“Whenever the Advice of the Blind Has Not Been Asked for, a Useless Waste of Money Has Invariably Taken Place”: Literacy and Blind Self-Advocacy in 19th-Century Canada

Just as today, blind adults in nineteenth-century Canada were not passive recipients of aid from the sighted. “The blind know their wants far better than the sighted possibly can, and they are, therefore, the only persons in a position to deal with these wants,” wrote E. B. F. Robinson, president of Toronto’s blind Self-Help Club. Robinson stood alongside other blind self-advocates, including those who argued for the adoption of tangible prints, pushed for funding for sheltered workshops, and managed schools for the blind.

However, unlike the blind in the United States, Canadians were often pushed to the side of advocacy efforts. Of the three Protestant schools in the late nineteenth century, only one had a blind man in a position of authority – Sir Charles Frederick Fraser at the Halifax School for the Blind. The only institution for Catholics, founded by the Grey Nuns in French-speaking Montreal, was treated more like a warehouse than a school.

While blind adults in Canada also advocated for the same things as their American counterparts, their efforts were focused elsewhere. As appropriate for a country with a smaller, more far-flung population, they fought for Home Teaching Societies, free postage for the shipping of books, and an extensive lending library. This focus on literacy rather than job training created a different blind self-advocacy network. Examining this network during the decades prior to the First World War not only uncovers the hidden advocacy of the Canadian blind, but also demonstrates the importance of geography in forming nineteenth-century networks of people with disabilities.