Jeff Preston’s life work is making Ontario accessible. He explains why his wheelchair is part of who he is
Leslie Armstrong
Arts Editor
@Peachcrate
Every now and then, Jeff Preston logs onto stairporn.org and indulges in the beauty of the staircase.
To him, they are a symbol of power. Preston knows he will never walk a set of stairs, but he doesn’t mind—stairs, while beautiful, are ultimately overrated.
“You guys look stupid when you walk them,” he jokes during a talk on ableism at Winters College last week. Diagnosed at three months old with congenital muscular dystrophy, Preston has dedicated his life to resisting ableism through creative intervention.
Born in Port Elgin, Ontario, he became a minor celebrity at the University of Western Ontario in London. Preston started an act of resistance called “stairbombing,” by blocking off a staircase in a public place, and wrapping caution tape around the railings. Preston tries to demonstrate to the able-bodied person what hardships a disabled person faces every day. His tactic works on the premise that nobody crosses caution tape.
Stairbombing visited stairwells in Vari Hall and Vanier College on the mornings of February 6 and 7. The tactic even has a Facebook page with its very own stair porn of blocked off stairs with signs that read, “Caution: these stairs are out of service. Inconvenient, eh? This is only an example of what people with disabilities experience every day.” The page gives updates on upcoming stairbombing campaigns.
“Stairs are beautiful,” says Preston. “They’re beautiful when they’re shut down.”
A similar practice, “chairmobbing,” involves showing up to a movie theatre or a restaurant, where the wheelchair capacity is six to eight, in groups of 40 people in wheelchairs. When the staff cannot accommodate them, the wheelchair users turn around and go home, and the companies lose their customers.
Chairmobbing is also done by convening a group of wheelchairs at the bottom of a staircase. People trying to get down the stairs are forced to either resist their instincts or find other routes.
Preston resists ableism through artistic expression as well. He updates a webcomic called Cripz every Wednesday, a combined effort between himself and Clara Madrenas, his girlfriend and illustrator. The comic follows two schoolboys in wheelchairs, Rhett and Griff, but their characters don’t follow usual stereotypes surrounding disabilities. Like all schoolboys, Rhett and Griff are cocky, youthful, and spirited.
Preston started the webcomic when he realized that the media doesn’t cast enough positive representations of the disabled.
He identifies four types of representation: The Hero (Rick Hanson, Terry Fox), The Villain (Captain Hook), the Burden (Artie Abrams from Glee), and The Child (I Am Sam, Rain Man).
Artie Abrams from Glee, the token “wheelchair kid,” is the most unrealistic—he has a meltdown when he realizes that his dream of becoming a dancer is hopeless.
“If you ask someone in a wheelchair what they want,” says Preston, “I can guarantee you they’ll say they just want to get laid.”
Surprisingly, Preston says the best representations are found in cartoons like South Park and Family Guy. South Park’s Timmy the wheelchair kid only utters his name, which is lost on the adults, but his friends understand him perfectly. Family Guy’s Joe Swanson is an active member of society, but he’s no better than his brash, arrogant friends.
Preston’s proudest accomplishment was traveling from London to Ottawa on his motorized wheelchair along the highway to protest transportation barriers. What became known as the Mobilize March, his trip was split into 25 kilometres a day with stops on the way.
Resistance to ableism is slowly but surely coming to the attention of policy makers. After years of lobbying and proposing new bylaws, Preston can confidently imagine a fully accessible Ontario by 2015. He knows it’s an ambitious request, but he swears by baby steps.
“Going in saying ‘every bus should be accessible tomorrow’ won’t get you anywhere,” he says.
Accessibility for the disabled is particularly important because many people with disabilities wouldn’t have it any other way.
At the ableism talk, a deaf man told Preston, in fluent sign language, that he was happy with who he was, and that he took pride in signing. He asked a question on all of our minds: if you could walk, would you?
“My wheelchair is a part of who I am,” says Preston. “All of the opportunities are due to the fact that I’m in a wheelchair. A lot of people in London know who I am because of it.”
“Besides,” he says, “walking looks so complicated.”
