Many Years Ago
As a high school student in the years 1957-58 I volunteered with my piano teacher Frannie Korson at what was named the Home for Incurable Children. Together with her other piano students we helped in the production of musicals with a group of children at the Home who became known as The Wheelchair Players. It was lots of fun and very exciting with productions being held at Northern Secondary School. Our Frannie was later known as Fran Herman, the founder of Music Therapy in Canada. Fran worked at the Hugh MacMillan Centre for many years where she was greatly loved by both children and staff. Later, in my career as a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) I worked at OCCC between the years of 1971 to 1973 and was a member of the founding team of Blissymbolics, a graphic symbol system which is used to enable non-speaking personsS to communicate, which emerged at the Centre. Blissymbolics was one of the main forces behind the founding of the field of AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication), the internationally recognized field which encompasses the technological and non-technological strategies for non-speaking persons – children and adults – with disabilities to make their voices heard.
Judy (Lazonick) Seligman-Wine