Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Greater Napanee will be among the communities across Canada that will recognize June as Deafblind Awareness Month.
In celebration of the campaign, the Napanee River falls will be illuminated blue and Springside Park’s chain link fence will be ‘yarn bombed’.
Recognition of the month by the town was done in response to a deputation made by the Ontario Eastern Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
“As far as I know we haven’t done anything in the town of Napanee before,” said Shari Maracle, a specialist and intervenor with CNIB Deafblind Community Services.
June is recognized as Deafblind Month in tribute to Helen Keller. Born on June 27, 1880, Keller’s political activism, lecturing and writing make her one of the most internationally known deafblind person in history. Deafblindness is quantified as the loss of sight and hearing to a degree that impacts a person’s communication, mobility and access to information.
“It’s a unique disability because in incorporates two sensory loss, with both sight and hearing,” said Maracle, who works with clients across Eastern Ontario, including Napanee. “They are some clients who are profoundly deaf and profoundly blind, but to qualify for intervening services you have to have a legal degree of both to be qualified as deafblind.”
A major focus of the campaign isn’t just to raise awareness about the condition, but to let people know that there are services available if they need them. The Eastern Ontario chapter serves over 40 clients, but there are likely more who would qualify for the service.
“I think a lot of times people who are deafblind or their families don’t know that these services are out there for them,” said Maracle.
The highlight of the month long campaign will be the ‘yarn bomb’, which will take place Friday morning. Part of a larger global movement, yarn bombing is when public objects are covered in yarn-in this case the fence at Springside Park.
“They try to do tactile displays when they’re doing displays like that,” said Maracle. “The reason for picking the squares is that its something that people could come up and touch. Some of the squares knitted were by the clients, some of them were just volunteers who wanted to be involved and show their support and some people donated yarn. Maybe they themselves didn’t know how to knit but we had lots of yarn donated and lots of squares donated just by the community.”
Maracle says members of the community are encouraged to add to the display throughout the month. This will be the first time such a display has been created in Greater Napanee.
“We would love to see it grow just from the community support,” she added.
At the end of the month Maracle will remove the display from the fence.
CNIB’s eastern Ontario chapter is located at 826 Princess St. in Kingston. Their phone number is 343-550-1309 and they can be found online www.deafblindservices.ca or on Facebook by searching CNIB Ontario.