This week, the Triple Vision team starts a series on the history of employment for Canadians who are blind, deafblind and partially sighted. In today’s look back, Peter speaks with Geoffrey Reaume, Assistant Professor of Critical Disability Studies at York University, about the impacts of the industrial revolution and the development of the sheltered workshop. Starting at the turn of the century, these workshops provided a very basic form of employment for Canadians who are blind, but they were often menial jobs which did not even pay the minimum wage. Hanna then talks with Cathy Stukenberg, who managed a CNIB CaterPlan kiosk for 28 years in Vancouver selling a variety of items ranging from cigarettes to chocolate bars. CaterPlan was CNIB’s answer to the employment problem from 1928 up to the 1980s. “It was really with the industrial economy that large numbers of people in the industrial world were employed in sheltered workshops. Beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Goodwill industries in Boston was founded by a philanthropist and spread throughout different parts of North America.… By the mid 20th century, there were large numbers of sheltered workshops established for people with physical, mental and sensory disabilities. People who were blind were especially put to work doing jobs that they were seen as being more capable of doing in regard to tactile work.… Of course it was very exploitative work, where they were paid very poorly and were very, very much not valued as labourers within themselves. So, people with disabilities, blind, people with physical and mental disabilities whose work had previously been more integrated into a pre-industrial economy were more segregated as the industrial revolution speeded up activity. They were considered less capable of contributing to the economy even though in many cases this was certainly not true."