Continued from page 1: ASL Communities: Modern Outposts of History’s MV
however, invited us to gather together not only as Deaf people but also as members of a language
community, and so included the family and friends who share our language.
Founding the ASL Community of Niagara in 2012, David Wiesblatt, the organization’s first
President, along with several founding board members, created a local platform for arts, cultural, and
educational presentations and gatherings in ASL. Now led by President Paul Moreau, who first joined
the board of directors as the interim secretary in November of 2013, the ASL Community of Niagara
continues to host monthly events and strives to make each one as different as possible.
We invite Deaf and ASL signers to appear as guests and provide presentations, workshops,
share life stories and more. Our guests have presented on a range of topics, such as ASL linguistics
or organizational efforts in the Deaf community. For example, Paul LeDrew, an instructor at George
Brown College and Deaf Interpreter, spoke to us about conceptually accurate ASL; John Hemingway,
a retired teacher from the E.C. Drury School for the Deaf, presented his research on Ontario’s name
sign conventions; Megan Youngs, now the Director of ASL Services at Silent Voice Canada,
presented on her previous work with the World Federation of the Deaf in East and North Africa and
more.
Occasionally, we will host a literary performance or film screening. This past fall, Dr. Supalla
came to perform his new epic and, in November 2017, Patrick Graybill performed a selection of his
original and translated works for us. Among the films, we have shown we most recently screened The
Man with a Thousand Faces (1957) which explores the influence of growing up in a Deaf home on the
silent film star Lon Chaney and before that we had screened ...And Your Name is Jonah (1979), a
family drama about a Deaf child born to hearing parents.
Proceeds generated by our events are donated to support other worthy projects, such as the
50th anniversary of the Ontario School for the Deaf (Ernest C. Drury) and the national conference of
the Canadian Association of Sign Language Interpreters (formerly the Association of Visual Language
Interpreters of Canada) held in Niagara.
(Continue on the next page)
The Power of ASL
7
Winter 2018 – Issue 12