The couple uses walkers, so Prudhomme had called Via ahead of time to make sure the train was accessible. Despite assurances from the railroad, it wasn’t. “I had called and made sure everything was accessible, talked about accessible bathrooms, made sure we had wheelchairs when we got to some of the bigger locations,” said Prudhomme, 27, of Thamesford, Ont. “We got there and waited and the train arrived and there were about five steep steps.” Hazel, 85, and Ken, 88, of Hanover, Ont., can’t climb many steps. Knowing that we are still not an accessible country is extremely troubling to me, – Brittany Prudhomme from Thamesford, Ont. “I asked, ‘How are we going to go?’” Prudhomme said. “They said, ‘We don’t have anything for you to get on the train.’ The Via Rail website page for Ingersoll is also a bit vague, especially for people who don’t visit the train regularly. It says the platform is wheelchair accessible but goes on to say there is no wheelchair lift. The Via train station in Ingersoll, Ont., the starting point for the planned trip to Miramichi, NB, for Brittany Prudhomme and her grandparents. (Submitted by Tim Lobzun) When Prudhomme realized her grandparents wouldn’t be boarding the train, Via Rail agreed to call the trio a taxi in hopes of getting them to Toronto’s Union Station in time for the next leg of their journey. They said taxi would be accessible. “The taxi that arrived was a small Toyota car and there was no way they were getting into it.” That’s when Prudhomme said they decided to pull the plug on a trip they’d been planning for more than a year. “They were extremely upset,” Prudhomme said of her grandparents. “Knowing that we’re still not an accessible country is extremely concerning to me. And to basically be told that they can’t travel to places because they’re not accessible. It’s extremely disappointing and upsetting.” Prudhomme, an educational assistant who works with children who have disabilities, says she is frustrated with Via’s accessibility issues. (Submitted by Brittany Prudhomme)
VIA Rail response
Via Rail has fully compensated the family and, in a statement emailed to CBC News, the company said it was sorry to hear about the situation. “Via Rail Canada (Via Rail) is proud to be the first Crown corporation to submit its 2022-2025 accessibility plan to the Government of Canada,” the statement said. “The company is determined to be Canada’s most affordable national and intercity mode of transportation and is driven by the mindset that it’s time to create a seamless travel experience from booking to destination.” Via said it has also formed a Universal Accessibility Advisory Committee, made up of “various groups that advocate for the rights of people with disabilities and will be instrumental in planning Via Rail’s future accessibility projects.” Prudhomme with her grandparents at the Ingersoll Via train station before they realized the train was out of reach. (Submitted by Brittany Prudhomme) That should be encouraging news to Jeff Preston, a disability advocate in London, Ont., who also teaches disability studies at Western University. “In my experience, the train is more affordable when traveling between major cities.” “However, there are several stops along the path from Windsor to Montreal that are inaccessible, either because the platform itself is not wheelchair accessible or because the station does not have the platform lift required to go from train car to platform,” he said. he said. “Like many services, it sometimes feels like Via approaches disabled passengers reactively, as if it’s a service for non-disabled people that has been retrofitted rather than seeing accessibility as an inherent or core part of their service model.” As for the family trip to Miramichi, Prudhomme isn’t sure he’ll book again. “It really depends on how my grandparents’ health is,” she said. “They were at a point where this might have been their last trip to New Brunswick and that was taken away from them.” London Morning6:45 Lack of accessibility at VIA station forces family to cancel trip Brittany Prudhomme was taking her elderly grandparents from Ingersoll to New Brunswick by train. When they arrived at the VIA station they realized that the train was inaccessible. Prudhomme tells London Morning they were forced to cancel their trip.
