Outlook on Radio Western

It takes two: best sister in the world or a kick in the head in the womb. This April, on Outlook, we’re doing a series on sibling pairs who are blind such as us two hosts indeed are. April 10th is National Sibling’s Day and our first pair in the series are twins Jessica and Jocelyn Gladysz of British Columbia. We asked each sister to describe the other and the answers were both sweet and fun, alon...

She was born in Sri Lanka and came, with her family, to Toronto, Canada when she was two-years-old. This week, on Outlook, we speak with the co-host of Kelly and Company, Ramya Amuthan, after having her partner on the show, its namesake, Kelly MacDonald on last year. We talk the best Sri Lankan food in the GTA or Greater Toronto Area where she grew up, about her mother’s choice for her daughter to...

Blaine Deutscher’s motto for living his life: "I don’t want blindness to be the reason I don’t do something”. This matches up with the philosophy of the Canadian Federation of the Blind and National Federation of the Blind: “living the life you want”. This week on Outlook, we speak with Blaine from Alberta about how he discovered CFB/NFB and related philosophy, the level of assistance he received...

After hitting our 100th episode a few weeks into 2021, we’ve put together a demonstration of Outlook and what we are all about. From the serious to the silly. So celebrate with us as we share one clip from each episode, one clip from each of our first one hundred shows.

Spring is on its way and we’re back with a taste of our famous Kijewski calmness. Read on and listen to learn more... After the first few months of 2021 and all the excellent guests we’ve had on, Outlook is back with just the two of us once again for what we like to refer to it as a mixed bag episode - new month, mixed bag March and here we go. On this week’s show we share our newest equipment for...

Q: What’s it like to have siblings who are blind? A (from one of ours): I don’t know. What’s it like Not to have siblings who are blind? Around this time every February, we celebrate Family Day and this year, on Outlook, we’re celebrating with our two, older siblings. We, as co-hosts, do this show from the perspective of growing up with blindness that has a baring on how we see the world. Our olde...

Legally blind. Low vision. Blind. What exactly does it mean to be legally blind anyway? Today on Outlook we speak with Toronto based journalist and AMI audio reporter Meagan Gillmore about being born with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), attending a private Christian school in a city that’s known for its school for the blind and not knowing where you fit in, and how applying for employment is mad...

What’s a fire tornado? How do the northern lights appear in the night sky? What does Joe Biden’s wearing of aviator sunglasses represent culturally? Who is The Falling Man? What exactly is a meme anyway? And what do Mike Pence and Grandpa Simpson have to do with one another? To our blind listeners, for answers to these questions and more, check out Outlook this week where we speak with Christine M...

We’re celebrating our 100th episode of Outlook, on this final Monday in January, with guest and friend Sky Mundell and his keyboard. As a child, our guest begged his dad for a piano and his dad said he’d buy him one if he learned a particular Beethoven song. There’s a timeless quality Sky has. He shares with us his adoption story, mainstream and segregation in education, and he explains his love o...

Check out the latest episode of Outlook where we speak with Natalie Martiniello and Jen Goulden from Braille Literacy Canada (BLC) as they celebrate thirty years. They discuss the early influence of braille literacy in their lives, how Braille Authority of North America (BANA) made Canada realize we needed something of our own, and what our guests believe is the future of braille in the literacy o...

Mixed Bag Monday, though I know when it’s a podcast, days of the week aren’t a part of it anymore. It’s our second episode of 2021 and the first with us two co-hosts back at it, as Outlook discusses what’s in the news, in the world of social media, and what’s happening on this show in the weeks to come. It’s another Mixed Bag Monday show. Today, on Outlook, we discuss the recent celebrations for W...

Have you ever seen a children’s picture print/braille book in your local library? Or any braille at all for that matter? Our first guest on Outlook for 2021 is a public service librarian from the National Network For Equitable Library Service (NNELS). Pikiora Wylie moved to Canada from New Zealand when she met a Canadian and, since moving here, has lived in Ottawa, northern British Columbia, and n...

We’re Back! Before Outlook, this is where it all began. Every year, around this time, we at Ketchup On Pancakes sit down by the fireside for a talk on the interesting year we’ve just experienced and the one still to come and 2020 was no exception; far from it. So we may not be recording as many episodes here as we once did, but even though we’re focusing our attention on Outlook and our advocacy o...

On this final episode of Outlook for 2020, we (brother and sister hosts) return with another Mixed Bag Monday for a discussion about how Outlook has grown over the past year. In a year where we were made to record from home rather than going into the station, we changed from 30 minute-long episodes to hour long shows where we began a year of interviews that can’t be beat: From mothers with blind c...

On one of the final episodes of Outlook for the year, we speak with Judy Robinet, advocate and ally to those of us with disabilities as she shares her own journey with the “D word”. Her father was the major influence in her life, but along the way she met other influences including Stevie Wonder and went on in the fields of child and youth development, special education, and orientation and mobili...

Welcome to December and our first International Day For Persons With Disabilities or IDPD episode before 2020 comes to an end. The interviewer becomes the interviewee, but you can’t totally take the host out of the guest and we three soon find out we have one thing, in particular, in common. He’s on AMIAudio with the afternoon talk show Kelly and Company. Today, he’s our guest. We speak with Kelly...

Someone who is blind has just as much of a stake in a healthy environmental imprint as anyone else. Yet, when you hear a bicycle flying by, when the wizzing sound of the bike’s tires surprises you when it’s most often too late, when this is a dangerous impediment to smooth travel on public transportation, it’s serious and must be taken into account. On this week’s episode of Outlook, we speak with...

We met him at the Orlando Airport, all coming home from the National Federation of the Blind convention of 2018 and we learned we all wanted to do more to advocate for blindness and disability in Canada. Check out this week’s episode of Outlook where we speak with Patrick Bouchard about finding the best educational environment, working in the online accessibility world, and how he found and took a...

Did you know there’s a way to add descriptions to photos on Facebook now? On this week’s Outlook, we pay tribute to Alex Trebek (long-time host of gameshow Jeopardy) as we discuss the influence and memories that show had and we had with it and Alex. We share a story of the first blind contestant, a big deal for us back in 1999 as he went on to win big, once the accessibility issues were addressed....

This week, on Outlook, we discuss disability literature with the reviews of two books, involving fairy-tales and the story of a blind mechanic. In our first half hour, we review Disfigured by Amanda Leduc, as we recall the fairy-tales we knew as siblings, growing up with blindness and disability. pure goodness and pure evil and how themes of physical or invisible disabilities manifested in fantast...

As we say goodbye to another Blindness Awareness Month and enter the final, uncertain, few months of 2020, on this episode we pay tribute to someone we’re naming most famous Canadian blind person, most well-known across the country anyway. Tom Dekker was one of our first guests, back at the beginning. We’ve decided to replay the thirty-minute episode where we were lucky to get a chance to intervie...

Happiness is blind is a worthwhile state of being. It’s not all misery is blind as so many parts of society might have you believe. A year of acceptance is what the mother on today’s episode of Outlook describes since the genetic blindness diagnosis of her third child, her only boy, after the Calgary family received the results of multiple examinations and medical testing for genetic markers for L...

Meet local London friend Rob Castrogiovanni in his first interview on Outlook. We talk school days, sharing a disability with a sibling, and music with his newest project: The Melody Chamber! Rob's music page can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/robctg And his writing page: https://www.facebook.com/robCastrogiovanniAuthor/ The Melody Chamber website coming soon!

BAM!: also known as Blindness Awareness Month has arrived. October is also Meet The Blind month. We are unsure about such a name as we eagerly await Meet The Sighted Month for November. ;-) October means not only BAM and Disability Employment Awareness Month but World Sight Day was October 8th and we’re back, us two, discussing why WSD seems to include blindness awareness on a day all about sight...

From her early rural west coast years to becoming a city girl, our guest on Outlook this week is someone we met in 2019, for the first time, at the Canadian Federation of the Blind Employment-Empowerment convention. On this week’s episode we discuss a musical life with good tone days and bad tone days. Patricia Elgersma speaks with us about perfect pitch, comparing just knowing a note to automatic...