ABSTRACT
In October, 1985, the Canadian Association's 28th Conference and Annual General Meeting was held in Alberta, Canada. Leading women who attended that meeting came with a variety of issues they wanted addressed at that Conference. This was the first time Jo Dickey, Audrey Cole and Paulette Berthiaume met on the national scene. They held different positions and had different responsibilities, but they were unified in their determination to urge the membership to take progressive positions on social issues. Jo Dickey, Chairperson of the National Institute on Mental Retardation, was from British Columbia; she had a proposal to change the name of the Institute. She was showing solidarity with people who had been labeled “mentally retarded” themselves and who had campaigned to have this term removed from the Association's name. She also wanted to publicize her provincial government's response to deinstitutionalization; the province was moving residents out of one institution only to place them in another. She wanted the National Association to advocate strongly that residents were moved to appropriate community settings. Until this point the organization had only conducted a letter-writing campaign. Audrey Cole, from Ontario, was Co-Chair of the National Advocacy Committee and a candidate for Vice-President having been named by the Nominating Committee. She was asked to prepare a background paper on pre-natal testing and selective abortion for a scheduled debate at the Annual General Meeting. She brought copies of her report, “Prenatal Diagnosis: Why?” She wanted to spark national action opposed to genetic testing. Paulette Berthiaume was a delegate from Quebec. She led a growing parent group that mobilized in response to the government inquiry into institutional abuse at Rivière-des Prairies where her son lived. She wanted to alert the Board to the struggle for deinstitutionalization forming in Quebec that had implications for the other provinces. She also came with a specific request from the parents’ group for financial support.
