‘Bitterness and sadness’: Calgary disability hub closes, leaves gap for community

Supporters bid adieu to the Disability Action Hall after the hub loses its funding. The service helped Calgary's disabled community for over 25 years.

An advocacy hub that has served Calgary’s disabled community for nearly three decades is closing after the province ended its funding contract a year early.

Supporters gathered Thursday for a farewell event for the Disability Action Hall, a peer-led space that has helped people with disabilities share information, advocate for policy changes and navigate what many describe as a complex and often overwhelming system of supports.

Colleen Huston, co-ordinator of the hall, said the group has functioned as both a meeting place and an engine for change.

“We’ve just been a gathering place for people with disabilities, and it’s been a great safe support to talk about issues and connect with services. We’ve seen people secure housing, find work, (and) go to back to school,” Huston said.

“There’s just some really positive outcomes. We’ve helped people get married and just take on those life milestones.”

The hall operated under the umbrella of SCOPE, a disability support agency. Bruce Howell, SCOPE’s director of community outreach services, said the organization was informed last year that its contract for the service would be terminated early.

“We were given 90 days notice, and that our contract for the Disability Action Hall would be cut a year early saying that it wasn’t providing a direct service. That’s what the government was focused on,” he said.

Howell said the loss will be felt both individually and collectively.

“There’s a lot of anger and bitterness and sadness in the in the entire group right now, so most everyone’s devastated.”

Jennifer Stewart, who has attended the hall since 1999, said it broadened her world.

“It’s changed my life. Before that, I lived a very sheltered life,” she said.

“I did what my mom told me to do. I didn’t know much about disability at all. It’s opened the world for me.”

She said the hall provided a safe space to seek advice from peers with lived experience, and shutting its doors will only make things more difficult for those who have found a community there.

“The system is so hard to navigate when you’re just doing it by yourself, it’s not easy,” Stewart said.

“You need this kind of group to help you.”

Alex Jack, a disabled Calgarian who also frequents the hall, said the facility fostered confidence and belonging.

“The hall to me has meant genuine belonging. The hall has really taught me how to just accept myself as a person with a disability,” Jack said.

“Before, I felt really ashamed, and I felt like disability was this big monster inside of me and something that’s wrong.”

At the farewell event, Jack said the closure is difficult to process.

“It’s hard to even feel it, because it’s just such a significant thing and it’s this powerful chapter of my life is coming to a close,” he said.

“I don’t know where I’m going to find the same sense of community and camaraderie.”

Huston said the annual provincial contribution for the hall was about $110,000.

“It’s actually a low investment for huge impact. That’s always been a great community building help,” she said.

Disability Action Hall first opened in 1998. Organizers say they are exploring whether community or donor support could allow it to reopen in some new form.

In a written statement, Amber Edgerton, press secretary to the Ministry of Assisted Living and Social Services, said the province has not reduced funding for direct services.

“There have been no funding cuts made to any direct services for Albertans with disabilities. Alberta’s government is ensuring that resources are allocated directly to connecting individuals and families to supports and services as quickly as possible,” she wrote.

“The contract that concluded was for funding that did not provide direct front-line services to persons with disabilities — no front-line services were impacted.”

Edgerton added that advocacy services such as those provided by the hall were established in a different context and pointed to other provincial initiatives.

She said Alberta’s government “is committed to ensuring Albertans with disabilities have the supports and resources they need.”

She added that the province has “the highest provincial disability benefit rates and most robust disability programs in Canada, and we continue to expand and improve these supports.”