6/11/2009: St. Catharines, ON—Artist with CMT Tells Story in MuralThe tragedy isn’t the disability.
The real tragedy occurs when a person does not use what abilities they have to their fullest.
Linda Crabtree appreciates life.
All her life, the 67-year-old St. Catharines woman has lived with a disability. Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease. CMT. A neuromuscular disease that steals muscle mass and gets progressively worse.
She cannot walk. She uses a motorized scooter and drives a van with hand controls. Muscles in her hands are so weak, she has trouble cutting her own food. She types by weaving a pencil between her fingers.
Yet, her life has been full of joy. Happiness. Fulfilment.
She is a wife, married nearly 30 years to Ron Book. She is an artist. A woman. A writer who once worked as assistant editor of The Standard’s family section and who still writes the Access Niagara column for The Standard. She is an advocate. Linda and Ron ran a charity that helped people with the same disease she lives with.
She is a university graduate, who earned a degree in psychology. She’s won awards. The Order of Canada. Order of Ontario. Finally, Linda is a person with a disability.
It’s a part of her life that some might assume consumes her when in fact, it does not define her at all.
While it’s likely made her who she is today, she considers it an underlying theme in her life.
“The fact I can’t walk is just incidental,” she says.
She hopes people can appreciate her message through a 9.15-metre (30-ft.) collage she has created that tells the story of her life. Her artwork — From Good Stock: A Family. A Woman. A Disability — is on display at the Niagara Artists Centre on St. Paul Street until June 18.
Two years ago, she came and measured the wall. And despite weak hands, she did it pretty much all herself. She had some help photocopying pictures. And a friend helped her apply double-sided tape tabs.
The top half of the mural is a collage of photos, documents, some of Linda’s own drawings, and other memorabilia she’s collected over the years. The bottom is made up of 11-by-17 paper panels on which she’s written the story of her life. Each panel tells its own tale, so that visitors don’t have to read it all to understand her message.
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