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Shea’s Story – Part 1 – A Long Struggle

By Peter Ewart

By Peter Ewart


Shea Anker is a thirty-five year old mother who lives in low-rent housing in the VLA neighborhood of Prince George. Living on her own, she is raising two boys, ages 3 and 4, and trying to do all that is needed to keep a household going, including buying groceries, cooking meals, doing laundry, cleaning up messes, and supervising her lively and energetic boys. All of this on a very tight budget.

But there is something quite unique about Shea. Every day she works hard to do all of these things to keep her family healthy and thriving, yet she is completely blind. Raising two young children is difficult enough for a single parent who can see perfectly well. For a woman without sight and living on a small disability pension, it is a major achievement.

Given Shea’s determination and capacity to raise her boys and ability to overcome most obstacles in her way, one would think that the social safety net in place in British Columbia would be there to assist with any additional supports she might require.
That’s why it is shocking to discover that Shea was recently cut off a small homecare allowance that made it possible to obtain help raising her children.

How could this happen? Surely if someone was entitled to a few hours of homecare a week it would be this mother. After all, the provincial government has spared no means of letting citizens know that the economy in British Columbia is booming and that we are on the road to prosperity. The provincial budget is said to have a $1 billion surplus, enough that billions of dollars are being poured into the two-week extravaganza of the 2010 Vancouver – Whistler Olympics.

Indeed, in the May 2005 provincial election, the Campbell government pledged, as part of its “great goals for a golden decade”, that it was building “the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities.” It also announced that “an extra $19 million” was to be provided in 2005 “for the care of an additional 10,000 children” and new spending for child care providers was to increase by 36 per cent. This funding comes out of a deal that will see the Federal government distributing $600 million to the provinces for early learning and child care.

Yet, despite all this election hoopla and glittering promises, Shea’s small homecare allowance has been axed, and she and her children have been left in the dust of the election buses. Why has such a thing happened in a modern city in a modern country in the year 2005?

Back in 1970, about a dozen children were born blind every year in the province of British Columbia. Shea was one of them. Her parents, living in Kitimat then, were told that she was permanently blind when she was about three months old. According to Shea’s father, Lionel Anker, who now lives in Langley, thus began a fight that has lasted over thirty years.

From the beginning, Lionel and Shea’s mother fought to have Shea experience as normal a life as possible. Being told that blind children, raised in a supportive environment, are capable of learning at the same rate as other children, Shea’s parents pledged to provide her with that kind of environment. Indeed, as a result of their efforts, Shea was one of the first blind children to be accepted into “regular” school. But bureaucracy was a block even back then. Little things such as getting braille textbooks on time turned into serious problems. Often Shea did not get her textbooks for two or three months after school started. But Shea and her parents persisted, and twelve years later Shea graduated from high school. As her father proudly says today, she accomplished this “despite all the hurdles placed in front of her as a disabled person.”

Shea grew up with an independent streak, and by the time she was twenty years old, she was living on her own in Vancouver and attending UBC. She learned how to navigate around Vancouver on buses and the Skytrain, and by her own words, “was very independent.” Her father rightly describes her as a “very intelligent, talented young lady.” Indeed, she even won an essay contest and, as part of her prize, got to travel to Australia. Like other young women, she had a boyfriend (who was also blind), and eventually moved to Ottawa to take a job. It was in Ottawa that she discovered she was pregnant. She and her partner moved to Montreal and began their life as a family, including the birth of a second child. But, as often happens in life, the relationship didn’t last. After separating from her partner in 2003, Shea and the children came back home to British Columbia, and set out to create a new life.

The family found an affordable place to live in the VLA subdivision of Prince George.
Many people think that this subdivision is a scary world to live in. And it is true that it does have more than its share of crime, crack houses and prostitution, and that many feel the streets are not safe - which is the reason why it has gained the nickname, “The ‘Hood”. But most living in the area are just ordinary people, a large number of whom are poor, many single moms with kids, a few students and a significant number who, like Shea, are disabled. As always, Shea was eager to learn about this new neighborhood and overcome any obstacles that might be in her way.

A crucial question for a person living in any neighborhood is: Where is the nearest grocery store and pharmacy? For the people of the VLA, the nearest shopping centre is Parkwood Mall. For Shea, a trip to the Mall - which is about 8 blocks away - is a major expedition.

People who can see find it hard to imagine what it is like for a blind person to live and work without visual cues. So much of what we do as human beings depends on our sight, yet the blind must operate in a chasm of profound darkness. This world of the blind is one based on sound, smell, taste and touch. Yet it is still a rich world, and their other senses become exquisitely tuned to its nature and variety, allowing them to accomplish amazing things.

In the VLA, sidewalks and roads pose special hazards for a blind person walking. Some sidewalks are cracked and uneven, and there are potholes in the streets. There is a lot of litter and sometimes needles, broken bottles and other debris on the sidewalks. In the wintertime, treacherous patches of ice and drifts of snow make walking tricky. Any miscalculation on Shea’s part could mean a painful and potentially devastating fall. Yet she was determined to become familiar with the terrain and make a comfortable home for her children.

Besides navigating down streets in need of repair, getting to the Mall demands alertness to light posts, garbage cans, and other obstacles along the way as well as crossing two main thoroughfares – 20th and 15th Avenues. To get across 20th, Shea has to go several blocks out of her way up to Victoria because her street does not have sidewalks all the way through. Even for a sighted person, crossing the intersection at 20th Avenue and Victoria, with its traffic islands, lights and stop sign, can be nerve wracking. Cars and trucks whiz by in all directions, or screech suddenly to a halt at a red light. For a blind person, it can be a harrowing experience.

After the Victoria intersection, there are more blocks to navigate, another major intersection, and then the confusion of the Parkwood Mall parking lot, the haphazardness of which poses navigational problems even to pedestrians with sight.

Of course, for a blind person simply getting to a grocery store or pharmacy is not enough. There is the problem of finding and selecting items from the shelves. Luckily, the Save-On Foods store in the Mall has a policy of helping disabled people with their shopping. Not all grocery stores do this.

It is obvious that a simple trip to the grocery store can be a challenge for Shea and that some assistance would go a long way to support her as she seeks to further develop her capacity to care for herself and her family. 

In the next part of this series of articles, we look at some of the challenges Shea confronts cooking a meal, looking after her children or cleaning the house. We hope it will become even more clear why this young woman, who seeks to raise her own children, should receive the assistance she seeks from our social service system in order to look after her family and build her life


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