DAWSON CITY │ Disabilities at High Noon

It is the apex of winter. We are in the Yukon Territory, the north-western most region of Canada to meet with business owners, agency representatives, government officials and people with disabilities to explore issues and ideas regarding disability and employment in this unique part of the world. We are about to drive across the recently opened ice-bridge across the wide, fast flowing Yukon River.

Three weeks ago temperatures dipped below 30C, but even this was not enough to stem the flow of the car-sized chunks of ice streaming past and onwards to the Bering  Sea, another 1000 miles in the journey of this timeless causeway.

Colm, our host and the local expert on learning disabilities, who singlehandedly provides disabilities education support services to an area the size of Wales, calmly suggests we unbuckle our seatbelts, but enjoy the ride as we venture out on this temporarily static ice flow.

This is the first time this season Colm, himself has made the trip across the ice to West Dawson, the other half of Dawson City that lies coldly disconnected from its better half twice a year: once as the residents wait for the ice flow to slow, slow, slow to become safe to cross in all manner of vehicles, as theory that water bears weight and ice is as strong as steel is put to the test once again, and a second time in the spring, as the last brave Dawsonite makes the final journey across the 200 meter bridge before ‘break-up’ and the eventual return of an equally precarious looking ferry. Colm wisely refrained from showing us the newspaper clipping of the front end of the truck firmly gripped in the racing sub-zero water with rest of the vehicle looking rather like a sad version of Titanic in her last moments.

My colleague Rick and I were temporarily warmed by the car heater, working hard against the -38 wind chill – a term that only really begins to make sense from about 20below in what otherwise would be a welcome breeze.

Half way across I found myself feeling a kind of bravery which is closer to bravado and trying to coax Rick to get out of the car with me when we reached the middle…and walk-wheel back. Rick was having none of it. But now, having made the fatal error (from the back seat, nonetheless) of taunting my colleague and companion into the wilds of this frozen flow, I had little choice but to follow-through as Colm pulled up and let me out. Out and alone on the ice in the middle of the Yukon River. Cold. Wind. Snow. Twilight daylight and the quiet as the car pulled away and disappeared behind the river frozen car-sized chunks of ice piled in one long crash.

The sensation of being on the ice, knowing the gazillion litres of water flowing just a few feet below the ice surface had been at pace for 2000 miles with a 1000 more to go before it would be slowed by the sea, made me shiver – or was it the cold. I spotted what appeared to be a path marked out with orange flagging tape, heading away from where I was dropped, but back in the direction to bank from which we’d come. This path seemed even more precarious than the car route that I can only imagine must have been created by some great machine that cleverly transforms icebergs into ice roads.  This narrower, less trampled route weaved around and over (thankfully not under) the ice flow for those who felt a car an unnecessary luxury to traverse the river in arctic temperatures to fetch milk, tea and bread.

At this point I was getting properly cold. I held my hands up over my ears, having foolishly left my hat behind, and turned my whole body – as you do when you are either stressed or half frozen – to see if Colm or Rick were anywhere in sight. They weren’t. So I decided to make a move, and head for the shore.

Now, given that I, myself, have been known to enjoy a laugh at the expense of some poor fool when I witness a bit of bravado-gone-wrong, I know what it looks like when someone is not having a great time when they are ‘having a go’ with a view to appearing adventuresome or undaunted. I can assure you that as I crossed the ice I was the source of much amusement to any onlooker from the offices and residences that overlooked the river that day. Indeed, by the time I reached the bank my face was bright red, my ears nearly white, my eyes squinted to slits and my body shook in my inadequately constructed London pea coat. Thankfully, as I waited, stock-still, showing the beginnings of desperation, Colm and Rick emerged from the river’s edge.

Colm, Rick and I headed back down main street to the hotel where we were to meet with our colleagues from the Yukon Council on Disability to begin our preparations for exploring disabilities and employment issues in this unique ex-goldrush wilderness frontier town.

Dawson City, as it would turn out, was a modern, forward-thinking city disguised as the Wild West circa 1898. Disabilities at high noon. Who would be left standing. 

HALF WAY DONE │ YUKON COMMUNITIES WORKING TOGETHER

A summary review of the YDES project so far.

KEY CONCEPTS: unique community and business, triple bottom line, the pragmatics of community living

The Yukon Disability Employment Strategy team put in a huge effort through the late fall and early winter month to visit as many communities as possible, as soon as possible, to ensure we were able to develop a clearer picture of the needs and wants of our communities and their businesses.

As a part of our review work during the month of January 2012, we thought it might be useful to step back from the intensity of the research phase and share some of what we have learned with the world. To this end, we have now had one article accepted for publication in the prominent international disabilities magazine, Disability Now, and have a second article that we are finalizing for an online magazine called Disability Horizons.

Part of our justification for taking the time to focus on sharing some of what we have learned already with the world, is that we felt it important to continue to build upon the foundations established by the Six Steps to Success conference for a regional, national and even international conversation on disability employment issues – as identified here in the Yukon.

We will make sure we post a link to the live articles once they go to print/online. But in the meantime, you can have a sneak preview of the first article below.

We’d like to thank all the community stakeholders we have met so far for your openness and honesty in helping us to identify the priority issues for disabilities employment in Yukon. Great work everyone!

Happy reading!

YUKON’S RUSH FOR HUMAN GOLD!

Imagine an untouched wilderness landscape four times the size of England, dizzyingly high mountain ranges and glacial-fed rivers dappled in gold and underpinned by diamond and silver seams.

Consider 360◦ wilderness vistas, where 17,000 wild grizzly and black bears wander the woods surrounding a handful of picturesque frontier towns tucked away in green valleys.

This is not mythology. It is the Yukon.

The Yukon is a geographically unique and isolated territory in north western Canada, sandwiched between British Columbia and the Arctic Ocean. It has the tallest peaks and coldest temperatures in North America, and is subsumed in Arctic twilight for half the year, contrasted by long summer days and the midnight sun.

The Yukon’s uniqueness ends abruptly, however, when we consider the statistics regarding employment equity for disabled people (or to use the preferred Canadian vernacular, ‘people with disabilities’). In the Yukon, like elsewhere, disabled people remain underrepresented within employment statistics and continue to face significant barriers in the workplace.

With a population of 35,000, an unemployment rate of 5%, a historically strong growth economy and highly educated workforce enjoying an equally high standard of living, the Yukon stands out as a northern oasis, free of the economic ills facing the rest of the western world. It is a refreshingly friendly, familiar place where everyone knows everyone else; where people stop and talk in the streets and welcome newcomers with smiles. What better place to develop a comprehensive disability employment strategy that ensures a barrier-free, progressive work and business environment?

In 2011 the Yukon Council on Disability took a bold step to resolve workplace discrimination across the Yukon, once and for all. They began with aninternational conference on disability employment issues, aiming to lay the foundations for a coordinated, comprehensive approach to firmly establish employment equity for disabled people across this vast and wilderness frontier landscape.

For the first time, business owners and managers across the whole of the Yukon have been asked for their perspective and input about why disabled people continue to face barriers in the workplace.

Now, at the start of 2012, the Yukon Council on Disability is proud to report significant progress is underway – real, measurable progress – grounded in the recognition by businesses across the Yukon that, yes, barriers preventing people from having a full life, including employment, remains a serious problem, and one that can and must be resolved through progressive, coordinated business and community planning.

To be clear, though, Yukon business owners are not discussing workplace accommodations and revising human resources policies and procedures simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Yukon might be a place full of thoughtful, highly educated people, but business is business wherever you go.

Indeed, Yukon employers identified that they are interested in recruiting and retaining disabled people because it makes good business sense. An inclusive, happy, productive workforce = efficient, expanding, successful, sustainable business. And if there is one thing that all successful business leaders agree on, it’s that a business is only as successful as its people. What businesses depend on is access to a highly skilled, experienced and motivated labour market, and that includes disabled people.

It is not our intention to imply that business owners in the Yukon are only interested in the bottom line, with disabled people simply an untapped labour market and instrument to coldly increase productivity. Rather, without necessarily using the terminology, business owners are thinking imaginatively about business in terms of the triple bottom line – people, planet, profit – and the benefits of becoming the employer and provider of choice to an increasingly discerning marketplace.

In many ways, building a successful business is about connecting the dots that comprise the full image of what you are trying to achieve as a business and good corporate citizen. Success, check. Sustainability, yes. Committed labour force, essential. Support of the community, absolutely. A complete, well-rounded happy work environment, yes please. But connecting all these dots is not as simple as it might seem.

Unlike a children’s connect-the-dots activity book, entrepreneurs and business owners are starting with a blank page, having to identify all the dots (read, business planning factors), then mapping these out in a way that forms the shape of their idealised business (products, markets, size, growth, etc.) and finally connecting the dots together in a way that results in a business resembling the intended progressive, friendly corporate citizen. To use a hackneyed example, think Apple Inc and its corporate image: imaginative, barrier-free, shrewd, customer-focussed, creative products for a whole, inclusive community.

Smart business owners recognise they can simultaneously mitigate risk of failure and promote growth simply by taking progressive steps towards considering the needs and desires of their employees and the community in which they operate. But, articulating and persisting with a progressive, strategic business plan is not easy. Managers must resist the everyday temptation of short-term gains through cost-cutting in areas such as workplace innovations inspired by fresh, forward-thinking universal design. Recruiting or retaining a person with a disability and modifying the business to ensure universal accessibility is invariably an investment in the future.

Interestingly, one of the key outcomes of this present initiative is that businesses are coming to terms with the revelation that many of employees they depend on most of all are in fact disabled. This awareness, admission and recognition by business is indeed new. Many businesses might have been employing and accommodating disabilities for years, but by going through this process of questioning, discussing and reflecting, businesses are finally putting words and structures around what they have been doing intuitively. The translation from the intuitive to the explicit is the essential first step to the kind of strategic planning that will enable businesses to expand productivity through targeted workplace modernisations, inclusive of accommodations to the advantage of all employees.  

It’s now January, 2012, and the Yukon Council on Disability is looking ahead to completing the consultation phase of the Yukon Disability Employment Strategy development with business (see the blogs, here and here) and undertaking the difficult task of developing the strategy itself: the set of guidelines, best practices  and resources which will help businesses create successful, inclusive, barrier-free workplaces. With disability as a core component of a whole community, businesses in the Yukon are eager to finally connect all the dots and demonstrate to the world that equity in employment for disabled people is not only possible, but good business.

ROSS RIVER │ JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF YUKON

The long slow road to Ross River and the anticipation of understanding the disability employment issues of this unique little town in the heart of Yukon

Ross River is a community of approximately 300 year-round residents. It is located in central Yukon, accessible from Watson Lake, 6 hours drive to the south-east up a predominantly single-track gravel road in winter and summer.

The journey time to Whitehorse is a similar distance, but going round the loop and down past Carmacks and on paved roads. There is one other access on a summer road only from Jakes Corner directly south on the Alaska Highway.

Travelling to Ross River in November from Watson Lake was, to say the least, a journey which few have done – particularly at -25C in snow and starting out at 4am! But, alas, no misadventures on the way, and just enough left in the tank as I arrived that there was no need for coasting down the hills over the last few miles as the sun began to lift just over the horizon at 10am.

Six hours after I departed Watson Lake I was in my first meeting of the day, and looking forward to understanding the issues of this historically significant little town tucked away down in the heart of Yukon.