At 65, and blind, Victoria’s Doris Belusic does not allow the lack of sight to serve as an obstacle to a full and meaningful life. She is a poet, non-fiction writer, children’s book author, magazine editor, recent university graduate and, together with her husband, the builder of several houses around the city, including a sevenplex.
All the while, Doris keeps an active social calendar, plays the guitar and ukulele, travels and, according to everyone who has sampled her cuisine, cooks phenomenal meals.
In her early 20s, Doris was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative eye disorder of the retina, the inner back layer of the eye which has the visual cells that send images to the brain. When retina cells get damaged, it frequently leads to blindness.
“Often during this long progression of many years, in my case, from sight to blindness, your central tunnel vision can still be fairly clear, until it, too, fades out,” explains Doris. “Today, seeing anything depends on lighting, the direction of it, glare and so on. Mostly I see light, shapes, blur and sometimes things with strong light-dark contrast.”
“I use a long white cane to get around,” she adds. “It makes all the difference to independence and safety.”
Doris, who spent her professional career in public health, started work as an operating room aide at a local hospital when she was fresh out of high school. She later moved on to being a unit clerk in orthopedics.
In 2006, as she approached 50, the literary bug bit, and Doris began dabbling in poetry. “I can’t say why I started to write poetry, but I was inspired many years earlier as a teen when I heard BBC personality, Pam Ayres, read her humorous poem on a Victoria radio station. I bought her book,” says Doris. “Since then, I’ve written all sorts of poems.”
In 2013, Doris wondered how many more credits she needed to complete her BA degree, as she had spent several years in her early 20s at the University of Victoria and Camosun College.
When she checked into it, she learned she was half-way towards graduating. With some urging from a friend, she decided to finish her BA, which she completed in 2019 at age 61, by taking writing classes to hone her craft.
“I loved going to classes, learning and being amongst the students and professors. It was all very inspiring and fun. It opened my mind and taught me the skills to write well,” she says. “Being a mature student was great. The students were very nice and treated me no differently. Most of them, in their 20s, impressed me by how intelligent they were.”
Going to school, however, was not without its challenges as a blind student. “A friend put a carrot in front of my nose, offering to drive me to classes the first year to make it easy,” recalls Doris. “Each year, she helped me learn the routes from the bus stop to the buildings and to the classrooms. This was crucial for me, so I could travel around and function independently in an unfamiliar setting.”
For the past 25 years, Doris has been a member of the Canadian Federation of the Blind (CFB), an organization of blind people that works to improve the lives of blind Canadians through mentoring, advocacy and education. Among CFB’s core philosophical beliefs are that blindness is a characteristic – not a handicap – and that blindness is not what defines people, nor should it hold them back.
For over a decade, Doris has been the editor of the CFB’s publication, The Blind Canadian. Each issue of the magazine focuses on the lives of blind people around the country, on their accomplishments and on advocacy for the breaking down of barriers to the blind wherever they may exist.
“Through CFB I have learned most of what I know about blindness and the abilities of blind people,” she says. “CFB has had some super role models and mentors over the years. The organization holds a positive philosophy on blindness and knows that with equality and opportunity blind people can live the lives they want.”
Earlier this year, Doris completed a Grade 3-6 children’s book, I Am Blind (Beech Street Books, 2024).
“It’s a lived experience book,” she says about the project. “I am hoping it may be of interest to those who are thinking about buying books for the little people in their lives. This nonfiction children’s book is full of messages that I have been sharing in my advocacy role with the CFB.”
Next up on Doris’s to-do list is publishing a book of poetry.
“It’s a dream of mine,” she says.
No doubt she’ll make it a reality.
To learn more about the Canadian Federation of the Blind, visit cfb.ca or email info@cfb.ca
Doris’s book is available for pre-order at: https://www.saundersbook.ca or through Indigo or your local bookstore.
Link to the series: https://www.saundersbook.ca/series/WBEE0068
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