from the VAULT
The first accessibility failure of our family road trip happened about an hour and a half outside Oshawa.
We stopped at an EnRoute along Highway 401 so I could use the washroom. I went into the accessible stall, closed the door and discovered that the lock did not work.
People kept opening it.
I would close the door, try to settle myself, and somebody else would pull it open again.
For most people, that would be embarrassing and annoying. With MS, it became a physical barrier.
Going to the washroom is not always automatic for me anymore. It can require privacy, concentration and enough calm for my muscles to cooperate. Every time that door opened, my whole body clenched again.
Eventually, I could not go at all.
So I left the accessible washroom and got back into the car, hoping I could hold it until the next stop.
The washroom had the sign on the door. It had a large stall. It probably had grab bars and enough turning space. On paper, it may have passed every accessibility requirement somebody was assigned to check.
But the lock did not work.
So neither did the washroom.
That became the clearest lesson of the trip:
Accessibility is a chain.
It is never just one grab bar, one ramp or one automatic door.
To use a public washroom, I first have to reach the building. The parking has to be close enough that I have not already spent my limited walking capacity. The entrance needs to be level or have a working ramp. The automatic door opener needs to work. The route inside needs to be wide enough. The stall needs space, grab bars and a usable toilet. The lock has to function. The sink has to be reachable.
The links do not all have to be titanium.
They just have to work.
Break one, and the whole chain can fail.
We left Oshawa on July 5 for a family road trip through Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal. The Mazda CX-9 was packed with luggage, family stuff and my mobility scooter folded into the back.
I keep a rough daily one-to-ten scale to track how my body is functioning. It is not clinical. It simply gives me a consistent way to compare one day with another.
A higher pain number means more pain. Higher numbers for mobility, energy, brain function and sleep mean I am doing better.
When we left home, my pain was around 6.5 out of 10. Mobility was about 6. Energy was only 4.
I was not beginning the trip at full strength.
Disabled people rarely begin anything at zero. There is usually already some pain, stiffness, poor sleep or fatigue sitting in the background before the new activity even starts.
The scooter took up a lot of room.
It complicated packing. It had to be loaded, unloaded, unfolded, charged and fitted back into the car every day.
It also made the trip possible.
There was no version of this vacation where I casually walked around Old Quebec, explored museums and wandered through Montreal with Natalie and our daughters.
I cannot walk around a mall anymore.
I was not going to defeat Quebec City through positive thinking.
The scooter was coming.
Our first night was in Ottawa with Natalie's brother Chris. The bed was tiny, but I slept better than expected.
The next morning, after leaving Ottawa for Quebec City, we stopped at a Real Canadian Superstore.
The difference from the EnRoute was almost ridiculous.
The store was easy to enter. The washroom was clean. The door locked. There was an elevator. Moving through the building was simple.
Nothing happened.
That was the accessibility win.
I used the washroom and continued with my day.
Good accessibility often produces no story. There is no confrontation, workaround or humiliation. No family member standing outside the door to stop strangers from walking in.
You just do the thing you came to do.
The chain holds, so life keeps moving.
Our hotel in Quebec City was mostly good. The elevators were large enough for the scooter. I could enter and turn without repeatedly backing up or worrying that I was blocking everyone else. The room had useful grab bars, and the shower was easier to manage than I expected.
Other parts were less successful.
The breakfast area felt cramped on the scooter. The towels were thin and rough. There were not enough electrical outlets, which becomes more important when a family is charging phones, travel equipment and a mobility scooter.
None of that ruined the stay.
But accessibility does not end when somebody installs a grab bar beside the toilet.
Can I get from the parking lot to the entrance?
Can I move through the lobby?
Does the elevator fit my scooter?
Can I get into the shower safely?
Can I move through the breakfast area without becoming a piece of furniture everybody has to squeeze around?
Can I charge the equipment that allows me to leave the hotel again tomorrow?
Every part connects.
Then came Quebec City.
Beautiful place.
Absolute menace.
The hills were steep. The streets were rough. There were cobblestones, construction, gravel, broken pavement and routes that looked possible until they suddenly were not.
My scooter handled the hills like a beast. That little machine worked for hours and barely lost a battery bar.
But it could not make the ground smooth.
Every bump travelled through the wheels, through the seat and into my body. I had added a thicker cushion before the trip, which probably saved the day. Without it, the vibration would have been unbearable.
The scooter solved the distance problem.
It could not solve the terrain, the heat, the humidity, dehydration or the physical strain of sitting on rough ground for hours.
Mobility equipment does not erase disability.
It removes one barrier so you can reach the experience on the other side.
Quebec City was in the low thirties, but with the humidity it felt close to 40 degrees. The sun and heavy air bounced off the stone streets and buildings. It felt like moving through a blast furnace.
Heat and MS do not get along.
My body was already using extra energy to manage balance, muscle control and movement. Add severe heat, rough terrain and dehydration, and the whole system began shutting down.
After lunch, I crashed and slept for two or three hours.
Not regular tired.
System shut down.
Nothing catastrophic had happened. It was a collection of smaller things that became too much when they arrived together.
Heat.
Humidity.
Travel fatigue.
Rough ground.
Scooter vibration.
Dehydration.
With MS, five manageable things can stack into one unmanageable day.
A restaurant in Quebec City showed another broken link.
The staff were kind. They wanted to help me get inside and seated. But parts of the layout were too narrow for my scooter. Reaching the washroom required another entrance, and the scooter had to be folded and physically carried.
We made it work because people helped.
I appreciate that. Human kindness matters.
But kindness should not be confused with accessibility.
A disabled person should not need staff, family members, improvisation and equipment lifting to use a restaurant washroom.
The people temporarily held the chain together.
The design was still broken.
Despite the terrain, heat and workarounds, I stayed with my family.
I explored Old Quebec.
I ate with them.
I saw the architecture.
I was there for the jokes, the complaining, the decisions and all the small nonsense that becomes the real memory of a family trip.
I was not sitting in the hotel waiting for them to return with photographs.
There is still an emotional adjustment in using mobility equipment publicly.
Part of my mind is always negotiating pride, identity and the fact that my disability is visible before I even say a word.
But once I was moving through the city, the freedom was bigger than the embarrassment.
The scooter did not take me out of the family experience.
It returned me to it.
By the time we drove from Quebec City to Montreal, the trip was accumulating in my body.
This is where my tracking scale becomes useful. It lets me see the decline instead of relying only on whatever the day feels like in the moment.
Pain stayed around 6 and then climbed closer to 7. Mobility dropped. Energy sank toward 3. My eyes felt exhausted, and poor hotel sleep added another layer.
The body keeps the whole itinerary.
The long drives.
The transfers in and out of the vehicle.
The unfamiliar beds.
The heat from yesterday.
The rough streets.
The vibration.
The extra distance caused by taking the wrong entrance.
The body does not erase yesterday because the family has arrived in a new city.
Travel is also more than sightseeing.
It is searching for parking close enough to preserve energy. Finding curb cuts. Checking entrances. Charging the scooter. Remembering medication while the schedule is different. Finding food that works. Locating a washroom before the need becomes urgent. Watching the weather. Watching my body. Trying to judge whether one more stop is possible.
And trying not to make every family decision revolve around what my body cannot do.
That is the invisible labour inside disabled travel.
Everyone sees the museum, the restaurant and the old street.
The disabled traveller is also running logistics, risk management and body triage in the background.
Montreal felt easier almost immediately.
It was cooler. There was less humidity. The tall buildings provided shade and airflow. The ground was generally more forgiving.
My MS had not changed between Quebec City and Montreal.
The environment had.
We talk about disability as though it exists only inside a person's body. But the body meets the environment, and the environment either reduces the load or adds to it.
A smoother sidewalk gives something back.
Shade gives something back.
A nearby entrance gives something back.
A clear route gives something back.
None of those things cure MS.
They stop making it worse.
By Thursday, my body was struggling. Pain was around 7. Mobility had dropped badly. Energy was around 3. Shoulder pain had broken up my sleep.
I was not suddenly well because Montreal was easier.
But the city was no longer actively fighting me at every turn.
At the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the scooter gave me something more valuable than distance.
It gave me attention.
I could move through the galleries without spending all my energy reaching the artwork. I could actually look. Think. Talk to my family.
At one point, we were looking through the museum's large windows and could see the enormous Leonard Cohen mural painted on the side of a nearby building.
It is one of those images people recognize instantly. That iconic pose. That expression on his face. Leonard towering over Montreal.
I was standing there taking it in when one of my daughters said she did not even know who the man was.
That stopped me for a second.
Eventually, one of the girls recognized Hallelujah, and the connection clicked.
"Oh, that's Leonard Cohen?"
It was funny.
Here I was looking at this huge Montreal icon, assuming everybody knew exactly who he was, while my daughters were discovering him backwards through a song they already knew.
That was a normal family moment.
A father realizing that the cultural landmarks living inside his head do not automatically live inside his children's.
Good accessibility makes room for ordinary life to happen.
For a few minutes, disability stops being the main event.
The museum also offered free admission for a disabled visitor and an accompanying caregiver.
That matters.
People sometimes describe disability pricing as a favour or charity. But disability already comes with extra costs: equipment, transportation, parking, medication, care, recovery time and often another person who has to come along because assistance is still required.
Reducing one of those costs is not special treatment.
It recognizes the actual conditions under which disabled people participate.
By Friday, my affected leg and hamstring were in serious pain. Mobility was around 4. Energy remained near 3.
The trip had stacked faster than my body could recover from it.
We still visited Pointe-a-Calliere, Montreal's archaeology and history museum. The museum itself was fascinating.
The experience getting into it was not.
Their admission program allowed a caregiver to enter free with a disabled visitor. I would pay the full adult price of around thirty dollars, and Natalie would accompany me as my caregiver.
The admissions attendant kept insisting that I needed some kind of card to prove she was my caregiver.
That pissed me off.
I was sitting directly in front of her on a mobility scooter. I cannot walk through a museum without it. Natalie and I were entering together. I was paying the full adult admission.
I was not running some elaborate scheme to cheat an institution out of thirty dollars.
I have visited the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario with a caregiver without being treated like I was trying to pull something.
Earlier in the same trip, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts had handled disability admission without turning it into an argument.
Here, I was made to prove the obvious.
A caregiver policy can look good on paper. But when the person applying it treats a disabled visitor with suspicion, it stops feeling like access.
It becomes another checkpoint.
Another explanation.
Another little piece of friction added to a body and brain already running near empty.
The physical design added more.
The automatic doors had tiny, difficult-to-notice buttons instead of the large, clearly marked accessibility controls most people expect. I could eventually find them, but somebody with limited vision could easily miss them.
The museum also had several unusual lifts and elevators. Once I understood how they worked, they were actually pretty cool.
The problem was figuring them out.
Having an elevator is not enough if I cannot find it, understand it or operate it without confusion.
A tiny button can break the chain.
So can unclear instructions.
So can a staff member making you feel like a scammer.
Each thing sounds small on its own. That is why institutions dismiss them so easily.
But by the end of a long week, when my pain was high, my leg was failing and my energy was near the floor, those small failures mattered.
The museum still gave something back. I loved the archaeology, the buried history and the experience of moving beneath Old Montreal.
But access should not begin with an argument over whether I deserve the policy printed on the wall.
That is the calculation I make now.
Not only, "Do I want to go?"
But, "What will this cost, and will it give me enough back?"
Sometimes the answer is no.
Sometimes the parking is too far away. The heat is too dangerous. The route is too uncertain. The body is already too far gone.
And sometimes I go.
I go because my daughter wants to see Old Quebec.
I go because there is art inside that building.
I go because my family is together.
I go because life cannot only be about preserving energy.
There has to be something worth spending it on.
That does not make the physical cost imaginary.
The trip kicked the hell out of my body.
By the final days, my leg hurt badly. My walking had dropped. Sleep was broken. My energy was almost gone.
The scooter reduced the walking burden, but it could not protect me from heat, vibration, travel, bad sleep and six days of accumulated activity.
It did not erase the bill.
It made the experience possible.
That is what accessibility gave me on this trip.
Not comfort.
Not a magical vacation where MS disappeared.
Agency.
The ability to choose where I wanted to go instead of having my walking distance choose for me.
The ability to stay with my family.
To see the museums.
To move through the cities.
To be present for the meals, jokes, frustrations and little moments that become the actual trip.
Accessibility gave my family more of me.
That is the part people miss when they treat support as nothing but a cost.
Access returns participation.
It returns parenting.
It returns humour, curiosity, connection and contribution.
It lets a person add something to themselves, their family and the world around them.
I am writing this from Ottawa at the end of the trip.
I slept on and off for nearly three hours this afternoon. My brain is foggy. My body is tired, and finding the words is taking more effort than it normally would.
This is part of the trip too.
The photograph ends when the family leaves the museum.
The physical cost keeps going.
I cannot travel as though I am not disabled.
I need the scooter.
I need planning.
I need help loading equipment.
I need working washrooms, close parking, water, shade and recovery time.
I need the freedom to abandon the plan when my body changes.
None of that means I cannot travel.
It means this is how I travel now.
The scooter was not giving in.
The planning was not weakness.
The help was not charity.
They were links in the chain that returned me to the family experience.
Not every link held.
A few broke completely.
Other people had to hold some of them together.
But enough worked for me to make the trip.
My body still sent the bill.
But I was there.
I was not watching my family have a vacation.
I was part of it.