That's exactly how you promote accessibility and uphold the law in hamilton. really, it is.

Thanks to a contact on MSN, we have tonight’s stupidity.
this time it come’s from hamilton, and it’s HSR’s
apparent lack of hiring compitent drivers
My comments follow the article.

Mo ther, worker want HSR to apologize to boy in wheelchair
Peach Festival transit pitfalls Dan Provan, 7, with respite workers John Moning, left, Coleen Plate, centre, and his mother Robin. He had trouble riding on a bus to the Peach Festival.
John Rennison/The Hamilton Spectator
Daniel Provan is a seven-year-old with cerebral palsy, epilepsy and is non-verbal. The Our Lady of Lourdes student was born seven weeks early with brain damage and is wheelchair-bound. But he was allegedly denied access to the designated wheelchair space on a Hamilton Street Railway bus.
His mother, Robin, wants an apology from the HSR after her son was made to get on and off the bus without a ramp.
Daniel and his educational assistant, John Moning, set out for the Winona Peach Festival early Friday evening and waited in a long lineup for the free shuttle service at Eastgate Square.
When the bus arrived, the driver did not open the back door, where passengers in wheelchairs usually enter, Moning said. So the EA took the boy to the front.
Once on the crowded bus, Moning said he asked the driver twice to have people occupying the wheelchair seating area move back. He was ignored both times, with the driver finally asking: “Where would you like these people to go?”
Moning ended up having to put the brakes down on Daniel’s wheelchair, behind the yellow line. When they arrived at the Winona festival, the ramp was not lowered for them.
On the return trip from the festival, another bus driver closed the back door before they got out and told them to exit from the front, Moning said, adding the driver had already stepped outside the vehicle to drink a coffee at that point.
Moning told the driver Daniel needed a ramp, but the driver said: “It’s OK. Just back him up, he’ll be fine.”
Moning and a secondary EA, Coleen Plate, ended up lowering Daniel from the bus without the ramp, after Moning had asked the driver three times to lower it.
The city’s public works department spokesperson Kelly Anderson said the director of transit, Don Hull, is assessing the situation to gather more information about the incident.
Daniel’s mother, Robin, sent an email Friday night to Mayor Bob Bratina, who replied Sunday, saying he would ask his staff to “review and comment.”
“I demand an apology. I think Daniel deserves one,” the 43-year-old said. “He didn’t ask to be disabled.”
Robin, who works for the city’s community services department, said this incident shows her that there is still a lot of “ignorance and intolerance” against people with disabilities in Hamilton.
“It was such a shock, such a slap in the face,” the 43-year-old said. “It’s unfortunate that other workers in the city … could treat another human being so shabbily.”
Similar incidents with HSR have happened before during Moning’s outings with Daniel, with whom he has been working for more than a year, but the EA never made a big deal out of it. “They might be having a bad day, whatever.”
But Friday’s events “ticked (him) right off” because it counteracted progress the city has made around accessibility awareness, he said. “Stuff like this happens and you’re going back 10 feet again.”
Moning said he wants to see HSR staff undergo more sensitivity training around the accessibility policies set out by the province.
“(I want) a public apology saying: That never should have happened.”
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Having lived in hamilton, I know what the rules and regulations are regarding this type of situation, and for a city that’s screamed accessibility for years, to allow this, and their only response is their looking into it?
If I were their, both drivers would be suspended without pay for at least 30 days pending a complete investigation, and either forced to undertake serious retraining or lose their jobs, entirely.
You are required by law to secure wheelchairs, and I’ve been on those buses. Nobodey moves to the back, nobody gives a shit.
Packed or not, if their is a wheelchair, the people in designated spots are to be told to move and the chair properly secured in the designated area.
As for the ramp?
That’s again, another form of blatent not giving a crap about the safety of the passenger(s).
If the child or the PSA’s had been hurt? It would be HSR’s neglogince that caused it and hell would be raised.
I feel both drivers shold be removed from their jobs, and a public apology from the drivers in question and from HSR as a whole shold be given to the child and workers who were put in a dangerous situation, and could have died that night because of the driver(s) negligence.
I know some of you are gonna wine that it’s a disability, who gives a fuck, but if you were in that situation, I don’t think you would be saying that, so just keep your mouths shut.
If this had happened here in Ottawa? the city, right alongside the people who live here, those drivers would be removed from the road and a full investigation would come out of it and their wouldn’t just be some lame ass form letter from the city and the mayor saying it was being looked into.
With that, I’m outta here!

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