Celebrating the Life of Disability Advocate Ing Wong-Ward
On July 6th, disability advocate Ing Wong-Ward died of cancer. She shared her illness publicly, voicing a need for quality palliative care in a country that offers medical assistance in dying. Ing was adamant that disability did not diminish life, and hers was a life worth living.
"Ing very much helped to shift the conversations so that people would less and less associate disability with the tropes of tragedy and misfortune. There was nothing tragic about Ing's life. Of course, her death is a tragic loss for all of us, but her life was extraordinarily satisfying and rich in so many ways. Ing would consistently challenge the stereotypes about disability being a fate worse that death, about disability diminishing life, and the subtle ways that that gets expressed in language and in our thinking and habits of response to disability. She wouldn't mince words - she was a tough cookie."
- Catherine Frazee