Events

Six years ago, Mike Little was working in management in the hospitality industry. He had just won a manager of the year award and was making good money doing a job at which he excelled. But his perspective on work changed forever when he met a group of farmers from Alberta, each of them disabled, at a Halifax hotel.

“The restaurant housed in this particular hotel had a front entrance with four or five steps,” he recalls. “If you were in a wheelchair, you couldn’t access the restaurant through the front entrance. But if you came in through the back service entry, you could.”
 
Five of the visiting farmers were in wheelchairs, and Little had to bring each of them to the restaurant through that back door.
 
“Now think about this,” he says. “Back in the ’50s if you were African Nova Scotian, you had to come in through the back door.” He found it unacceptable that in the 21st century anyone should face this same treatment. A few weeks later, the hotel management discussed whether they should spend $15,000 to upgrade the front entrance with a lift elevator or spend it on new curtains.
 
“We ended up spending it on new curtains,” he says, the disappointment still evident in his voice years later. “I ended up resigning.”