Two very important guests and institutional survivors join us before the holidays: Cindy Scott and Justin Clark. Their visit arrived at a meaningful moment — the MWH team was deep in the work of shaping their own stories, and hearing from survivors who had already found ways to speak publicly about their experiences offered something that no workshop or textbook could provide.
The significance of peer testimony
There is a particular kind of learning that happens when someone who has lived through an experience shares it directly with others who recognise it. Cindy Scott and Justin Clark both carry histories within Ontario's institutional system. The details of their experiences are their own to tell, but their presence in the room — and their willingness to speak candidly — communicated something important: it is possible to find your voice after years of having it suppressed. It is possible to stand in a room full of people and say, clearly, what happened to you and what you believe.
For participants who were still working out how to tell their own stories, this was not an abstract lesson. It was evidence.
The broader survivor advocacy movement in Ontario
Cindy Scott and Justin Clark represent a strand of activism that has been building for decades in Ontario's disability rights community. Survivors of institutions across the province have organised, testified, advocated, and in some cases launched legal action to seek acknowledgement and accountability for what was done to them. The class-action settlements that led to formal government apologies were possible in part because survivors were willing to come forward and speak about what they had experienced.
Organisations like People First of Canada have long championed the principle that people with intellectual disabilities are the experts on their own lives and must be the ones driving decisions about their communities, their services, and their futures. Survivor testimony is central to that work — it grounds policy discussions in lived reality rather than abstraction.
The MWH project sat squarely within this tradition. It asked participants to document their histories using media arts tools, and it did so with the understanding that those histories are part of a larger story that Canadian society still needs to reckon with.
What the visit offered the group
Cindy Scott and Justin Clark's visit gave the group energy at a point in the project when the work was becoming more demanding. Producing a documentary, writing a survivor's account, preparing to take cameras into the community — these tasks require sustained effort and a degree of vulnerability. Hearing from people who had done similar work, who had spoken their truth publicly and continued to show up, reinforced the value of what the group was doing.
They also offered practical insight: how to handle difficult questions from an audience, what to do when the memory of a particular event is still painful, how to find language for experiences that institutions tried to render unspeakable.
The session before the winter break ended with the group in a stronger position than it began. The new year would bring the pop-up event with Ottawa self-advocates, the final editing of Robert's text, and eventually the completion of the film. The visit from Cindy Scott and Justin Clark was part of what carried the team into that next phase with purpose and confidence.