Outlook on Radio Western

“You don’t know what you’re doing, you’re basically recreating your life, and there’s no map for it. I just went through the motions for a long time, I was just a shell of who I once was, but by talking about my experience I realised I could help other people and I began to share my story in front of audiences.” Power, control, empowerment. Rebirth, trauma, healing, and even forgiveness and on fin...

Heading toward International Women’s Day on March 8th, our guest this week says: “Listening to live music for me is just such an incredible experience because I’m not someone… I don’t personally enjoy the nightclub spaces, that stuff overwhelms me, but when it comes to listening to music, I could do that for hours. That’s good audio stimulus.” This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Amanda Shekar...

“For twenty-four years of my blindness journey I wandered around this world pretending I was sighted. I wouldn’t use a cane, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, I didn’t want to identify as somebody with a disability,” but then Gina Martin says, “In 2015 I met two women who were both confident and blind and it actually blew my mind”. This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Gina with an emp...

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” February is birthday month in the family and this episode happens to fall on co-host Kerry’s forty-first exactly so we’re celebrating all things Sister/Co-host with this one. This week on Outlook we’re talking Kerry’s favourite movie (unavailable with audio description), about the trick of FaceTime “Share Content”, along with the boys discussing fantasy b...

“I can’t just sit there and watch life pass me by - I wasn’t built for that,” says Keisha Robinson, a Brian Connection with this one. They first met when she ushered him to a seat at an AODA (Accessibility For Ontarians With Disabilities Act) round table event at King’s University College, at Western for International Day For Persons With Disabilities. When, in fact, we have a more personal family...

BRAILLE … IS … NOT … A … LANGUAGE!!! Welcome to our final 2025 Braille Literacy Month episode - kicking things off with a poem from a child who loves braille for (Braille200) an initiative by The European Blind Union. Meanwhile, for this week’s Mixed Bag on Outlook, we continue to speak about our new low tech device The BrailleDoodle and its role in making braille more accessible, such as for stud...

While sure there are big things, big horrible things happening in Washington, D.C. - on a freezing day in January, we are on air for another Mixed Bag, lurgy filled episode. This week on Outlook On Radio Western we’re finally all back, in-person, together at Radio Western after holidays and illness and continuing the celebration of Braille Literacy Month (Braille200) by sharing an unboxing of a ne...

Broadcasting live from both Kerry’s office/house and the Radio Western studio, the year and our first show of 2025 begins with the sound of guide dog Oyster’s nails and paws on the floor with our first episode being partially from home as a result of snowy Canadian winter. It’s our first Outlook of a new year and, instead of being all together in studio like we’d planned, two of us are joining fro...

“So after I was injured, all of a sudden I was discovering - Oh, there’s a whole other possibility of how I can use these artistic disciplines I’m really passionate about, but with now this whole new lens on it of being somebody with a disability, somebody who’s part of a community that has largely been marginalised and devoiced and that I think, by putting on stage, putting in the stories, sudden...

Q: What do Lego and musical theatre have in common? A: Our guest for this second last show of 2024 that’s what. This week on Outlook we’re speaking with our new friend Matthew Shifrin, someone we met with the rest of the gang at the drama camp/artist’s retreat we attended in Mount Vernon, Maine over the summer. We spend the first half of this episode talking all things accessible Lego as Matthew s...

From dusk till dawn. It’s always darkest before the dawn, but what’s wrong with dusk? Where’s the beauty in it? It’s December and nearly are we arriving at the shortest, longest, darkest day/night of the year.. On our International Day of Persons With Disabilities 2024 episode, we are discussing disability within a larger framework of discussion, expanding into age and the changes it brings, inclu...

Co-host Kerry’s back! Sister/co-host Kerry returns and is live in studio after being away for a month. It’s a month away from Christmas on this late November, mixed bag show. This week we discuss what was and what has been, with a badly sprained ankle, Kerry luckily got all her Dublin exploring out of the way, mostly. And Brian has been taking action regarding his mental and physical health. We ta...

In preschool, her teachers noticed she wasn’t hearing and she soon got hearing aids, but it wasn’t until she was in her teens that our guest on Outlook this week had to face that she was losing vision as well. Natalie Shearer is with us, for one of our final interviews of 2024, to discuss her position as an advocate, with her diagnosis of Usher syndrome. She’s telling us about what eventually caug...

Words like “childless” and “blindness” are both too harsh for some ears, often diluted by using other words or terms. These are conversations we on Outlook seek to take on and not hide from every day because we’re living it. November 5th is the official North American release of Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children by writer and translator Nicole Louie and this week sister/co-host K...

While Kerry is still in Ireland and away from the mic, this week there’s a special spot filler in her seat. We’re talking magic and monsters on what we’ve coined our Monster Mixed Bag show. This week on Outlook, the Fab Four return, including sister/co-host Kerry and boyfriend Barry in Northern Ireland and brother Brian and friend Nefertiti Matos Olivares, visiting from New York City, in studio af...

Frogs and toads, rubber ducks, and loons - oh my! It’s time for Part Two - this week on Outlook we share the second half of our audio scrapbook of our week in Mount Vernon, Maine this summer for Drama Club Camp. Last week we heard from several of the others in attendance and this week we continue hearing from those from our "cast of characters,” as our host called it. Host Scott spoke with us last...

“This morning, when I woke up, I felt good because the sun was shining. I felt good because I was a frog. And I felt good because I have you as a friend.” Arnold Lobel, “Days with Frog and Toad” We used to do tours of the hotel rooms we stayed in as a family, as kids, and now we’re going to give you a tour of the inn we were invited to this summer, in Mount Vernon, Maine, for an artist retreat. Th...

We’re continuing our education series during October, Blindness Awareness Month - BAM! A lot has changed since the summer of 2020, but not the focus and hard work of returning guest and ally, Caroline Karbowski, who joins us this week from the home of Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Mass. There she will soon be celebrating October 15th (White Cane Day) with blind and deaf-blind students wh...

DISABILITY WITH POSSIBILITY This week on Outlook we’re starting, along with our mission on this show toward recognising intersectionalities and identity, we begin this episode by talking about the date this one originally airs: September 30th. In Canada, the last day of September is known as Orange Shirt Day since 2013 and now Canada’s National Day For Truth and Reconciliation since 2021. We empha...

Over the summer, we visited Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, outside of Boston. It’s September and back-to-school is on people’s minds so we bring you a special Outlook…into this historic educational environment for blind and deafblind children. What brought us all there together?” Our tour guide asks us. Well, sister/co-host Kerry has known about Perkins for most of her life, which is d...

Richard Marion knows that: with the political climate threatening inclusivity of society in some ways, it’s even more important, out there, that he only wants people identifying themselves, being proud of their identities. Going with our September theme, we’re beginning this one by talking education for the blind, for our guest. This week on Outlook we’re speaking with first-time guest on the show...

Every year, when our anniversary for starting rolls around, we like to invite guests on with us who listen to the show. This time, we’ve invited longtime listener and friend Nancy Gill to join us live on air. It’s our Six Mix this week on Outlook with Nancy, all phone troubles aside, and we couldn’t have found a better person to be with us for this one. Nancy has a routine, every Monday morning (a...

Trouble with technology, social media, and yet we come on air laughing, asking ourselves one question: Next step - should we get a billboard? This week on Outlook it’s another Mixed Bag and one of the final summer shows. We hear about Brian’s night out and Kerry’s, Blind Barbie, and the 2024 Paris Paralympics are here with braille on the medals, being that France was the home country of its invent...

August is half gone and “back To school” will soon be here. Our returning guest this week, Mitch Kidd, knows about the butterflies on the first day (both as student and as educational worker) speaking with us about the new teaching program they’re starting this fall. This time we two are back in studio and speaking with Mitch all the way from their home on Canada’s west coast once again. This epis...

It’s still summer and the summer months often include summer camp which is where our guests this week first met as teens. To begin with, the three things we have in common are our differing levels on the blindness spectrum, all four of us were integrated into the public school system, and we now record our respective podcasts in studios, them at the studio at Perkins School for the Blind and us at...