If you like tall ships, sail and dreams of a by-gone era, the Halifax Tall Ships Festival is a treat. The Festival is free, with a $5 fee charged to actually walk onto the boats.
For Canadians with disabilities, Canada’s National Parks are a drive through experience.
A committee in Ontario designed the supposed disabled ramp at the National Park at Brackley Beach, Prince Edward Island.
The ramp is too steep for any person with a disability, excepting perhaps Olympic athletes who use wheelchairs.
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Parks Canada wheelchair ramp at Brackley Beach is one of the many obstacles to tourists with disabilities
The Federal and Provincial governments have a new website (under construction) that will rate PEI tourist facilities as accessible or not.
The website will disclose that PEI is a disaster for the disabled. Both Federal and Provincial governments have ignored their role in leading the public to accept people with disabilities.
A year in development, the website is still not operational.
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Parks Canada wheelchair ramp at Brackley Beach not accessible - For the most part the National Park on PEI is not accessible to the disabled.
For the most part the National Park on PEI is not accessible to the disabled.
On Sunday morning I checked out the disabled parking at the Prince Edward Island National Park. I am pleased to report that 4 new accessible parking spots were painted in at Brackley Beach. Thanks to Parks Canada for responding to Why is Parks Canada not accessible to disabled ?
That only leaves Stanhope Beach, Ross Lane, Dalvay and all the other beaches in that section of the park to be upgraded. The situation is more or less the same at Cavendish so it would be a kindness for Parks Canada to just upgrade the lot of them.
Unfortunately, our luck ran out with Minister Jim Prentice and Fisheries Minister Gail Shea. Ernie Hudson replied from Shea’s office that the Brackley Beach wheelchair ramp is accessible. That’s a joke. Continue reading
Stanhope Beach parking lot, only one accessible parking place where there should be 6
I’d known for years that the PEI National Park was not accessible. Sure the bathrooms are but that’s the limit of accessibility. Camping, swimming, and nature walks are basically reserved for the able bodied.
Yet Parks Canada has been under national standards on accessibility since 1993 that are the same for any Government of Canada facility.
They are granted some exemptions when it comes to preserving historic buildings. Even that is tempered with a requirement to use their “best efforts” to make buildings accessible. Continue reading
Dalvay Beach, located east of Stanhope in the PEI National Park, is one of the better beaches on PEI for people with walking disabilities. It could be improved with a little blue paint and painting effort and the construction of a ramp.
The beach is close to the highway with some roadside parking but not designated disabled parking. Get a can of blue paint boys. The walk to the beach is a slight incline and only needs a ramp to bypass the 7 steps at the beach for someone in a wheelchair. That means a 100 foot ramp at a gentle grade. This shouldn’t cost more than $10,000, which is considerably less than the $500,000 spent to build the wrong wheelchair ramp at Brackley Beach.
Press release journalism results in false story
CBC’s code of journalistic ethics says that “The information conforms with reality and is not in any way misleading or false.” Yet in the case of their June 18th story they claimed Parks Canada had spent $500,000 making Brackley Beach more accessible. Parks Canada spent the money but the beach is not accessible by any reasonable standards.
Will they correct the story or is this another example of the lazy and arrogant news reporting at CBC Charlottetown? Continue reading
