Mayor, councillors take on the visually impaired to raise awareness following White Cane Week

Bowling for awareness

Photo: Michael Potestio

These shades may make the mayor look like a cool cat, but they're actually used to show the sighted how the visually impaired cope with their handicap on a day-to-day basis.

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Photo: Michael Potestio Photo: Michael Potestio Photo: Michael Potestio

A trio of city council members joined up with Kamloops’ White Cane Club to raise awareness while doing battle in the bowling alley on Friday.

Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, Coun. Nancy Bepple and deputy mayor Coun. Margot Middleton took part in a friendly bowling competition at Falcon Lanes in Valleyview, capping off this year’s White Cane Week — an annual awareness campaign for the visually impaired celebrated across Canada.

One awareness tool the club utilizes is a set of various sunglasses customized to show the sighted what it's like to live with various types of blindness.

For example, the glasses showing macular degeneration have the centre of the frames blotted out while the ones demonstrating glaucoma have all but two small holes to see out of.

Mayor Hamer-Jackson tried on the pair simulating glaucoma while bowling a frame, which, he said, surprisingly helped him focus on the target.

“It was my best shot of the day, so far,” Hamer-Jackson said with a laugh.

The mayor said it felt outstanding to be invited by the club to take part in the event again this year, and lauded the work vice president Vern Short and the Kamloops White Cane Club does raising awareness on eye health.

He said their awareness campaign spurred him to action last year.

“I didn’t think about it [but] I heard years ago that we have glaucoma in our family, so, a lot to do with Vern and the whole organization, I went and got my eyes checked last year,” Hamer-Jackson said.

Short told Castanet Kamloops the bowling event isn’t just to raise awareness of blindness and vision loss in Kamloops, but it's also a fun activity for their members.

“It shows the sighted residents and city council that we can participate in society, we just have to do things a little differently,” Short said.

Short said if he can just educate just one sighted person to look at the individual first before the disability and convince them to get their eyes examined at least once a year, he’s done his job.