Many shades of darkness

Dean Batstone has never seen a clear picture of anything; he was born visually impaired.

In the quiet little outport community of Jackson's Cove, Green Bay located on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, not many could figure what would cause a baby boy to be born with bilateral, partially detached retinas.

Describing the condition that caused him to be legally blind with very limited vision, the 48-year-old says it was never explicitly determined what the cause was.

"My eye condition is very convoluted," Dean, who currently resides in Labrador City, explained of his earliest years. "In my right eye, my best vision was upwards and to the right and in my left eye, my best vision was downwards and to the left. So I was kind of looking both ways. I had very little vision then because the two eyes were working against one another."

Dean wore glasses back then, but he explained it was primarily for the protection of his vulnerable eyes. Because of his partially detached retinas, doctors and his parents were afraid he'd trip or run into something that would cause trauma enough to fully detach the retinas.

A critical snowball fight

All went pretty well, the young boy attended regular school and, though his eyesight wasn't very good, it was enough to get him though the classes and stay on par with the rest of his classmates.

And, just as he attended regular school, he also took part in regular activities like other boys his age.

"When I was between eight and nine I got into a snowball fight, like you would, and I was doing pretty good too; I was hitting a scattered thing," he recalled a day that changed his life. "Then my opponent hit me in the side of the head with a snowball."

The repercussions from blow to the head didn't manifest right away, but later when his left eye went black, it was determined the snowball fight had yielded him a total loss of sight in his left eye; the retina had completely detached and blackness was left. "I have been blind in my left eye ever since," he explained. "I have no light perception, NLP is what they put on the report. The bit of sight I have now is confined to the right eye."

Steadfast Mom

With only six per cent vision to go on and the benefit of only one eye, Dean was further challenged but he carried on; actually he had little really to say in that.

"There were a lot of challenges, but I was blessed going to school because my mother was a teacher before she was married and education was her priority," he said with gratitude in his tone. "She was very independent. I remember a gentleman coming to our door, before I went to school, to sign me up for the school for the blind in Halifax. All I could think was, he is going to take me away. At the time CNIB was very different than it is now. Once they identified a person as having severe impairments, their immediate goal was to get that individual into a situation where they felt they had a positive learning environment, which was an institutional environment where there is a residence and a school."

But his mother was not having her young child sent off to Halifax and she held fast to her commitment to support him as he was educated in Jackson's Cove.

She was regimented. Dean sat at the table for supper at 6 p.m. with his two brothers and two sisters and his parents. When the table was cleared away, it was time for Dean's homework.

"We would sit at the table and mom would read the lessons to me," he recalled. "She would read the questions and write down the answer just as I said it and she wouldn't cheat. I tried to get her to cheat for me more than once, but she wouldn't do it."

Enhancing the other senses

When Dean went to school, his classroom consisted of five grades in one room (Kindergarten to Grade Four), and the variety of activity provided the young boy with an opportunity to hone his listening skills quite well.

"That was a good thing because when you can't see, you listen," he said of coping with the multiple grades in one room. "It's not that you hear any better, you don't get super hearing or anything, but you pay attention to your surroundings more because you have to know what's going on around you. You pick up a lot.

I have never, ever been able to recognize someone from vision. I could recognize someone by their general shape. Back home I would know people by their clothes. If someone got a new coat, that threw me off."

The often-witty Dean explained people use different cues to familiarize themselves in surroundings and shares a surprising observation that sighted people may not realize.

"The sound of someone's voice for example," he added. "A voice sounds totally different outdoors than it does indoors. If I was used to hearing someone only in the classroom, then I heard them outside I would not recognize that voice. Everybody has different experiences, but that is the way it was for me."

Successful school years

It was a normal, happy childhood for Dean in his outport home despite the challenges of his very limited vision. He said he often got teased and his buddies would hide some of his belongings, but it was all very light-hearted. He liked to play his own practical jokes as well and claims he was not the saintly kid.

"Yeah, I got in trouble at school with the teachers sometimes like the rest of my classmates," he admitted with a grin. "Only thing was I got caught more often because I couldn't see the teachers coming."

By the time Dean was 16, he graduated from high school. He was the youngest in the class and that earned him the honour of cutting the gradation cake, a big deal for the teen.

He looked back on his academic achievements and explained he used a stand magnifier that brought his text up 3x, he used paper that allowed for bigger print-it took him a full page to write what his classmates could do in a quarter of a page, but it didn't matter. He found ways early to work around his limited sight.

"There is nothing you can do with sight that you can't do without sight, you just have to figure out a way to do it," Dean said. "You have to train your memory to remember things. You can't drive, obviously...well I guess you could, but you'd hit lots of things."

Still very young, Dean said he had no idea what he wanted to do after high school. He was delighted to have completed school and decided he would rest on his laurels for a while before deciding what goals he wanted to chase down.

University, not

Shortly after graduation though, Dean and his mother learned he had been funded to attend university in St. John's. Someone had applied on his behalf and he had been accepted to Memorial University.

"When I was 15, I met a lady, she was with the Department of Rehabilitation at the time, and she decided (on her own) that I was an intelligent young man and I needed to go to university, so got me into a funding plan to go to university. She applied to the university and I was accepted...all without the knowledge of anyone in my family including me."

Learning of how the woman had taken control from Dean and his family, his mom was not at all pleased.

"Mom asked me, before she even told me this lady had this arranged, whether or not I wanted to go to university. I told my mother that at that time university wasn't even in my thinking."

Dean said his mother was angry then to think someone could do this without even asking what her son wanted. She saw it as someone coming in and taking control after all he had accomplished for himself.

"I mean I was not a disabled person in my mind," said Dean. "I was quite capable of making that decision with my family. I knew I had challenges with my sight, but I never felt disabled."

Working the farm

With a decision to not attend university, Dean's mother was not about to have her son loafing around doing nothing while he decided on what his long-term career goals were.

"Mom said well you are not sitting around doing nothing," he recounted. "So my grandfather was a farmer and he had a mixed operation-he would grow crops and he had animals. My dad was doing some farming too and I was used to working the barn and the hay."

So the summer he finished school, Dean went to work on his grandfather's farm and for the next five years he took over the chores of feeding the animals and working at hay. He did everything his grandfather asked of him and his grandfather didn't mind giving him jobs.

"Grandfather was a very open-minded man, he'd let me try stuff," Dean said. "When I was about 20, he bought a new tractor. It was a $60,000 four-wheel drive rig with a bucket on her and the whole works. He looked at the tractor her and then he said, 'Dean, you think you'd be able to drive that?' and I said, 'Yes Sir, if I look at it a bit, I think I could.' 'Good enough,' he said, 'one of these days we'll see.'"

Dean said it took his grandfather about a year to feel comfortable and learn the operations of his prize tractor and he enjoyed riding on her with his grandfather pointing out the different features. Dean was also intrigued with reading the manual on the tractor and he read it from cover to cover.

A great day

"Then one day Grandfather said, 'Alright boy, are you ready?' I said, 'Ready for what?'" Dean smiled at the memory. " He said, 'ready to drive the tractor,' and I said, 'sure.'"

With that his grandfather passed him the key, instructed him to bring the tractor down to the lunch shack because some maintenance work was needed on her.

"And he just walked away," Dean said of the pivotal moment in his life. "He just walked down the road and left me on my own in a $60,000 machine. He took my word. He expected me to say whether or not I could or couldn't and if I had said I couldn't, he'd never say another word about it. But if I said I could, and anything happened, the weight of all the repercussions would come down on my head."

It was a level of trust that Dean would soon realize was rare and only a select few would be willing to give him again.

It was a trust that boosted his self-esteem further than he had ever encountered and Dean was not about to let the old fellow down.

"I brought the tractor down to the lunch shack," he recalled. "But I didn't bring her in close because I have no depth perception with only one eye and I can't judge distance. Instead of parking her 10 feet from the shack, like I thought I did, I parked her 30 ft, but I never hit the shack. Grandfather liked it because it showed him I was using caution. He trusted me to do a lot of stuff after that I guarantee you."

Off to Trades school

When Dean turned 21, he was itching to get out and do something. He wanted to go to get a trade.

"I applied for trades school to do small engine mechanic," he said. "I decided to do that because I figured it was easy. I mean auto mechanic didn't make sense because I didn't drive a car. I drove a ski-doo and I used a chain saw in the woods, I cut the wood for the house for years. They was all scared to give me a chain saw so I bought my own. It's like any machine, you have got to respect it, you got to know how to use it and know how to use it safely. I was using this equipment and if you have these machines, you need to know how to fix it. I knew I could do it, no matter how many people told me I couldn't, I knew I could. So I went and did the course."

The 21-year-old headed to Lewisporte to take on the nine-month course; it was his first time away from home but he was determined.

He was prepared to work harder than the other 11 who took the course with him, he knew his poor sight forced him to, but he had long been seasoned into putting in the extra. He even completed the welding component to the course that most in the class opted not to do. At the end of the nine months, not only did he pass the course, Dean had the second highest achievement record in his class. It was the second great boost to his self-esteem, he never felt more confident.

Ready to take on the world

"When I got out of there," he said of the trades program. "I felt like could take on the world, I was ready to go."

And, go, he did. He went on an aggressive job-hunting mission, sending applications all over the province. A year into it, he had come up empty. He was starting to feel despair when he got called for an interview.

An employment counsellor at the CNIB had arranged for an interview with a major sporting equipment shop/garage. Dean was not about to lie about his visual impairment, he felt his academic record spoke volumes for what he was capable of and he had sought the assistance of the CNIB in his job search.

Seeing two fellows who had attended the same trades school for a block while he was training was an added gleam of hope. They assured Dean they'd offer an enthusiastic reference for him to the manager.

"I went in and met with the manager and he was like peaches and cream to me in the interview," Dean recalled the critical interview. "He was so positive and he gave me the feeling that he was really going to give me the job."

Dean said he had great hopes when he left the room to go talk to his buddies out on the shop floor. It had been the 10th interview but none of the other nine had made him feel such optimism. But in the end, the experience turned out to be one he'd never forget years later.

The ugly truth

"I went back with the employment counsellor to his office after the interview," said Dean "and I was stunned by what he told me. I found out my rear [end] was barely through the door and he [manager] told my counsellor that he was wasting his time to bring me there. He told my employment counsellor that there was no way I could function in his shop.

Then he went on and said he couldn't understand why the government was wasting his money [tax dollars] to train these people to do things they can't do. He said I was a danger to him in the shop. He saw me as someone he would never hire in 10 million years and when the counsellor brought forth the record of achievement, he told him it didn't mean a thing to him and he thought the instructor that wrote that should be fired because it was obvious I couldn't do the job. He thought that my academic record was doctored, that I was someone who sat in a corner and someone just gave me the achievement. He was so two-faced, it was worse than the other interviews because he let me think I would get the job."

It was the ugliest day of Dean's life, a diametrically opposite day from the great day when his grandfather had confidently passed him the keys of his prize tractor.

"I will never forget how I felt that day, I had hit that glass wall." said Dean. "It was the first day, I felt disabled."

He headed back to Jackson's Cove, back for another stint with his grandfather.

Check next week's Aurora for the second part of Dean Batstone's story where he overcomes even more challenges and achieves great successes right up to a national position working for the CNIB.