Quebec City, Quebec

My adventures in Quebec City, Quebec! It is a lovely city. I am glad that I had a conference there, otherwise I may have never in my life discovered its charm =) The conference was amazing and I think that our presentation went very well. We had good questions afterward ... and one of the best compliments was that the moderator of the session suggested that our data would be of benefit to people with recent spinal cord injuries who are in the early stages of the adaptive process.

This statue is a symbol of the inuit people of Quebec. The statue is a symbol of the friendship between the people of the great North of Quebec. The statue is on the grounds of the Quebec province capital building which is across the street from the conference center. I love this picture because you can see the statue, the conference center where I did my first professional research presentation, and the symbol for the celebration of the 400 year anniversary of Quebec City (from what I hear it is the oldest city in North America)
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Flowers on the grounds of the Parliament building
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.Flowers on the grounds of the Parliament building
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Vieux Quebec (400 ans vieux) and the Chateau
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This is a poster which was at the conference. It is describing a theater in which the performers have aphasia (the loss of ability to speak and/or understand verbal language due to a cerebral lesion). It looks like an awesome form of communication and theater.
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I think that this poster describes well the disability rights movement ... the desire not to survive on "compassionate" daily bread but rather to have barriers removed (societal and physical) so that they can participate fully in life and contribute.

One of the plenary session speakers was a woman from South Africa who had polio as a child and her ability to use her legs was severely compromised. The message of note for me was not so much what she overcame nor the specifics of her disability but rather how much she had to offer to the world. She was a vibrant and inteligent woman. To me, to think of the loss of her contribution to the world is very sad. For me the rational for disability rights is very reciprocal. On one side that people with disability may have rich fulfilling lives through participation but also so that we as a world and a society can have the contributions of all people.