By Spencer Williams
During the week of March 8 to the 14th, I travelled to Ottawa to participate in Encounters with Canada - Journalism and Communications. It was an eye-opening and somewhat life-changing experience for me. I met many cool people and I now have friends from all over Canada. For example, I met teens from Nova Scotia who were very friendly and free-spirited. I have never really had a chance to interact with teens from an Eastern province on the other side of Canada, so many thousands of miles from my home in Vancouver. I learned a bit about every province in Canada. The representatives from each province had to make a skit highlighting what was the best thing or most important aspect of their province; it was a fun and entertaining way to learn about each province. Of course BC’s presentation was the best!!
I also met some great people from Quebec who stood out because I had a chance to learn a little bit of French from them. I learned about the importance of bilingualism in Canada and how far you can go if you have both languages. I can’t speak French at all but during my trip I met so many French-speaking people that I now feel as though I can understand it! It was interesting because I hadn’t seen or heard that many French people in one place in such a long time. . . it really made me feel proud to call myself a Canadian because of our respect for the two founding languages of our country. Living in Vancouver, you hear little or no French so it was a relief to know that so much French still exists in Canada. Where I live I hear more Italian and Chinese, than French!
Going to Ottawa, I had an expectation that it was going to be all classroom work and homework and be a tad bit boring. But no, I totally underestimated the depth of the program and it turned out to be the most fun I’ve ever had. A small group of us toured the University of Ottawa student volunteer-run radio station. Going in the radio station was cool because I got to see what actually goes on in the making of an on-air broadcast. I never thought that the area they worked in was as small as it was! I sat in on a seminar with a journalist from Ottawa Life Magazine who puts an interesting spin on journalism. I was interested in hearing what she had to say because her background was music and I had chance to do a mini interview with her asking for her thoughts on how music relates to journalism. I chose to go in that direction because I am developing my skills as a music journalist and I wanted to get a fellow music journalist’s opinion on our field of journalism/work. I have interviewed several bands, mostly independent artists because my goal is to learn and gather as much information as I can about the music industry.
As a person with a disability, doing this program I found it to be very accommodating to my needs. It allowed me to participate in the program to my fullest ability without any setbacks. The biggest thing for me is teaching everybody about me and that not everyone that’s in a wheelchair is “scary”. Everyone accepted me for who I was. They saw me, and not the wheelchair! It just so happened that I was one of two people there who had the most experience with journalism. Going there I felt like I had the most experience but I still learned a great deal.