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Sam Spiteri, a 3-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, won't have to give up his beloved pony, Emily, Caledon Town Council ruled Dec. 10.
After a dispute stemming from a neighbour's complaint in August about the pony's smell, Sam's mom, Antonia, made her case before council Dec. 10.
The issue centred on a zoning bylaw; the Spiteris' property was rezoned from rural farm to rural residential in 2006, meaning they were to house no livestock.
But after national media attention and letters of support from as far away as Finland and Australia, council had no objections, Spiteri said, as long as the family took adequate care of the pet.
Sam received the pony when he was 6 months old and started riding before his first birthday. The family began a collection for the $800 fee to appear before council, but after receiving more than that from supporters, Spiteri says she'll put the money toward helping disabled people acquire animal-assisted therapy.
"I don't know if he realizes she's a pony. To him, she's just a friend. Once I explained Emily gets to stay all he wanted to do was go home to her."
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The Star in Canada:
