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Despite major improvements, barriers remain for people with disabilities. In the years since Margaret Carter's death, no one has emerged to take up the cause of the disabled with quite the same degree of fervour. This biography is from Meredith Ebbin's website: www.bermudabiographies.bm

By Meredith Ebbin

Margaret Carter (June 1,1939-December 27, 1992) was a passionate advocate for people with disabilities. She founded the Bermuda Physically Handicapped Association (BPHA) in 1970.

It became the forum through which she led the fight for jobs and greater access to public facilities, education and transportation for people with disabilities.

She was herself disabled, but unlike the majority of disabled Bermudians of her generation, she received access to a formal education. That, along with her talents as an organizer and writer, her wit and her media savvy, combined to make her a formidable spokeswoman.

She also influenced the construction of Summerhaven, the residence for the physically disabled in Smith's, and was at the forefront of a seven-year battle to amend the Human Rights Act so that people with disabilities could receive protection from discrimination.

She was born with muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that put her permanently in a wheelchair by age 11.

She was raised at Mount Hill, Pembroke, the only child of devoted parents, Margaret and George Carter, a Bermuda Electric Light Company engineer.

She received her early schooling at Mount St. Agnes Academy. When she was 13, she left the island to receive rehabilitation at Pinderfields Hospital in Yorkshire, England, where she was a patient for three years.

On her return to Bermuda, she completed a correspondence course in creative writing and began to develop her talents as a writer and a doll maker.

Her life as an activist began when she took out a newspaper ad, inviting people who were disabled to contact her. The result was the formation of the BPHA.

She became its long-time chairman. Working with key supporters, among them Willard Fox, Mildrette Hill and Father Pat Mackan, a Canadian Roman Catholic priest who was attached to St. Anthony's Church, she made the BPHA a force to be reckoned with.

She made effective use of the media in the BPHA's many battles, whether they were with government over what she saw as its slow pace in changing policy, or a rogue taxi driver who refused to pick up people in wheelchairs.

Successes were hard-fought, but lasting. They included greater access to transportation, with the advent of buses with hydraulic lifts, ramps on Hamilton sidewalks, and at City Hall, which also installed an elevator, in response to pressure from the BPHA. Planning regulations requiring new public buildings to be accessible were also adopted.

In 1988, the long-awaited amendment to the Human Rights Act became law and by the early 1990s, children with disabilities were being mainstreamed into the public school system.

Margaret Carter was a member of the board of Summerhaven and also served on Government's Human Rights Commission and the Rehabilitation Council. She was a member as well of Bermuda's Anti-Apartheid Group, which was active in the 1980s, lobbying for the overthrow of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In November 1992, while attended a creative writing workshop she suffered a stroke. She died on December 27, the same year.

She was an avid reader and prolific writer, whose work was included in two short story collections published by the Bermuda Writers' Collective, of which she was a member.

The second collection, An Isle So long Unknown, was published in her memory in 1993.

Despite her love of literature, most of the Bermuda National Library's collections were off-limits to her because it was inaccessible to people in wheelchairs.

That changed in 1997 when an elevator was installed and dedicated in her memory.

For more Bermuda bios, visit: Bermuda Biographies

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