Conviction for assault at Pat and the Elephant is tip of the iceberg with PEI’s largest paratransit service

Pat and the Elephant is an important part of the disability service infrastructure of PEI but it has lost its way in providing services with dignity.

I started using Pat and the Elephant about 9 years ago. Up to then, I had been walking but things got worse so I got a wheelchair.

Imagine this: I offer to drive you shopping. After you get in the car, I come around, open your door and buckle you in. Then I tug on it to see if it’s safe.  Why would I do that if you weren’t a four year old?

I trusted my children to buckle themselves in if I heard the snap. Otherwise I would ask them but not strip them of their independence and dignity.

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That’s what Pat and the Elephant did for me at age 51. I owned a 4 x 4, had run companies, raised 5 children and owned my own home but Pat and the Elephant reduced me to a child in one simple move.

Insurance they said – bullshit I said to myself but had to endure their dehumanizing and patronizing treatment.

That is only one example of the lack of dignity that most adults in a wheelchair have to endure to get transported.

I have taken Pat and the Elephant and it is a dehumanizing experience. The drivers are sometime pleasant and sometimes rude. Some drivers will help you others just stand back and let you struggle to get on.

The dispatcher Trent Costello is bordering on abusive all the time. The Board told me to accept him that way since he’s an old Navy man and can’t be trained. Well, my uncle was an old army man and he didn’t abuse anyone let alone the disabled. Pat and the Elephant apologize

When the Board of P&E tolerates Costello’s abuse, the staff know they can get away with it. In Valerie’s video, Trent told her that Margaret, another driver, was “grossed out” by the boy’s saliva.

Where does that leave the mother but demoralized? How can she help the boy’s disability? Is she God with a miraculous curing power? Trent let Mrs. Gillespie know that they think her son is sub-human. Great message for caregivers – it is incomprehensible but that’s Pat and the Elephant.

I got stuck in the snow last winter and the driver just watched me struggle until I ended up pushing the chair myself. She wouldn’t even help with the joystick while I pushed. Strangers on Kent Street are more helpful.

Taking P&E goes from a tolerable to a hateful experience.

I try to take cabs whenever I can. Sometimes that means I don’t have my wheelchair which I need.

Cab drivers around town are a great bunch of people. I’m sure they have to put up with lots of rowdy passengers late at night coming home from the bars. They are not likely to assault a passenger. They always help with packages or my chair.

Patronizing and dehumanizing comments are not what we want. We just want to be treated like humans, not lesser creatures.

If the taxpayers of PEI and Canada are funding a disability bus (paratransit) service, we expect the service to accommodate people with disabilities.

And to do it keeping their personal dignity intact. Lord knows life with a disability can be hard enough without some paratransit company beating up on you.