Outlook on Radio Western

“Tis the season to be jolly/tis the season to be brother” Outlets and outlooks. We’re ringing in the new year (goodbye 2023 and hello 2024), here on Outlook, from down in sister and co-host Kerry’s basement. We’re discussing trends that made an impression in 2023, for blind people, including things like Be My AI in the “Be My Eyes” app, the celebrating of our 200th show and 5th year in 2023, and s...

Sheila’s three questions in problem solving and in life: Where am I? Where am I going? And how am I going to get there? Sheila Dinnin is an Orientation & Mobility specialist (O&M) with Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada. How did she learn about the job she now has and what did it take to get into this type of work in the first place? This week on Outlook we’re speaking with brother/co-host Brian’s...

John, AKA Mac The Movieguy, has a degree in Cinema Studies and has been critiquing movies since the 90s and before he went blind - his YouTube channel has over 1000 videos all about movies and audio description in film. This week on Outlook we’re speaking with John Stark and getting his movie critic expertise on audio description (AD) in film, including how watching a movie with sighted people is...

Stories from a scientific life, on a snowy Ottawa morning. The International Day of Disabled Persons (IDPD) promotes people with disabilities being a part of life in all areas, including in science, which is everything all around us and involves everyone. This week on Outlook we hear from Lawrence Gunther, a storyteller with a love of being by or on the water. He got a degree in Environmental Stud...

With “The Politics of Blindness” he’s looking to plant the seeds. This week on Outlook we speak with Graeme McCreath whom we met through The Canadian Federation of the Blind about his book and about his dual British and Canadian perspective. We hear about his early years in England and the unique opportunity he got to study physiotherapy there, his coming over to Canada and Victoria, British Colum...

Then - our friendship with this guest goes way back to when he and Kerry got their first and only guide dogs in Quebec in 1998 and how he shared an apartment with Brian in Toronto for a few years between 2009 and 2012. And now - this week on Outlook we’re speaking with our friend Erik about how, in the past five years, he’s found love and gotten married, had two kids during a pandemic, and is rais...

SIGHTED PEOPLE SUCK Well, let us explain further. This week on Outlook we discuss our friend Dr. M. Leona Godin’s new live performance piece “Sighted People Suck” along with discussing what that statement is really all about for us and other blind people in a mostly sighted world. Also, we discuss Brian’s experience speaking to a group of greeters from across the globe. So what does it mean to be...

Shortwave 1310… This week on Outlook we’re reviewing the November Netflix release of “All the Light we Cannot See,” adapted from the 2014 novel by Anthony Doerr. We share the audio described trailer and about what it means to have representation in storytelling and in media with ATLWCS having a lead actress who is blind, playing the blind character in this series, along with the important part an...

Bit of a rocky start to this Mixed Bag episode, down one mic to start the hour, but Brian is taking us on an audio tour of Ireland. This week on Outlook we go from a Belfast pub, to on board on Dublin tour buses, following a traditional Irish trail with co-host Brian. Also, we discuss our recent time visiting an old friend in St. Catharine’s and we read more AI generated image descriptions from ou...

As three pals do, giving each other a hard time but having fun in studio with good friend/boyfriend Barry Toner visiting from Ireland. While he’s appeared on our show many times before, Barry is back on Outlook for the first time live in studio to have some fun with us as he tells us what he’s been doing and how he’s been getting along during his stay back here in Canada. Brian is also taking us t...

Have the conversation. Following September 30th, National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, and ahead of Thanksgiving it’s another Mixed Bag with a mixture of topics we discuss on Outlook this week as co-host Brian makes his return to the show live and in person. This week we discuss co-host Kerry’s command of things in studio while her co-host was away in the UK and catch up on all Brian did on hi...

Her one woman show is premiering, in London, England this October and we’re pleased to have returning guest Jasmine Thien back to discuss it, along with recent insights on adjusting with a second prosthetic eye after having the first one removed in response to childhood cancer. This week on Outlook, Jasmine is here to share about her upbringing and family history and her lifelong journey with reti...

Chippy or chipper and what, exactly, is a Belfast bap? Fries, chips, crisps - from England to the north of Ireland to Canada, differences are everywhere when travel calls. This week on Outlook, sister/co-host Kerry is alone in the radio studio once again (only a handful of times has she been in there on her own), without brother/co-host and board operator who’s still away in the UK. Kerry is speak...

In September of 2018, Outlook was born and first aired and here we are, five years on, with more than 200 shows full of discussions from a wide variety of perspectives. This week we spend time and have fun reminiscing on these last five years, with us two siblings as the core of what Outlook has grown into, while, all the while, enhancing things by speaking with an array of fascinating guests with...

This week on Outlook we speak with Kelly Evans, an audio description script writer, but this time the script has been reversed. Last time, on her first appearance as our guest, we asked her about how she got into the field, learning about the impact she hopes to have in the world of audio description, to make the visuals of media more accessible to blind viewers. This time, Kelly interviews Kerry...

Once co-host Kerry, as a baby, climbed all over his shiny oxygen tank. They first met in the mid 80s, he born premature, and have known each other all their lives, including all sorts of camp experiences throughout the 90s. Steven Potter is back, his third time with us on the show, and he brings his ear for audio and impeccable memory to this lighthearted summer subject. It’s a summertime children...

Cow themed festivals and giant sand hills. It’s a late August Mixed Bag and we’re returning with a slew of topics and we have our return guest, from last week, to join in on the conversation. Laura Bain is back on Outlook this week as we discuss finding data plans for travel, our family beach day and using our white canes to climb the giant sand hill at Sand Hill Park on Lake Erie, and about some...

Back in 2021, we had guest Laura Bain on Outlook, a reunion between Bain and co-host Brian after meeting twenty years earlier training for guide dogs in Quebec. This week, we welcome Laura Bain back to the show after two years of a program she’s been studying in, a Masters of Socialwork and we’re checking in on how school, for her once more, is going. We discuss school, but we spend a lot of time...

Since our last mixed bag, back in May the proposed federal disability benefit (Bill C22) finally passed Royal Assent on June 20th, 2023. It’s a mid summer Mixed Bag episode of Outlook this week as we cover topics from social and entertainment to politics. With this one we share about the recent Radio Western station social gathering we attended and Brian’s time lately with the station’s Systems/We...

“I’ve never felt so free,” says Kerry about her time in Ireland recently, which is what we’re talking about for one more episode in a series, Kerry’s travel series, before we move along to Brian’s upcoming vacation. This week on Outlook we’re wrapping up co-host Kerry’s Ireland stories with a show full of audio clips she collected on her travels. From the waves at Spanish Point to kick off the sho...

Anita, travel agent with The Travel Agent Next Door, met co-host Kerry, back in 2017, when Kerry walked into the travel agency where Anita was working to book travel to a writing workshop in Mexico. They’ve been friends and traveling, together sometimes too, ever since. This week on Outlook we speak with Anita Paton about her years of experience as a travel agent, the challenges she came up agains...

We cant have a Disability Pride Month go by without the subject of sensitivity reading coming up. This week on Outlook we speak with debut author Rachel Kelley Stones about her book: “Love Unseen”. It was the Summer of No TV - Rachel grew up, her and her twin sister on a farm in Kentucky, when one television-free summer books became her entertainment and an immersive reading experience. “It’s righ...

She grew up on the mountain, on skis from an early age. Shelby Perry grew up with good working vision and never gave any thought to the alternative. So when the accident, “When it happened, I was really at a loss and I didn’t even know what a prosthetic eye looked like or how people lived with one. So it was a very challenging time when that first occurred to get a grasp about how I was going to c...

“It is a special place and I always feel a real kinship when I’m here” says show co-host Kerry during her travels across the pond. Brian is live from the studio solo, but is joined by his sister and co-host over Zoom currently enjoying her final week in Ireland. We’re talkin’ travel this week on Outlook. Kerry discusses the first 2 weeks of her trip spent in Dublin and other regions of Southern Ir...

“Persevere”, “Rise”, “Flow”, “Connect”. These are the titles of 4 paintings Vera Popovic created for an exciting art project in British Columbia.. We’re back this week with Part 2 of our look back at “Your Eyes, My Vision”, a program in B.C. where blind adults were paired with sighted facilitators to encourage, create, and showcase “visual” art. It consisted of an online VocalEye event where some...