Yesterday’s street festival in However, that one error left MLA for Calgary Buffalo and Calgary mayoral candidate Kent Hehr stranded at ground level and unable to join his colleagues on the stage. The organisers made no effort before hand or day-of to make the stage accessible to Hehr and nobody stepped up to help during the event.
Hehr is wheelchair bound due to having been hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting some 20 years ago. That bullet left Hehr paralysed but has not paralysed his career or his civic involvement.
Yesterday, with the entire slough of dignitaries and candidates on stage, Hehr was forced to stay beside the stage, on the ground and hidden from view, unrecognized by the MC and excluded from the ribbon-cutting ceremony and photos of the event.
This is a glaring oversight and a slap in the face of one of
The organisers owe Mr. Hehr a public apology certainly as do Mr. Hehr’s colleagues. It speaks VOLUMES about the other candidates and dignitaries that they did nothing at all to see that their esteemed college was not excluded. 
There were PLENTY of able bodies up on that stage and had any of them had a thought beyond getting their mugshot done, they could have easily found a solution to Mr. Hehr’s forced dilemma.
It is embarrassing and a very poor reflection on such people that they so pointedly ignored the needs of a colleague; one must ask how that ignorance translates to the lesser-known who also have accessibility needs.
I want to make THIS perfectly clear: I have nothing at all 
against any of these people personally. I know most of them quite well and like them all very much.
I don't ascribe any malice to any of them. I do, however, question how they could so blatantly ignore the fact that Kent was right there, below them all, while they were up on stage.
He is a colleague; he has been part of civic and provincial politics for ages and he had spoken yesterday, still from the ground, so they couldn't have not known he was there. I must say, the one comment I received so far today was of the "Wasn't Me," variety.
WHY didn't anyone think to make sure he had his deserved place on stage with his colleagues?
I hope some or all of the dignitaries and candidates who were on the dais yesterday will step up, acknowledge this oversight and make public apologies to Kent.
Also on site: Richard Gotfried
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