ARE YOU A FORMER MEMBER OF SPEECHMASTERS OF OTTAWA?

Are you a former member of Speechmasters of Ottawa the self-help group for people who stutter that was very active in the 1980s and the early 1990s? This was a very large group that met in the Ottawa Rehabïlatation  Centre.  Marie Poulos was the speech therapist at the Stuttering Treatment Clinic at that time.

I, along with several other members of the current Ottawa Association of People Who Stutter (OAPWS) was also a member of the Speechmasters group and have fond memories of our time together. Besides meeting on Thursday evenings for fluency practise, we organized weekend refreshers and held social evenings.

We also were responsible for organizing the 1993 Canadian Association of People Who Stutter Conference. This was CAPS’ second national conference and at it a draft version of the CAPS (now the Canadian Stuttering Association) constitution was debated in a series of plenary sessions.

This conference was special for many of us because it was held in memory and in honour of Marie Poulos, our beloved speech pathologist who died tragically in a car accident in October 1991.

If you are a former member of Speechmasters we would love to hear from you. Please share some of your memories of the group and of the conference.

Tania Kamienski