Podcast: Celebrating 50 years with the Alberta Sports and Recreation Association for the Blind

According to MacPhail, ASRAB’s three pillars are: helping children and youth achieve physical literacy, ensuring recreational opportunities are wide-ranging, and finally, the association’s primary organized sport of goalball.

“We run that sport from entry level to the provincial level, and we’ve got a lot of athletes who are on the national team, competing internationally,” she says, noting the markets they’re currently based in are Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Grande Prairie, Edmonton and Calgary.

“We’re very cognizant of everyone who’s helped build the platform we have, one that’s robust, engaged and energized, and we’re ready to move into the future with enthusiasm.”

ASRAB will host a gala in September for past and current board members, coaches and athletes.

They’re also going out in their centres to deliver fun social events. A calendar of events is here.

A big part of the calendar for ASRAB is its annual ‘Sight Night’ events.

Four such gatherings are coming up in the fall, in Edmonton and Lethbridge on Sept. 27, Red Deer on Oct. 18, and Calgary on Nov. 8.

“Sight Night is a fun run in the dark, vision is optional, and we start the run at about dusk. We give all the participants a headlamp, and it’s just to celebrate recreation and activity within a community environment,” MacPhail explains.

All events, but especially Sight Night, allow members of the community who are blind, and their families, to connect.

Some proof that’s in the pudding as far as ASRAB’s impact and what athletes with blindness can achieve is Viviane Forest, who was this year inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame.

Forest, the first Canadian to medal at both the winter and summer Paralympics (goalball, alpine skiing), is from Montreal, but has spent plenty of time in Edmonton participating in dragon boating, lawn bowling, blind hockey, and athletics, among other things.

On misconceptions about people with blindness, it isn’t cut and dry, if you ask MacPhail.

“I do know we can adopt virtually any activity to support persons with low vision, and once those adaptations are made, it’s really wide open what they can accomplish,” she says.

In Red Deer on July 30, ASRAB held a peddle boating event at Bower Ponds, where members came out to connect and have fun.

Two participants were Gordon Steffensen and Laurie Meadows Robinson.

“These events are great. It’s good to get out, get around, and be an active guy, and it’s nice to share with other people who are visually impaired,” said Steffenson, who has glaucoma in his older age, on top of his hereditary retinitis pigmentosa.

“Accessibility is very important, and sometimes we get left in the dark, so to speak.”

For folks like Steffenson, certain aids are crucial as well, and in his case, Meta glasses and the familiar red and white cane are his go-tos.

Gordon Steffensen, ASRAB member in Red Deer. (rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

For Meadows Robinson, people often don’t realize she’s only partially sighted, because she doesn’t carry a cane. That leads to some anxiety when she does choose to use one because she’s worried someone will question her need for it.

“I can see most things; for example, you’re two feet away, and I can see you’re there, but if you were making a face at me, I would have no idea what face it was,” she says, noting her condition, cone dystrophy, is also hereditary. “I actually see better in the dark, so my phone is black with white writing, I have special screens on my computers at work, and I ask a lot of questions.”

Meadows Robinson says ASRAB’s events provide encouragement to try things, or often to try things again but for the first time with vision impairment.

“ASRAB tells us the sky’s the limit, so if we say we want to try something, they make it happen. I’ve gone golfing with friends, but sometimes, even though they know me, and know I’m a trooper, it’s hard to not feel like a burden when they have to find your ball every time. With this group, you don’t feel that way because it’s expected,” she says.

“To folks who aren’t visually impaired, be patient with us; it is okay to ask what someone needs help with or to say ‘Let me know if I’m being a pain in the butt and you don’t need help.’ It goes both ways though because it has to come from us who are partially sighted or blind to have the confidence to ask when we need help.”

Meadows Robinson also runs a monthly CNIB-sanctioned peer support group, the second Wednesday of each month, from 6-8, at ABC Country Restaurant.

More information about ASRAB is at asrab.ab.ca.

by Josh Hall | @Vancan19

Podcast: Celebrating 50 years with the Alberta Sports and Recreation Association for the Blind

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