Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Crone: The Beauty and Risk of Building Accessibility Beyond a Pandemic

This personal essay by disabled senior writer Dorothy Ellen Palmer charts the last forty years of her attempts to find a home in the family of CanLit. It addresses the interwoven, systemic barriers of colonial control that have long prevented both the inclusion of senior and disabled writers and the building of true diversity and inclusion. Both physical and attitudinal, these barriers include class, geography, gender, parenthood, urban snobbery, inaccessibility, racism, ageism, and ableism. Palmer’s critique of CanLit’s response to the pandemic is a clear indictment of how the arts in general have failed disabled and senior artists and art patrons. She concludes with an invitation to all to participate in the building of a more inclusive and truly diverse arts community.