Wheel With It Podcast

If You're Alive, You Can Thrive: Hollis Peirce on Disability Advocacy

"If you are alive, you can thrive." Hollis Peirce lives by that motto, and in this episode he shows what it looks like in real life.

Hollis is a disability advocate from Ottawa, Ontario, host of the Twenty-First Century Disability podcast, and holds a master's in history from Carleton University. He lives with congenital muscular dystrophy and now uses a ventilator. Devon and Hollis talk about ableism and being spoken down to, founding Ottawa's power wheelchair hockey league, the technology changing disabled lives (like a power chair driven by eye movement), and what living in a complex care unit is really like.

They also compare disability benefits across the border. Hollis explains Ontario's ODSP, the $200 earnings cliff, and the politics behind reform, then wraps up with baseball road trips, Schitt's Creek, and poutine.

Real conversations.
Fascinating people.
Real hope.