7 Breakwater

Figure 20 is made up of a graphic with six panels, described as follows:

1. Text reads: “University of Toronto Disability Studies Speaker Series presents ‘Disability in a Dangerous Time’ a lecture by Dr. Catherine Frazee ~ November 5, 2009.”
2. Dr. Catherine Frazee, seated in a power wheelchair, addresses an audience at the University of Toronto. Superimposed on the image is a poster for the event, featuring a graphic image of Frazee alongside the text: “Disability Studies Speaker Series 2009, Disability in a Dangerous Time, Dr. Catherine Frazee, Thursday, November 5th, 2009, 3:30–5:00 p.m. OISE Library, Main Floor, 250 Bloor St. West.”
3. Floodwaters rise in New Orleans, nearly submerging a house. The residents take refuge on the roof, where they have written “HELP” in large white letters to attract the attention of a passing rescue helicopter. Text reads: “For Frazee danger could be found when the floodwaters began to rise and the levees broke in New Orleans in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina.”
4. Frazee conjures an image of a broken hospital bed in an abandoned nursing home. Text reads: “1,800 people died. Most were poor, Black, elderly, and/or disabled. Frazee reflected on the deaths of 34 drowned elders abandoned in their place of residence, St. Rita’s Nursing Home.”
5. A widely circulated image of a body slumped in a wheelchair outside the New Orleans Superdome, covered in a blanket. Text reads: “Images of discarded assistive devices and of victims slumped over in their wheelchairs circulated through Western media suggesting it was people’s impairments that led to their drowning.”
6. Close-up on Frazee’s face and upper torso. Text reads: “Such tragic depictions too often overlook the interlocking systems of racism, ableism, poverty, and ageism.” Frazee says: “In and of itself, vulnerability explained nothing. It was social frailty, not impairment, that accounted for those deaths.”

Figure 21 is made up of a graphic with four panels, described as follows:

1. Text reads: “Frazee went on to connect the failure of the US government to safeguard and protect some multiply marginalized people to unjust social policies in Canada.” A health worker in scrubs stands before a door marked “Vaccination Centre.” Frazee, in her wheelchair, is shown being ushered inside, while a long line of people—including racialized individuals, older adults, and others with disabilities—wait outside. A second caption reads: “During the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, Frazee’s disability, together with her class and race, allowed her to be seen as deserving of medical protection in the form of advanced access to the limited stores of vaccine.”
2. Text reads: “Frazee was quick to point out that designations like ‘at risk’ or ‘vulnerable’ are flexibly given and taken away by the state in ways that shape which bodies and minds count as having social, political, and economic value.” Eight human figures are shown, shrouded in shadow. Their faces cannot be discerned clearly but one of the figures carries a cane, others are racialized, and yet another appears to be visually impaired. Text superimposed on the image reads: “While disabled people's race and class privilege is very real in dangerous times, it is nevertheless a privilege that can be revoked at any time.”
3. Text reads: “Frazee was not alone in her advanced access to the vaccine. 150 Calgary Flames hockey players were also given a place at the front of the line. This access was not extended to elders, under-housed Torontonians, or to people living in rural Indigenous communities in Northern Canada.” The image shows the front page of the Vancouver Sun, featuring a photo of a male hockey player. The headline reads: “Calgary Flames got private H1N1 shots while senior citizens were denied, inquiry told.”
4. Text reads: “Frazee’s lecture pushed us to attend to our interconnected struggles for breath.” Close-up on Frazee’s face and upper torso. She says: “As we line up for our shots, we wash our hands of the great big messy truth: [As Priscilla Wald says] ‘Nothing [would] go further to contain the spread of disease than a healthy population with access to health care.” *Superimposed image 1 of Frazee pausing her lecture to take a breath and readjust her chair. *Superimposed image 2 features six handwashing illustrations, styled like instructional posters commonly found in public restrooms.

Figure 22 is made up of a graphic with six panels, described as follows:

1. Text reads: “After the lecture, we (Kelly and Anne) talked about how the residents of the remote Northern Manitoba Reserves of Wasagamack and God's River First Nation did not receive the requested vaccines or medicines at the height of the outbreak . . .” The image shows a map of Canada with the reserve names of Wasagamack and God’s River marked.
2. A cardboard box lies open to show body bags packed inside. Text reads: “. . . Instead, Health Canada sent a shipment of masks, hand sanitizer, and body bags.”
3. Text reads: “In his formal apology, Canada’s then–chief public health officer Dr. David Butler-Jones assured communities that officials did not anticipate disproportionate Indigenous death.” A white middle-aged man wearing glasses and a suit addresses an unseen audience and says: “It's important to plan for the worst-case scenario in a potential flu pandemic.”
4. Text reads: “Missing from this (non)apology is an acknowledgment of how the body bags highlight an uneven distribution of Indigenous life and death under settler colonialism.” An obscured sketch of a group photograph of Indigenous youth taken at a residential school in Canada in the mid-twentieth century.
5. Text reads: “We now know that there was a higher rate of hospitalization, ICU admissions and deaths among Indigenous people.” A pair of brown-skinned hands holds up a placard that says: “Settler colonialism is a public health crisis.” Beside the sign appear two excerpts from academic papers that read: “Indigenous peoples make up 4.6 percent of the population of Canada and contributed to 10 percent of H1N1 cases (Helferty et al., 2010)” and “Inuit in Canada faced a hospitalization rate sevenfold higher than the already staggering rate among First Nations (La Ruche et al., 2009).”
6. Text reads: “After receiving the shipment of body bags, then-Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, Ron Evans, condemned the failure to deliver medicines, vaccines, and other protections to northern Indigenous communities as yet another example of state neglect.” An Indigenous Elder is shown standing outside a Health Canada office next to a pile of boxes marked “Return to sender.” Text reads: “Evans flew to Winnipeg with the body bags and stacked them on the doorstep of the Health Canada building, marking them with a note for Canadian government officials . . .”

Figure 23 is made up of a graphic with four panels, described as follows:

1. Text reads: “Returning to Frazee’s lecture, she noted that while some people with chronic health conditions, such as herself, had the privilege of being pushed to the front of the vaccine line, disabled people parted company with the Calgary Flames at the top of another pandemic list: the list of exclusion criteria in the province’s critical care triage protocols.” A silhouetted hockey player, stick in hand, stands against the glow of stadium lights. Beside him, two masked workers in PPE push disabled people, slumped in their wheelchairs, through double doors. Text on the side reads: “Ontario’s 2008 Health Plan for an Influenza Pandemic laid out the blueprints for the state’s rationing of breath.”
2. Text reads: “The document listed various physical and intellectual disabilities—including Frazee's own disability—as a reason for denying treatment in the event of a pandemic surge.” Superimposed image of Frazee pausing her lecture to take a breath and readjust her chair. A clipboard listing “Exclusion criteria” hangs in the balance between a set of manual scales, like those symbolizing justice. Frazee herself appears on the list. She says, “There it is, that same familiar melody, that cold and clammy farewell handshake, utilitarian-style. ‘Sorry, we’ve done all that we could for you and your kind.’” Superimposed is an image of a limp, infirm handshake.
3. Text reads: “When performing a calculus of breath, eugenic justifications abound . . .” The backs of several figures are silhouetted against a dark night sky. One figure says: “. . . The waters are rising, and there are others in desperate need.” Another says: “. . . There are others that we must save, because they will live long and rich lives*” A third says: “Difficult choices must be made.” All the figures chorus: “Surely you understand.” Asterisk attached to the words “rich lives” notes “Homonym intended.”
4. Frazee sits in her wheelchair watching a torrent of water beginning to spurt through a fragile levee wall that cracks and begins to give way. She is in the direct path of the flood and says: “Yes, I believe we do understand. Just keep washing our hands.”