Talking Rotary Zones 28 & 32
Talking Rotary Zones 28 & 32 is a podcast that features the work of Rotary International, the service organization. The podcast features the good works of Rotary clubs in the district, the zone, and the world.
Talking Rotary Zones 28 & 32
Meet Your Co-Host with Peter Tonge
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Guest host Joe Solway, from the Bowmanville Rotary Club, interviews podcast co-host Peter Tonge, prior to Peter's appearance at the Rotary International Convention.
The wide ranging interview talks about life, the law, para sports, DEI and Rotary.
Welcome to this episode of Talking Rotary. I'm Peter Tonge, and I'm a member of the Rotary Club of Winnipeg Charleswood.
Mandy Kwasnica:And I am Mandy Kwasnica, past president and also a member of the Rotary Club of Winnipeg Charleswood. We are so happy you have joined us here and I are so excited for this new podcast and thankful to our many listeners. Let's start Talking Rotary.
Joe Solway:And I want to start off by talking about the beginning,your own story. So I want to go back again, and start it, I want to start at the beginning of your story. That means talking about the young, Peter Tonge, who I'm really interested in hearing about, you've got your first wheelchair when you were four years old. And you've been using one ever since. And you told me that your parents both worked really, really hard to ensure that you had access to good schools, just as your older siblings have. What does that mean? Why was that important? What kind of education did you have? And what kind of kid were you? So questions, but you know, talk to me about that.
Peter Tonge:Let me let me start with the last part, what kind of kid? I've always been been kind of loud and outgoing and active and all that. I think it was a real handful for my parents. But I think one of the things that was really good is I'm the youngest in my family. I'm the youngest of five. So I'm the only one that has a disability, my family. But I think that was a very good thing that because for my parents, they just assumed that I was going to do everything that all the other kids did. Right? So when I started grade, one way back in 1969, there weren't very many disabled kids in schools. It's not like today. So they had to apply to the local school board. I was put through all kinds of testing, all kinds of stuff went down. And they worked very hard to make sure that I could go into the regular school stream. And that was so important.
Joe Solway:So why was it important that you go into the regular school stream?
Peter Tonge:Well, because if they didn't have that awareness, I could have ended up in a in a in a day workshop or something making you know, political campaign buttons, as opposed to going to school. And I mean, I wanted to go to school and be with my friends, my neighborhood friends all went, we all we nt to the same elementary school. My neighborhood friends didn't care that I had a disability, it was just you. I was it was it was great to sort of fall on that path.
Joe Solway:Sorry, sorry. No, no, go ahead.
Peter Tonge:I was just I was I was a regular member of the community. And I, I don't know, if that was just down to the very much awareness of my, my parents or whether it has something to do with my placement in the family. They never, they never thought of me doing anything, but what older, only other brothers and sisters did.
Joe Solway:And where the expectations high? By that I mean, you know, if I'm just speculating, but if I had a child with a disability, and they said, Oh, I can't do that, because I'm in a chair. And I would say, you know, like, Screw that, like, you can do it. You know, I don't care. What kind of parenting was it did certain things from you,
Peter Tonge:it was exactly that I lived in a home where , I was expected to do what everybody else. My parents did, lots of good things to to make my life easier. They made sure that I had the wheelchair and the equipment that I needed. We used to go camping on the weekends. So for me, that meant carrying extra gear and all that kind of stuff. And they just did that as a matter of course, but I was expected to do what everybody else did. And in my house growing up. academic expectations were really high. You could come home with five A's and a B+ and the question wouldn't be congratulation got the A's like How come there's a B+ here?
Joe Solway:Yeah what happened to the other five marks? Yeah, yeah. So I want to jump ahead. 1981 you head to the University of New Brunswick. Yeah, you go into science. You get a Bachelor of Science, and then a master's degree in computer science at a Cadia what interested you about science in a particular community, in particular, computer science back then?
Peter Tonge:um, I was, I was very fortunate because I have an older brother and an older sister, or who were both into computer programming computer science, even in the late 70s, early 80s, I found it very interesting. And it was, it was work that I could do. That was more intellectual and physical. So it saved me a lot of physical wear and tear, but I could be very creative and solve problems and algorithms and, and do all that. I thought it was very interesting stuff.
Joe Solway:You thought it was so past tense?
Peter Tonge:Well, and it was it, I did it for many, many years. But then after working for almost 20 years as a computer, project manager and computer programmer, whatever, I just decided I wanted to work with people more.
Joe Solway:Yeah, I you know, I don't know you all that well, but from what I know, you don't seem like if somebody said Peter Tonge, I wouldn't say oh, yeah, he's a stats guy. Like, I would never say that. Right. So. So you end up, as you say, like, nearly 20 years at Statscan 2003. You decide you want to be a lawyer, and you go to law school at the University of Manitoba. And what I found really, really interesting, I could ask you why. But I found a quote that I think, you know, has something to do with motivation. This is about you working in legal aid, you said I wanted to work for and on behalf of the people who had no voice. Why was that important for you?
Peter Tonge:It really was, that's what took me to the law. When I started. In law, my initial goal was to be a human rights lawyer. And then as I get into law school, I find out that, you know, in Canada, human rights cases, take 25 years to resolve and you don't get paid until the end and whenever. So I decided that I didn't want to starve to death. It was like, so how do I have that kind of impact that human rights cases have? You know, instance, don't eat. So what I was able to do was join Legal Aid Manitoba, and I represented some of the most disadvantaged people in the criminal system. Well, most remembered a couple, most of my clients had very serious mental illness. Right. So I not only navigated the course, from a legal point of view, I also worked with doctors and psychiatrists and clinicians, to make sure that my my clients were, were were very much cared for I was the representative for legal aid in Manitoba for what we call mental health court we based as do start a mental health court. And what that is, Joe is it's folks that are involved in criminology, criminality, largely because of their mental health issues. Okay, so rather than these people be be taken through the regular criminal justice system, they will be diverted to this court where a whole team of specialists would be put around them, and we would find housing for them. And we would find support for them, and integrate them back into the community. Because as you can imagine, by the time people were ill enough to be involved in the criminal justice system, and whatever they probably alienated from most from their family and a lot of the community and all that. So a lot of it was, was getting people back into the community with support. That was some of my favorite work to do because you could see a real impact on people's lives.
Joe Solway:Is there one case without naming a name that you can talk about that particularly made an impact on you?
Peter Tonge:There there were, there were many, but I can the one example that I can give it I can think of a one client who ended up in her in her mental health court, he was homeless, he spent some time in jail over minor things like theft, because he was trying to eat and all that kind of stuff. He went through our program for about 18 months. By the time he left the program. He was housed. He had a part time job. He had reconnected with his family. What happens at the end of mental health court is you're not charged or dismissed. If you successfully go through, you're given a certificate. That certificate was the proudest thing that that person owed. He was so proud of making it through the program and making it back to the community that that really sticks with me And there are many examples like that.
Joe Solway:And do we as a society care about these people? Or do we just want to see them locked up?
Peter Tonge:It's a bit of a complicated answer. But I'll try to keep it brief. Way back in the 1980s. You may remember, Canada did a Royal Commission on mental health. And there were sort of two big recommendations that came out of it. One that was institutions are bad and they should be closed. The second recommendation was that people should be integrated into the community. Well, they did the first part, because that's relatively cheap and easy. We didn't do the second part. So what's what's happened ever since then, is people have fallen through the cracks without getting proper community care. And they often end up in the criminal justice system, because either because they become violent, because they're not properly treated, or they're just hungry, and they're stealing food and all that stuff. So it's kind of a failure the system overall. So I don't think it's that we want to lock people up. We just haven't put the structures in place to support people properly. And that's where they end up. It costs money. And it's really expensive the most ... Keeping someone in jail is many, many times more expensive than then keeping someone in hospital even so it's the worst solution we can have.
Joe Solway:Paint me a picture of Peter Tonge, in the courtroom. You know, you don't you don't strike me as someone who suffers fools gladly. How would you describe yourself as a lawyer and how you how you went about your job in a courtroom?
Peter Tonge:You know, what I was much more about the people that I was about the law, I was always trying to find the best solution for my clients. I might leave even technically been the best lawyer. I think it was a very good lawyer. But there were others that were much more versed in, in case law. And then and technicalities that I was, I was always trying to work with the court, and with the prosecutor with the resources to find the best possible solution, like good for my client. And that, you know, whether my client was ill or not right.
Joe Solway:So all this is a was you left lawyering, when did you leave? And why did you get out of it?
Peter Tonge:I left four years ago, and I left because I had to back up a little bit for to practice practicing why as a person with a disability, at least in my jurisdiction with Manitoba has lots of barriers. I always there was a there was a famous model one time who said that "it didn't matter where I went, I always felt like the wind was blowing in my face". I kind of felt that way. And it's not things like there are some physical barriers, but it's we're not talking ramps and toilets, we're talking about attitudes. And I was always left with the impression until we're sort of my other colleagues with disabilities that the justice system was happy to have us as long as they didn't have to change a single thing for us to be there.
Joe Solway:You filed the human rights complaint?
Peter Tonge:Yeah, that's still in process.
Joe Solway:I was gonna ask you about that. Can you talk about why you did that? And what it was exactly for it was about access. Right? Exactly. It
Peter Tonge:It was really about this , systemic sorry, discrimination in the criminal justice system. And I can only speak for Manitoba because that's the jurisdiction where I come from. So I don't want to paint with too broad a brush and say, as I described it, there was always the attitude that you can't, you're more than welcome to be here, as long as we don't have to change to have you here. And the best. The most sense Is this. Are we talking about? lack of respect, or ignorance? example that I can give you is a number of years ago, I was the one of the defense attorneys on a murder case. And it got to the point where the case was over, the jury was being charged, and they were being sent out to deliberate. And when that happens, the various lawyers are expected to be available in case the jury has any questions. And our Queens what was squeezed venture that time, Justice made it very clear that she wanted us available within 20 minutes in case the jury had questions. And I said, Well, I under I understand that. But you need to understand that it takes me about 20 minutes to get into my robes. And the response I got was Well then I guess As you're staying in your robes until this case is complete, there wasn't even sort of a 10 minute leeway to maybe we can make it 30 minutes or, you know, it was the woman, you're living in your robe store that. And it's a very small example. But it's very illustrative of the kind of discrimination that we're talking about. Or where does this come from? The example I gave you is the biggest example that I can, that I can show you a lack of respect, I felt very disrespected like that. It was not a big deal to our five or 10 minute leeway to reflect some of the challenges that I had, and it was completely dismissed.
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Peter Tonge:The answer the question you started with, How did I become involved in the human rights case, I was approached by another young lawyer who was a wheelchair user who actually left the profession because he kept running into these kinds of obstacles. And he was having difficulty practicing in rural areas because most of the courts aren't physically accessible and you have to smoke fly in by small plane and bla bla bla.
Joe Solway:This is Mike Reimer.
Peter Tonge:Mike Reimer. So Mike approached me and some other lawyer friends and said, What do I do? And we decided to put in a human rights complaint in Manitoba. And as we're going through this, I'm telling my story as well. And the other lawyers of the group said, Well, you don't have to be part of the complaint, because Mr. rhymers only been involved in this process for, you know, 18 months you've been practicing for, for 10 years, we have to show that this isn't a one off or what whatever, there's a there's a systemic pattern. So I went from being an advisor to being your planning.
Joe Solway:And your consultant now. Yes. would tell me about that about what you want as a consultant? What do you do describe your
Peter Tonge:I work with all kinds of organizations around disability policy access, one of the very interesting projects that I'm working on right now, I'm working with a group here in Winnipeg called the Arts Accessibility Network of Manitoba. And what we've done is we're doing accessibility audits of arts venues, all throughout the province of Manitoba. And we don't only look at the physical building where their events take place, but the structures of their organizations, do they involve people with disabilities? How do they design their programming, and we're building a searchable database. So when people are considering going through an event at a particular venue or working with a particular organization, think concert on the elements that are important for them and see if it works.
Joe Solway:Yeah, I mean, there's a lot we're talking about. I don't know subtitles, search titles, access, we're talking about a whole bunch of things.
Peter Tonge:Absolutely. Is they even including things like structures or the boards of directors, and Oh, right. And all that sort of, we're really going that deep.
Joe Solway:I found a piece. I really love this. It was written for the CBC. And you said airlines can't argue the headline writer said airlines can't seem to safely transport my wheelchair, but they found a way to move horses by air. Can you explain that? I that was astounding.
Peter Tonge:I can and I I love the story that I got the right to vote and speak about others. Others like Maayan Ziv have have done so as well. But it's really illustrative because people with disabilities that traveled particularly people that have wheelchairs, get their wheelchairs damaged on regular basis because the airlines and it's all airlines, I don't want to just stick a finger at their head. It's literally all airlines damage your wheelchair because they treat it like luggage. In fact, Air Canada has damaged my wheelchair on at least one occasion so badly that they had to replace it.
Joe Solway:Right so when you fly somewhere, you you give hand your wheelchair over with trepidation and worry about what kind of state it's going to be in at the other end.
Peter Tonge:Absolutely.
Joe Solway:You're also very active in athletics for a time you were the exec director of the Manitoba Wheelchair Sports Association. I assume you're still active in that. Why was it important for you to get involved in that whole field?
Peter Tonge:Well, the placement of your question is very good, because one of the reasons that I got involved in sport very late in life at the age of 55, is because when my wheelchair was damaged by the airline, I was using a power chair as a replacement for about a four month period, I lost a whole lot of mobility and stuff, because I wasn't in my usual manual chair with all its movement and whatever. And to the point where I was literally having difficulty dressing myself because I lost that much function in a sorted of said, you know, no, that's at 55. I'm not, that's not how I'm going to live. So I went out and I found myself a personal trainer, and I got involved in sport. And I was approached through that period of time by Manitoba wheelchair sports to sit on the board of directors. Their longtime Executive Director, found a better paying job, all of a sudden they need executive director. So I was, I was that as an interim Executive Director for a while I learned all kinds of great stuff about sports administration, but how challenging it is, on the surface, it looks like a very simple thing. But when you're small organization with a limited budget to try to balance all of the needs of your various athletes and the various sports you're representing. And whenever I felt like a grandma with a, with a coin purse passing out 25 cent coins at a time, you know,but that but that brought me to sport and now now I'm a wheelchair fencer, very advocate. I do that three times a week.
Joe Solway:I wish I was gonna ask you about that. When I was looking through your CV. I saw wheelchair fencing, I say, What the heck is that? And I saw some video of it. It's insane. It's wild. I mean, you guys, your tears don't move. You can't back up like, you know, you just jabbing at each other like crazy. It's so fast. Like, it's crazy. Can you can you describe what this sport and what it's like to be part of it?
Peter Tonge:I can. And I'm gonna preface it by saying I've only been doing it for about six months, but I absolutely love it. i'm almost 60 I finally found my sport. And it's literally that it's to people in manual wheelchairs that are bolted to a platform. i This is a part dependent on everybody that I'm like, yeah. And then you have a swordfight.
Joe Solway:Yeah. And you can't you can't move out of your chair like, No, you can't move your chair. You can't move your chair away from the other person. No, you're just sitting there and you're you're it's so fast. I can't believe it. How are you? I mean, how have you learned? How are you doing on it?
Peter Tonge:I I'm glad you asked that. Actually, at my our coaching session on Friday, my coach took me aside and told me how much I was improve it. That's fantastic. So I'm very, I'm very pleased about that. I mean, at my age, I'm not gonna go to the Paralympics, and I don't want to go to the Paralympics. But I'm sure having fun as an amateur as an amateur fencer. And the other thing I should mention about it, I guess is when it was first introduced to the sports, another wheelchair fencer described it as a knife fight at a telephone booth.
Joe Solway:Well, that's what it kind of looks like. It's, it's, it's crazy. It's really is crazy. I use that word, but it's but but it's wild. And this is kind of a philosophical, I don't know, if there's any answer to this, you know, fencers talk about, you know, only helps me, you know, in other areas of my life, it's taught me, you know, this kind of mental dexterity or wit or focus. I mean, has it affected you in other ways? Or just a question?
Peter Tonge:No, it has effected me actually, in two ways: as part of my disability, my fine motor coordination is not particularly good. But the fencing is making it better all the time, all the time, all the time, just from repetition. And it's interesting, because I don't know if this is going to translate to radio, but we're learning new maneuvers and new techniques. I can actually feel my brain almost twisting to do this.
Joe Solway:Oh, wow. Okay, so you it's cranial gymnastics? Yeah, absolutely.
Peter Tonge:That's the best way I can describe it. I can literally feel my brain drain and sort of wrap itself around what we're trying to do physically and and mentally, because it's so fast, you have to be so sharp and you have to have a plan so it's helping you in those areas to.
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Joe Solway:And one of the you're involved in so many fascinating things. One of the things I also found saw on your LinkedIn, you're a facilitator in something I've never heard of called Lego Serious play, which sounds like a total oxymoron. This is about like problem solving through Lego. And you talk about that?
Peter Tonge:Exactly. I haven't done it for a number of years. But I did do it for a number of years. It's exactly that it was developed by it is a process that was developed by two former employees of Lego. And it's basically doing problem solving by building Lego models. And using it as a communication method. It's particularly within organizations that are having trouble communicating, it's really neat to sit people down in a room and ask them to build a Lego model about what they're struggling with. People seem to that way everybody participates instead of a boss talking at the front.
Joe Solway:Really, really, that's really fascinating. I wanted to talk about Rotary, okay, because that's why, you know, you're here. And that's why I'm here. For years, your show. I talked to rotary, which is great. You guys do great work. So I want to talk about you in Rotary. You joined Ottawa kind of data. Yeah, in 1999. Then Winnipeg, Charles Wood in 2003 1999. I mean, that's 24 years, right? You're, you're like a senior rotary member, what what drew you to rotary back in 1999.
Peter Tonge:I had, I had just gotten divorced, and I was trying to figure my life. I ran into a friend who had just joined a brand new rotary club, and said, Come on out. If nothing else, you'll meet some friends. And I did. And this brand new Rotary Clubs was very much into doing Water and Sanitation Program, projects internationally, we did a lot of water and sanitation, and hospitals in Ghana. And I was just hooked by that. Boy, just to see the differences as one of my best rotary friends said, if you're in Canada, and you don't have enough food, you can go to the food bank. If you're in Guyana, you don't have enough food, you're gonna die. Right, so I could see the impact. And the other thing that that sort of drew me in and kept me there is my fellow club members realized that I probably wasn't going to be able to travel to Ghana to physically work on the project. So I became the administrator of all the grants and all the paperwork and all that so very much involved, but I didn't have to take my butt to Africa.
Joe Solway:So tell me about the Club you are in now?
Peter Tonge:So, Winnipeg Charleswood, is a long established club. And again, the stuff there's there's two main areas that we do locally. We're the we're the we're the custodians of what's called the Assiniboine forest. And for those that aren't familiar with Winnipeg, we're fortunate enough to have a huge forest park right in the middle of our city. It's a beautiful thing. And then that our my rotary club is the custodian of it. And the other thing that we've been doing internationally, is helping families in trouble a number of years ago, five or more years ago, we brought a family from Africa. She was a mom was a union organizer, and she found herself on the wrong side of the government. So we managed to smuggle WeMos and safely in Canada and they literally down the street from where a rotary club needs now. And we've we've taken the same cause for Ukrainian refugees. We brought family from the Ukraine, the winter taken out of the out of the warzone.
Joe Solway:You guys have a huge Ukrainian population.
Peter Tonge:Yeah. So the folks are very comfortable to come here because we have a very large Ukrainian community.
Joe Solway:So yeah, well, that's wonderful. And Talking Rotary, tell me about that. But starting that,
Peter Tonge:My friend Mandy Kwasnica, and I were both in the same room. We're huge fans of podcasts. But at the time, we couldn't, we couldn't find a rotary podcast or a few now. But at that time, three years ago, the closest thing there was a was a rotary club in Texas was literally recording the rotary meeting and putting it up online, it was a little bit like listening to paint dry. I'm sorry if you guys are listening, but it was not very dynamic. So we decided to start our own. So like, like everybody else in the world, I guess we went to YouTube and says, How do you make a podcast? And that's what we did.
Joe Solway:So you how many people have you interviewed over the course of it?
Peter Tonge:There's, there's currently 49 episodes active. I've got I've got six more in the can and I'll cover it in season three.
Joe Solway:And he said, include yourself for that you make seven. I'm the 7th. Yeah. So of all the 49 or I guess, the 56. Now, can you? I mean, I used to get asked this question all the time. If the CBC Who was your favorite interview, you have one that stands out for you that you just that you would just love and goes through your mind all the time. I didn't know you had to pick one.
Peter Tonge:No, I don't think I can. But what I can tell you is I can tell you about a recurring experience that I see all the time in doing the podcast and and I can think of two different people that were doing water projects. And one gentleman from Drago club, just just offhandedly said, oh, yeah, we've helped 10,000 families. And he said like it was my England who was working on a water filter project that again that, you know, I think we impacted about 10,000 families. And it wasn't saying, look at us. What a great thing we though this was just a measure of what they done.
Joe Solway:Just what we do. Yeah. So what does it meant to you to to be in touch and hear these all these stories? Like, what is that? What was that mean to you?
Peter Tonge:It's interesting, because I was actually recording an episode this morning with some folks from Kenya. And what how I described it to them because they asked a similar question was, sometimes in Rotary, we can become very isolated in our in our club or in our community. And we don't see the broader picture, I see the brightest picture. I've interviewed people literally from all over the world from all different aspects, all different points of view from rotary executives to people working on on the ground projects in Laos. I mean, it's such a broad you have what people are doing all over the world with Rotary, I get to see the impact, and literally the 10s of 1000s of lives that are improved because of it. It's hard not to be enthused about rotary when you see that. It's inspiring.
Joe Solway:Absolutely. Anything you want to cover that I haven't covered, anything you want to say about Rotary?
Peter Tonge:The other thing is that the more but the other the other thing that all shares I'm currently on the path to become a district governor in my district, and I'm what I think is interesting about that, is in some ways that was brought about by the pandemic. Because I think, you know, even though I'd been the Rotary Club president a couple of times or whatever, I don't think I was really ever under consideration because everybody got hung up on the idea. You know, how's the guy with with a disability going to visit 48 rotary clubs across three provinces to kind of stop there. With everybody doing zoom meetings, it was the podcast, that immediately fell away. I mean, I will when I'm district governor, I will visit the rotary clubs in person that are easy for me to get through. And everybody else is gonna see me over a zoom screen.
Joe Solway:This is a matter of equity, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it and you know, I don't want to I credit not to be critical. But you just Rotary International has a major focus on DEI. When it comes to people with disabilities, how are we doing?
Peter Tonge:We're starting. They were very late coming to the table, we're already more than 100 years old. And the focus of diversity, equity and inclusion is just coming now. So big, maybe it's because I'm so close to the issue. But, you know, I think we're late coming to the table, but I'm glad that rotary is doing it. One of my challenges in working with with Rotary Clubs, is we want to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, but I'm really trying to get get clubs away from that initial thought that says, Oh, we have to go find a disabled member, we have to go find more women, we have to go find some gay members. No, you don't. You have to get in your community and work with all these folks. And they will magically come to you into rotary, we can't we can't use a checklist approach to diversity, equity and inclusion as they go and speaking to rotary clubs, you know, literally all over the world. That's the message that I tried to bring. You build diversity by being in a diverse community, we all have diverse communities, let's be part of it.
Joe Solway:Wonderful, wonderful message. And thank you very much for the I feel like like I've been a guest on your, on your show. But you've been the guest. And thank you very much. It's really been an honor to hear your story and, and it's just so wonderful to be part of Rotary. And if I weren't part of Rotary, I never would have met you, which is wonderful now and you you really are fabulous. And your career is great, and you're doing great work. So thank you so much for doing for all you do.
Peter Tonge:I really appreciate that. And thank you for your suggestion. We should do it this way. I like I like them a lot. I've never, I've never particularly been well, not for this bypass. I certainly haven't been on this side of the microphone. So it's kind of fun to do. Well, there you go. Thank you.
Mandy Kwasnica:Thank you so much for joining us on another great episode of talking Rotary. We would love to hear from you. Please send us your comments and story ideas. And you can share with us easily by sending us an email at feedback at talking rotary.org Let's keep Talking Rotary.