CILT’s 40th Anniversary News and Updates

Transcript 

0:00 
Hi everybody, my name is Wendy Porch and I’m the Executive Director at the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto, also known as CILT. I’m very happy to welcome you and invite you to celebrate this year with us. This is our 40th anniversary. So, this year we are celebrating 40 years of good trouble, of working hard to support Independent Living for disabled people in Toronto and in Ontario broadly. 

0:28
This year CILT is planning a number of events that we would love for you to join us at. We are hoping in June of next year, of 2025, to have a big gala to celebrate our 40th. Throughout the year, we will be posting a podcast featuring people who are champions from the Independent Living movement and consumers from the community talking about the importance of Independent Living in their lives. We will also be looking back into the archives of photos, videos and other pieces of art and thinking on Independent Living. And we’ll be sharing those on our website too. We’ll also be putting things up on social media to celebrate the resilience and the accomplishments of disabled people in Toronto towards Independent Living.  

1:29
CILT is a community based resource center. We are by disabled people, for disabled people. We have been working tirelessly for 40 years for social and economic equity for disabled people across all sectors of society. We’re based on the Independent Living Philosophy that started in California in the late 60s, early 70s that says that disabled people, we are the experts in what we need and we should be supported to have opportunities for choice, autonomy and control in our lives.

2:07 
The last 40 years have seen a lot of evolutions, a lot of things happening that are significant in the context of supporting disabled people to live independently in the community. It was more than 40 years ago, but you know, within our lifetimes, that actually disabled people were regularly institutionalized and not in a position to live in the community. And in fact, Sandra Carpenter, who was a real champion of IL in Toronto and who was the founding and previous executive director at CILT, she and her sister Tracy were sent to Toronto from Ottawa to live in the “Home for Incurable Children”, which was a hospital here in Toronto from a young age until they turned 18. And the expectation was at 18 that they were going to move directly into long-term care, without any consideration for their hopes or their aspirations or their choices in their own lives.  

I’m happy to say that we’ve come a long way since then. 

3:14 
In the last 40 years, we’ve seen the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons by the UN that happened in 2006, so the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People. In 2005, here in Ontario, we saw the passage of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, which is aspirational piece of legislation that seeks to have a barrier free Ontario by next year, by 2025. 

3:49 
In 1994, we also saw the establishment of the Direct Funding Program, which is a program administered by CILT and IL centers across Ontario that enables disabled people to hire and maintain their own attendants. Which is a revolutionary way of thinking about how we put disabled people at the center of one of the most important relationships in terms of supporting people in their capacity to live independently in the community

4:22 
So the Direct Funding Program has been around for 30 years. They’re celebrating a birthday this year too. So we’ll be talking about Direct Funding and our celebrations and Direct Funding will also be celebrating this year. So keep an eye out on the Direct Funding web page as well. 

4:37 
And one of the things that you will see, I think across time, throughout all of the celebrations is that the concept of independent living has evolved. It is not a static concept. It is a concept that has changed and evolved with the way that community thinks about independence, with the kinds of barriers, the structural ableism, and structural barriers that are around us. As those have changed or shifted, the concept of Independent Living has shifted as well. 

5:07 
We definitely see Independent Living as not being something that someone does by themselves. Often it’s in relationship, it’s in interdependence with other people. But we do still see a need and a desire and the intention for the disabled person to be at the center of making choices about their own lives. So that has maintained across the past 40 years.  

5:32
Where does Independent Living go in the future? Join us for some of those discussions this year too. We’ll be thinking about the evolution of Independent Living and how we continue and we’ll continue to work together to support IL for disabled people. 

5:51 
CILT has changed across the years too. Our programs have also continued to evolve and shift in the context of community need, and in the context of changes broadly. But like all Independent Living centers, CILT provides peer-based supports. We have independent living skills facilitation and training. We provide information and referral services. 

6:15
We also are the home of the Parenting with the Disability Network and the IDE+A program that sees disabled people providing training that was developed by them to nonprofits and to healthcare organizations about how to better include us in their service provision, in their work, in their governance, how to better include disability justice principles as well. 

6:43 
So we have a lot to talk about this year. We really hope that you will join us for our 40th anniversary events. If you have any questions, please let us know through our Contact Us page. Or come and join us at the event, sign up, be part of the conversation that celebrates what we’ve been able to accomplish and that helps us look from foundations to futures and think about what the next 40 years of Independent Living will look like.  

So thank you very much and we hope to see you come out and join us! 

 7:14 
 Happy birthday, CILT!