my days. Subsidized apartments which now have huge waiting lists like 8 years or more, you just cannot do very many things when you're on disability pension … I want to support myself, I want to be financially independent. I don't want to be depending on other people to support me. That being said, a lot of the supports I rely on are covered through government efforts that are taxpayer supported.” “A new breed of disabled person:” a growing culture of protest in Canada In the early 1970s, representatives of the federal Department of Health and Welfare pondered in a government periodical, “Why is it so difficult for the disabled to organize?” The article answered that disabled people lacked a clear constituency in which to organize and asserted that individuals with disabilities were preoccupied with their own experiences and challenges dealing with the many obstacles to social and economic participation. It was asserted that “the ‘60s was a time when the traditional minority groups organized to fight for peace, civil rights, and an end to poverty, but disabled people (physically handicapped in particular) were the last group to be activated by this kind of activism.” While local groups of disability rights activists across the country worked toward similar goals around accessibility and inclusion, the federal government believed these activists were largely disconnected from one another and did not represent a genuine social movement compared to other civil rights movements of the time. Nonetheless, the authors acknowledged a “new breed of handicapped person,” characterized by acquired physical disabilities, middle or working-class status, youthful, while fully expecting to “return to their former jobs, schooling, and pursuits” after a period of therapy and training.23 Awareness of this “new breed” of disabled people reflected social and political developments during the 1970s that quickly transformed the discourse around disability issues. As in the United States, a new kind of disability rights activism emerged during this time that differed from previous forms of disability advocacy. Disability rights groups were animated by identity politics and engaged in direct and indirect strategies to promote practical changes in the way disabled people lived and worked.24 New political organizations in Canada led by disabled people were rooted in a youth-based culture of protest and identity politics that focused on dismantling physical and attitudinal barriers to greater economic participation.25
Canadian historians have examined the intersection of “rebellious” groups of youth and new political ideas that emerged in the postwar period.26 A cohort of “rebel youth” from the mid-1960s to early 1970s was energized by a culture of protest and forged a movement of New Left activists and young workers.27 Labour was a defining feature in these social, political and cultural developments, including a new wave of labour militancy and radicalism shaped by a defiance of existing conditions and systems of belief.28 This emerging youth-based movement of disabled people dovetailed with other social movements in Canada during the late twentieth century. The decades of the 1960s and 1970s reflected an upsurge in social movement activism, characterized by the introduction of varied new activist groups representing particular interests.29 In contrast to the previous generation of parent advocates and professional-dominated lobby groups, disability rights activists forged new social movement organizations alongside their nondisabled peers.30 Canada’s “rights revolution” was comprised of women’s liberationists, gay rights activists, and other civil rights activists who advanced a new discourse and culture of respect for social rights.31 Disability rights organizations lagged behind other civil rights groups, but social activism by disabled people emerged directly out of an ongoing culture of protest that engulfed the 1970s political discourse of human rights in Canada.32 Disability rights movement and poverty issues From the 1970s, Canadian disability rights activists were influenced by a developing poor peoples’ movement in Canada and the United States. The emergence of disability rights activism in Canada was partly based on combating various forms of marginalization as activists recognized early on that it was necessary to address “the intense unemployment and poverty experienced by a majority of disabled people.”33 Disability rights activists in Canada encouraged disabled people to assert their rights as consumers of social and community services, following the example of poor peoples’ movements in Canada and the US.34 The development of independent living centres in Canada and the US from the 1970s onward echoed the views of anti-poverty activists by advocating “that people with disabilities were 'clients' who had the right to determine their own treatment.” The Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped (COPOH), forerunner to the Council of Canadians with Disabilities