Today's DHR - Dave Hingsburger's Birthday

Over three years after his death, Dave Hingsburger remains one of Canada's most prolific disability activists.

Image Description: Circular cake, white frosting, with a lit, crimson candle in the middle and a crimson flower beside it. White lights in the background.

On December 21st, 1952, one of Canada’s most well-respected disability activists was born in Olds, Alberta.

Dave Hingsburger fought for the rights of all disabled people, but especially for intellectually disabled people. He took his BA Psychology from the University of Victoria, his M.Ed. from the University of Toronto, and a certitifcate in Human Relations from Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University), to build a 30-year career training service agencies about issues in the intellectual disability field that were often controversial at the time, including educating intellectually disabled people about:

• Relationships and sexuality

• Abuse prevention

• Self-advocacy

In addition to holding official positions over the course of his career where he could do his work, Dave spoke to service providers and educators all over Canada the United States, did consulting, partnered with organizations to produce educational materials, and wrote many books and articles. His disability blog that he started in 2006, Of Battered Aspect, remains available, even after his death in 2021.

Dave Hingsburger in Disability History

It’s important to recognize Dave Hingsburger in disability history because he, long before becoming disabled himself and having to use a wheelchair, insisted on empowering disabled people in ways that the support field hadn’t at that point.

Many people still struggle with the idea of intellectually disabled adults of any sexual orientation being in especially sexual relationships together; but being in these (consensual) relationship is their right. Even if being in a sexual relationship doesn’t appear to be a person’s goal, it’s important that they understand consent and what to do if they don’t consent to sexual behaviour in which someone is trying to get them to engage. Hingsburger helped develop the TALK-SC-R, a tool to talk about consent, with pre- and post-tests for level of understanding.

However, hs work encompassed many areas; his primary concern was self-determination, and teaching support workers that their role was “to be a person’s microphone…NOT their voice!”

In the last few years of his life, he collaborated with Open Future Learning, and I love this video that he did for them.

You can see more of their videos, including the ones that Dave himself did, on the Open Future Learning YouTube channel. Awesome. stuff. And you can find his books at Diverse-City Press.

Dave Hingsburger lived in Toronto, Ontario with his husband, Joe Jobes. They’d been together for over half a century when Dave died.

We used one of Dave Hingsburger’s books in the Developmental Services Program that I did after my stroke, but I never got to hear him speak; I’ll always feel regret that. To learn more about his amazing work, read this artcle from Open Future Learning that talks more about his achievements, and watch this tribute video they did when he died:

Happy Birthday, Dave.