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DID YOU KNOW that 8% of Irish adults have a significant, disabling hear loss?
Or that one or two per thousand of Irish children born have hearing loss?
There could be more deaf and hearing impaired people around you or in your life than you realise. So isn’t it time we put ourselves in their shoes and found out a bit more about Irish Deaf culture?
First things first. Why are we capitalising the D in Deaf sometimes but not others? That’s very simple to answer – because deaf people have drawn a distinction between the state of being “deaf” and the idea of “Deaf” culture, as defined by a man named James Woodward. The capital means you’re referring to the community who all have varying levels of hearing acuity, but primarily communicate through signing and have shared heritage, identity and culture.
As mentioned, the most recent figures from the CSO indicate that there are over 92,000 people who are deaf or have hearing disabilities. According to the Irish Deaf Society, 5,000 Irish people use Irish Sign Language as their preferred language. One of the core values of the Irish Deaf Society is promotion of ISL and social inclusion for deaf people fostered by the provision of qualified ISL interpreters.
Recently, we met a deaf man named Chris Fonseca, who does the very thing that hearing people might assume he can’t – works with music and choreographs routines as a professional dance instructor. He has had a cochlear implant, which helps with his crafting of dances, but also relies on vibrations and close attention to lyrics to “connect with the characters of a song”.
I have what is called a cochlear implant which means I can hear about 85% of music, but when I take out my cochlear implant at the end of the day I am profoundly deaf. With it on, I feel more vibrations, I put my hands on the speaker and it slowly works it way through my body and I can connect with it – and at the same time, I’m listening to the music as well.
I want to create a platform for deaf people in the mainstream and show that deaf people can dance and they can do the same things as hearing people.
Chris confounds people’s expectations – even those of fellow members of the Deaf community – by dedicating himself totally to an art that many people would assume is automatically not for him. He believes it is key for hearing people to look at someone beyond their hearing ability – to “see the skills and talent and not their deafness”.
The hearing world is very big. But the Deaf world can be very small. And the Deaf dance world can be even smaller than that.
Chris’s chief aim these days is to act as a role model to people in the Deaf community by showing them that music can be for them.
Chris says:
“As a deaf dancer, there are very few deaf dancers in the UK. The fact is, in Deaf culture, most deaf people don’t really listen to music. But that’s really dependent on who the person is. It depends on their upbringing, the school they went to. I have a few friends that really like music and connect with it well. “
Have we got you interested in Deaf culture yet? If you don’t know where to start, but want to find out more about Deaf communities near you or learning to sign, the Irish Deaf Society or IrishDeaf.com should be your next stop. But for now we’ll leave you with this to get you started…
Chris Fonseca doesn’t let his deafness stand in the way of his dance ambitions. Smirnoff – We’re Open is all about including everyone, no matter what their circumstances. Please drink Smirnoff responsibly. Visit drinkaware.ie. We have used Deaf to refer to the Deaf community as a whole throughout, and “deaf” for hearing acuity.
How have I never heard about this? What a story!! That telegraph man was very pragmatic wasn’t he? FairPlay.
@Deborah Behan: Quite a few of these accidental explosions have happened down the years – due to the somewhat US-centric nature of Wikipedia, I remember reading an “on this day” article about the Texas City Disaster of 1947 (ship containing 2,100 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded), which I had also never heard of – almost as powerful as the Halifax one mentioned here.
Wow, never knew about this. Sounds horrific
Coleman was even more of an hero than is reported here. He actually was leaving with his boss having heard the news of the presently exploding ammo ship and turned back into his office, 750 yards from the epicenter of the blast, to send his warning telegram not only to one train but to all the trains and stations along the Intercolonial network. His wife and children at home were injured badly in the blast, he was killed, and his destroyed watch which along with his telegraph key and warped pen were donated by his widow to a museum, bears testimony to the terrible forces that must have borne down on him. His sacrifice saved hundreds of lives and alerted the world to what had happened.
Never heard of it, must have been kept quite during the war for moral purposes.
Was in Halifax a few years ago and they tell this story on the harbour tour. They also tell it in Boston at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony. The people of Nova Scotia send a Christmas tree to Boston every year as a symbol of gratitude as the first external help to arrive in Halifax were the fishermen from Boston.
Suppose it just depends on your level of interest in history, remember reading about it years ago.
@Andy Sinclair:I remember reading about this incident too – I’m glad the Journal decided to highlight it, and that they included the story about the railway dispatcher.
The three lines under the first picture are blowing my mind, no pun intended.
Mankind and his folly will destroy our home Mother Earth.
@James Doyle: We’re only tenants. We’ll be evicted before long.
Brilliant comment Jimmy…. brilliant….
Big and all as it was, a similar accidental explosion on a ship started the Spanish American war in 1909. There is a fantastic free naval museum in Madrid which outlines the event complete with a scale model of the ship and cutaway diagrams. Worth visiting Madrid for a weekend on its own to see.
@Ian Moloney: Not really on the same scale, at that period many of the Navies had the same issue due to changing to new powder mixtures, the Royal Navy had a Battleship blow up in harbour as well around the same period, and even by WW2 the Japanese had a Battleship blow up in port as well.
I have completely forgotten about the Afghanistan bomb.
There’s a very good movie called Shattered City (The Halifax Explosion) well worth watching.
Ok so, if the MOAB =11000 tonnes of TNT and the Halifax bomb=3000 tonnes of TNT, how is Halifax bigger?
@Bel O Connor: The MOAB is 11 tons not 11,000 tons.
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