Mastodawn

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Nov 7, 2023

I must preface this with: As long as we have airplanes, all people should be able to fly on an airplane comfortably and safely, period. However, my point is: this also reminds me that if Canada (and North America in general) had a working high speed rail network, it is a mode of transportation that is far more conducive to accessibility and assistive devices.

I recognize trains can't go everywhere planes go (they used to!) and disabled people have the absolute right to expect the same speed and convenience of anyone else (thus this story!). But part of the problem for *everyone* is we simply have no options.

We've thrown all our transportation-eggs into the airplane and cars basket and the air corporations are showing to be particularly evil. The stories emerging from Air Canada and others are horrendous. The companies should be absolutely ashamed.

#Transportation #Canada #CanPoli #CdnPoli #AirTravel #AirCanada #Trains #Rail #DisabilityRights #HumanRights
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-hidden-camera-disabilities-transportation-1.7020175

Hidden cameras capture passenger who uses wheelchair struck by lift on Air Canada flight | CBC News

In light of the federal government summoning Air Canada to Ottawa this week to discuss a spate of reports about the mistreatment of customers in wheelchairs, Marketplace is releasing an exclusive preview of its hidden-camera investigation which documented a rarely seen first-hand account of the challenges faced by those flying with a disability.

CBC

Show thread

Gordon J Holtslander Nov 7, 2023

@chris For a country that was "founded on railways" its pathetic that we have no high-speed passenger railways. Perhaps we should be known as a country so polite, it is easily conned and corrupted? What corruptions would it take for high-speed rail? https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/railroad-building-in-the-19th-century-was-an-orgy-of-corruption-but-hey-it-built-a-country

Railroad-building in the 19th century was an orgy of corruption. But hey, it built a country

Get over it, Canada: Early Canadian infrastructure contracts were riddled with kickbacks, but things seem to have worked out okay

nationalpost

Show thread

Gordon J Holtslander Nov 8, 2023

@chris Is it more, Canada was not so much a united country, but a business convenience put in place to harvest its natural resources, with little thought and strategy for anything else? Has it changed?

Show thread

Gordon J Holtslander

@chris Til 1869 “Canada” was just The Hudson’s Bay Company, “HBC agreed to transfer Rupert’s Land to Canada for the bargain price of £300,000, or $1.5 million” Rupert’s land “ comprised what is now northern Quebec and Labrador, northern and western Ontario, all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, south and central Alberta, parts of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and small sections of the northern United States” https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ruperts-land

Rupert's Land

Rupert’s Land was a vast territory of northern wilderness. It represented a third of what is now Canada. From 1670 to 1870, it was the exclusive commercial do...