EP4 GIVE ME 15 MINUTES Thu, Dec 11, 2025 11:51PM • 18:56 SUMMARY KEYWORDS #dj #disability #accessibility #music #journalism #toronto SPEAKERS Michelle McQuigge George Quarcoo Amanda Shekarchi Ariel Tozman Dave Brown Mariam Kourabi 00:04 This is We Met U When...a podcast by journalism students at Toronto Metropolitan University.This is season four, and I'm your host, Mariam Kourabi. Every year we go back in time, dig up new stories from Toronto's past and track down the people in those stories. This season, we're going back to 2015. Sekou Osbourne James 00:29 I was just very confused. There was just a lot of photographs, but not a lot of asking people how they feel or what words they want to attach to these photos. It was just like the story was being told for us by shaping the narrative. Sara Calnek 00:43 It's a field where a lot of really bad things happen. You know, I've been assaulted and I've been spit on and I've been yelled at and all kinds of stuff thrown at me. I've had my life threatened. George Quarcoo 00:55 A lot of journalists that I have encountered where I'm also interested in my disability and not what I am doing as a person. Mariam Kourabi We want to know what happened after their names were in the news. Moises Frank 01:11 This story does take a turn as life does. I don't know if you want to go this route. I don't even know if I if I should tell you, but I'll tell you, just because it's reality. Mariam Kourabi 01:24 No one was in a position of power, but many of them felt the power a news story can have. Nicole Osbourne James 01:31 There was a lot of negativity in the traditional news media. There was a lot of abuse. There was a lot of Oh, you want to segregate your kids. Amanda Shekarchi 01:42 It's really frustrating because it can feel very click bait when you like, open an article and you're like, blind person runs a marathon, and you're just like, why? Mariam Kourabi 01:53 We're exploring the difference a decade makes, and the difference we journalists can make going forward by first going back to 2015 you're listening to We Met U When, season four. This is, give me 15 minutes. George Quarcoo 02:23 I play everything. I play, you know, reggae reggaeton, zoo, compound, you name it. So you know what I play at Zuk. No, not a lot of people like it, but then they like my compa stuff, or they like my kazumba stuff, or they like my reggaeton. George Quarcoo 02:41 I think the idea of either making a party lit or not, George Quarcoo 02:47 I love that about it a because, you know, if you're playing something that somebody don't like, you're gonna clear out the dance floor. But if you're playing something that the entire crowd likes, and they, you know, debunks into it. You don't have a lot of people on the dance floor. Ariel Tozman 03:05 That's George Quarcoo, also known as GQ Soundz, with a Z at the end. George Quarcoo I always loved music. I've grown up back home in Ghana. I had a friend who was a DJ, and I kind of liked the way he mixes two songs together, watching him play, you know, back then, we were using cassettes George Quarcoo 03:26 to actually DJ, you know, watching him do those things, kind of like, I was very intrigued. So I was like, Yo, this is something that I want to, I want to pursue, not as a career, but, you know, as a passion, right? And the more I got into it, the more I kind of like saw the DJs doing their thing, moving from, you know, cassettes to CDs, vinyls and so on. I got more and more into it. So when I migrated to Canada, you know, I got the opportunity to hop on the computer and, you know, learn all the accessibility features on it. And, yeah. Ariel Tozman He was 12 then. Now he's in his 30s, and he's getting gigs most weekends, but breaking through in the city has been tough. George Quarcoo You kind of have to know somebody in the industry, right, to get you you know even an opportunity get you to place on like, 15 minutes or something like that, right? It was hard. It was really hard. Ariel Tozman 04:26 Picture a swanky swimming pool bar in downtown Toronto, pink neon lights dancing on the turquoise water, dozens of sweaty faces illuminated by flashing green and purple lights. Ariel Tozman 04:39 George has booked this gig, but when he shows up, there's a problem. George Quarcoo 04:47 Booked for the night, and when I showed up, the person in charge of the sound was like, well, we didn't hire you. And I'm like, Yeah, you hired GQ. I give it all the. George Quarcoo 05:00 My contacts on and so forth. He's like, I gotta check with the manager. Ariel Tozman This type of thing had happened before. George would just leave angry, but that night was different. George Quarcoo 05:14 He went and checked with the manager, came back with me, and he's like, Well, how you gonna see George Quarcoo 05:20 to work the equipment. I said, man, just give me about 15 minutes, right? And if I'm doing something wrong, I'm not able to play to your satisfaction, I'm gonna gladly leave. I'll pick up my stuff and leave. Right? Ariel Tozman 05:34 That's when George began standing his ground, George Quarcoo 05:38 and it's just that one defining moment to be honest with you, Ariel Tozman 05:42 before that, too often, club promoters would underestimate him, George Quarcoo 05:49 many, many times I've shown up to you know different events and yeah, the promoters or the people in charge will tell me, well, we didn't hire you because of my visual impairment, right? Ariel Tozman 06:02 George says they'd overlook his talent and just focus on his visual impairment. As a journalist, I've overlooked some issues around disability coverage. Ariel Tozman 06:14 We've got community advisors collaborating with us this season, and one of them told our class, disability tends to be covered as something other or different. Michelle McQuigge 06:25 At this exact moment, one in four Canadians have a disability. I would not call that a fringe stat. The population is aging. Those numbers are going to climb, and as those numbers climb, everyone else will be affected too. I would argue that disability is a much more universal experience than a lot of institutions tend to assume or maybe want to believe or accept. Michelle McQuigge 06:49 That's our advisor, Michelle McQuigge. She's CEO of balance for blind adults. Before that, she was a long time journalist at the Canadian Press. Her comments prompted me to find George. We first met him in a Brampton Guardian article about the 2015, Para Pan Am Games. Ariel Tozman 07:09 In addition to DJing, George works for the City of Toronto as a digital accessibility specialist, and he's a professional athlete, a record breaking sprinter. George Quarcoo I train anywhere to from five to six times a week, George Quarcoo 07:28 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Sometimes I'm on the track on Saturdays or I'm doing some type of pool workout. George Quarcoo 07:36 It just never stops. Even when I'm at home and I'm resting, I'm still doing activations, rolling out, taking care of my body. Ariel Tozman 07:46 Since 2015, George has represented Canada in several international competitions and interacted with his fair share of journalists. Ariel Tozman So our podcast examines people's experiences being in the news. So I'm wondering, what was it like interacting with reporters during the games? George Quarcoo 08:07 Yeah, it's been interesting, because I think George Quarcoo 08:10 a lot of journalists that I have encountered were more so interested in, George Quarcoo 08:16 you know, my disability and not what I am. You know, what I'm doing as a person. You know, journalists will ask me, Well, you can't see, how do you run, and how do you run so fast? And you know, rather than actually what takes, what it takes to be an athlete, right? I was, I was interviewed by another journalist about DJing, and it was more so George Quarcoo 08:41 focused on my George Quarcoo 08:44 Yeah, how do you how do you see to do this? How do you see to do that, like, rather than, George Quarcoo 08:49 you know, focusing on the talent itself, right? Ariel Tozman So this moment was kind of meta for me. Ariel Tozman 08:57 I approached George specifically because he has a disability, because I wanted to hear that perspective, and he's telling me, the problem is that journalists focus on that too much. George Quarcoo 09:12 I mean, I don't refer to myself as disabled. I just say I'm a person living with sight loss, because the end of day, that's just visually impaired, right? I have sight loss. So I refer to myself as person with sight loss. Ariel Tozman George got me thinking about assumptions I didn't even know I was making. I was looking for a different perspective, and that's what I found. Ariel Tozman 09:36 It made me want to hear more about how others see themselves, represented or misrepresented. Amanda Shekarchi 10:00 About it like, or like, blind girl does my makeup. Ariel Tozman Amanda Shekarchi is an audio producer, radio host and singer songwriter with perfect pitch. After George told me he doesn't see himself as disabled, I didn't want to make any assumptions about Amanda, so I just asked, Amanda Shekarchi 10:19 I'm totally cool with you saying that I'm blind, like, that's totally cool with me. I'm also fine with like you using kind of disability or disabled like, I have no, no issue with that. Amanda Shekarchi 10:34 I always loved music. Like, whenever there was a piano, I would always play it. Amanda Shekarchi 10:41 Also when I was little, like, my parents would play a lot of music around me, like classical music and other stuff that they liked, and I just remember, like, sitting at the piano, and it just clicked with me, like learning the basic notes. I just kind of knew what they should sound like based off what I was being taught Ariel Tozman Right now, Amanda is working on a podcast that spotlights the stories of people with disabilities in the arts. It's called common threads. Amanda Shekarchi So we have Dave Brown, who is a huge mentor of mine, is a blind on air presenter for like, over a decade, Dave Brown Dave Brown here in my makeup chair with my makeup artist, April, maybe even with the makeup being applied to me. You might think that I'd be a diva Brown. Amanda Shekarchi He talks about his path to radio and television and what it takes for blind people, you know, to make it in the media. We also have playwrights, Vivian Chong and Landon Krantz. So Vivian is a multidisciplinary artist, Potter, musician and playwright, and she's blind and she's been in a couple productions, one of them she Amanda Shekarchi 11:57 starred and also produced herself, called blind dates, which essentially is about how blind people make connections and find, you know, go go into the venture into the dating world. Another, okay, so another question I have. What do you want journalists to know? Go right to the source. You know, talk to us in general. Sometimes people think that like everyone with a certain disability has the same experiences when often we you know, we may have the same disability, but you know, all of our experiences are different. Ariel Tozman That's exactly what Michelle advises. In fact, she helps spell that out in the Canadian Press style guide. Michelle McQuigge I was very privileged to be able to rewrite the disability section, and I did have to wind up literally writing right there in the style guide. Ask your subjects what their preference is and proceed accordingly. Michelle McQuigge 12:53 It's very interesting to see that this sort of question, which is honestly part of the fundamentals of good journalism, to ask people's preferences and age and pronouns and all that, but that's been being missed a lot of the time. Ariel Tozman That's what I've come to realize. Part of good journalism is all about respecting people's preferences. Transparency is also key. So after talking to George and hearing how he'd like his story to be represented. I needed to tell him something. Ariel Tozman So, to be fully transparent. I did contact you at first, like, this has been a learning process for me too, but because I wanted to amplify the perspective of people with vision loss. So I'm wondering, given everything we've talked about, how do you feel about that? And be honest. George Quarcoo I wish everybody would be like, you know, you, you know where you were interested in my story. Me as a athlete, as a DJ, whatever, you know. I mean, rather than, Oh, man, he's blind and he's doing all of these things. And, yeah, I mean, how does that? How does that make you feel when you have an encounter like that? It's like diminishing my my talent, my ability to do things. You know, I'm saying, George Quarcoo 14:12 right? People don't see George Quarcoo 14:17 people don't see my me for who I am first is they see my disability first, if that makes sense. So it's like it makes me feel, George Quarcoo 14:28 you know, some type of way about it. Ariel Tozman Hearing this made me slow down. I realized I needed to focus this episode on his music. George Quarcoo I see it as my it's my superpower, George Quarcoo 14:41 to be honest with you, I just see it as is my superpower. Like a lot of people may see things, but I hear things better, right? And if I translate that into like, DJing, like I again, I, I rarely, you know, use my laptop. Off screen, right? George Quarcoo 15:02 DJs are always looking at their laptop screen, like looking at different songs, BPM, so on and so forth. But I just have a bunch of music in my head, and I can just tell you what will work with what so I could be playing. And I just pull out the song and I'm like, yo, this will work with it. And I just dropped in, into my mix. Ariel Tozman He got the chance to show off that superpower in Brazil. One of his favorite DJs was hosting an event. George Quarcoo 15:29 Ask him if I can DJ, and he's like, yeah, come on up. You know, like the whole dance floor was packed, you George Quarcoo 15:40 it. George Quarcoo 15:44 I was only supposed to play for 15 minutes. I ended up playing for about three hours. Ariel Tozman 15:50 This led to more opportunities. Once he got back to Toronto, George Quarcoo 15:54 he's like, Yo, I want you to be kind of like the main DJ for my events, yeah, like, I've, like I said, I've faced a lot of no's, but at the same time, that one yes is the one that always opens up the door, right? I was very grateful that he gave me that opportunity for others to see that I'm a good DJ. Before leaving, I had one more question to ask George, but I'm wondering, like, what would you want early career journalists like me and my team to know or think about as we start our careers? Yeah, just George Quarcoo 16:33 listen to this podcast. George Quarcoo 16:36 Follow Ariel's footsteps., Ariel Tozman 16:42 George was very patient with me, but he does have a serious message for us journalists. George Quarcoo I would love for you know you know journalists and you know anybody you know George Quarcoo 16:59 pursuing journalism George Quarcoo 17:02 to, you know, to see that superpower in in a broader sense, right? Amanda Shekarch 17:14 So, there's a way to incorporate it where it's like, you know, it doesn't like, it fits in with the story, but it's not there to check off a box. You know, you're looking at a piece with someone with a disability, like it's it's going to come up. It's part of my story, but it's the way that you kind of tell it that, like, really makes the difference. George Quarcoo 17:33 It doesn't define me. My vision period doesn't define me. It's what I'm able to do with it. Mariam Kourabi 17:41 We Met U When is a production by journalism students at Toronto Metropolitan University. This episode was narrated by Ariel Tozman. It was produced by Ariel Tozman and Sonia Goloubev. Thank you to our Community Advisor, Michelle McQuigge, CEO of balance for Blind Adults. Shari Okeke is our executive producer and professor. Steph Colbourn , CEO of editaudio is our story editor. Leo Dias is our senior producer and teaching assistant. Angela Glover is our audio specialist. Our theme music was composed and performed by Eric Kroda. New logo design by Victoria Learn. Web design by Lindsay Hannah and Victoria Learn. And special thanks to the Center for Excellence in learning and teaching at TMU for supporting Season Four with a Learning and Teaching grant. I'm your host. Mariam Kourabi. Thanks for listening.