fun moments (also shared by Bill), in the pictures below …
Samantha and Julie Millar, along with Carolyn and Glynis Henry have contributed their thoughts as to what is so special about Barbara. The descriptive word they all agreed to was “inclusive”. Barbara is inclusive! They only saw her at conferences but they always knew Barbara was interested in what they had to say and listened to AAC users when they expressed their ideas. They saw their concerns being included in all Barbara’s advocacy work.
Julie gave an example of how the CDAC website had helped Samantha and herself directly. They learned from the website that AAC users have rights – and one in particular, the right, in hospitals, to receive the assistance they need! When Samantha was experiencing a difficult time during a stay in hospital, and the staff were not understanding nor responding to her anxiety, Julie used information from the CDAC website to explain to the nurses how they could address Samantha’s needs. With this knowledge, they were able to resolve the problems! Julie and Samantha thank Barbara!
We wish Barbara much happiness as she returns to Ireland. We know her presence will continue to be felt in Canada, Ireland and throughout the world in the years ahead! May Barbara’s star continue to shine brightly!
Since I have been in Toronto, many times I went over to the mall before Valentine’s Day, and I would get myself a chocolate heart and a heart for my sister. But, I won’t be going this year because of this pandemic. When I was a little girl, I used to send Valentine’s Day cards to my friends at school. When I got older I got a special card for my parents and for my sister.
Samantha’s Valentine Memory
My first dog was Smudge. Smudge was born on February 6th 2006 but for many years we believed she was born on February 14th. We went to Niagara Falls 6 weeks later to pick her up.
Carolyn has another memory of February
When I was living at home in Cornwall, I did have another favourite day in February. That day is the day before the start of Lent and is sometimes called Pancake Tuesday. To celebrate it, my mother always made us pancakes for dinner as a special treat – with fruit and maple syrup. They were so good. I always wondered why pancakes were special and found out that they were a tradition in many European countries because eggs, sugar and fat were often forbidden during Lent, so they were used up before Lent started.
Samantha has a similar tradition for Pancake Tuesday. We make potato pancakes for dinner.
hmmmmm …. they both sound good!!
By Samantha Millar and Carolyn Henry
with assistance from Julie Millar and Glynis Henry
We have several Birthdays to celebrate this month. Shirley’s Birthday was January 3rd, Kari’s Birthday was January 6th, Irene’s Birthday is on January 25th and Joe’s Birthday is January 28th. We wish each of them a very happy birthday!
Joe’s birthday celebration in Toronto, 2014
2022 has come in with a bang! … we hope everyone survived the snow that fell on Monday January 17th in Ontario. Just think, in 4 to 5 months we will be complaining about the heat! I hope everyone keeps warm and safe.
By Samantha Millar and Carolyn Henry
with assistance from Julie Millar and Glynis Henry
We met Ken Whiteley on Zoom when he joined our music group. Carolyn thought he was a really neat person and lots of fun to play music with. Ken told some stories about his music. He likes to create new songs as he sings them. Do you know that if somebody hadn’t recorded him when he sang “Gospel Music” for the first time, it might not have been written down? We each took a turn playing with him.
Samantha didn’t know that Ken plays with Raffi so it was a happy surprise. Samantha and her sister Jayme loved Raffi when they were younger. They sang and danced to Baby Belluga, Knees up Mother Brown, and Shake my Sillies out. Samantha looked on her Spotify account and saw that Ken played guitar and piano and even arranged some songs with him; like ‘Junior Ragtime’. Samantha liked Ken’s music before she found out about the connection with Raffi, she loves Ken’s music even more now!!!
By Samantha Millar and Carolyn Henry
with assistance from Julie Millar and Glynis Henry
