Nancy Hansen told us about her activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. She started by explaining that she is a “4-legged woman” because she uses crutches for mobility on a regular basis. She is head of the Interdisciplinary Masters program in Disability at the University of Manitoba.
She had the honour or distinction in delivering the last “in person” lecture at the University of Regina. Her comment was “I guess I shut the place down”.
Two weeks later, back in Winnipeg, Nancy read headlines worldwide proclaiming that people with intellectual and physical disabilities should be denied care in order to save resources.
In the next few weeks, Nancy began to teach by Zoom from her dining room table, which was very exciting. It saved her about 4 hours each day, since it’s much faster to get to her dining room table than to trek out to the University on Handi-Transit.
She began attending lessons on providing information world-wide.
She started writing – a lot – for her life (to justify her existence) and doing interviews for the CBC on the impact of COVID on disabled people and on the subject of medical assistance in dying.
She made the decision to apply for a full professorship (still waiting for the final decision).
She spends a lot of time Zooming with federal government commissions .
She does a lot of work for Equity, Diversity and Inclustion at the federal government level, internationally and at the University.
She’s been getting a lot of stuff published lately.
Involved with a project on children’s art at the U of Toronto, jury selection at the U of Manitoba Law School, disability and conflict with Peace and Conflict at the U of M, as well as an engineering project with WCB and a technology project at Carleton.
Non-work related activities included spending lots of time going to concerts all over the world “with the man I love” (her husband Peter Tonge), attending Folkfest for the first time (under regular circumstances Folkfest is inaccessible to them), regular concerts from Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea, William Prince, Larkin Poe, the Michigan Folkfest, JP Hoe concerts, an ice cream subscription from Sibon (delivery once a month) and weekly date nights with food from Mona Lisa.
Very important for Nancy were two dolls she got this year – an American girl doll with crutches and from the Barbie Fashion Easter collection, a Barbie doll with a prosthesis. She uses them in her Disability and Media course.
She read 6 books and has
- a new appreciation for the Lilac Bakery (because they deliver),
- two new pairs of shoes and
- a haircut last month, which was very exciting!Finally, Nancy was able to save enough money to make a donation to the Janette Soutar Memorial Bursary (for graduate students in the Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Disability Studies at the University of Manitoba).
It was heartily agreed that Nancy Hansen was BUSY in the past year! President Doug hoped that the online communications that have evolved during the Covid shutdown would continue well into future to make life a little easier for people – certainly for situations that Nancy mentioned.
This was the club’s last “Show & Tell”. Next week’s meeting (March 1st) will not include similar member participation because our guest speaker will take up extra time. However, on March 8th we will begin another series of presentations consisting of the assigned Rotarian’s holiday travel plans for when travel can become a normal activity again.