Getting into a cab is a seemingly ordinary experience —but not for Kim Kilpatrick and her service dog Ginger while visiting Calgary from their home in Ottawa.
Kilpatrick said the taxi driver didn’t want Ginger to get in his vehicle.
“She’s a yellow Labrador. She’s three and a half. And she’s my fifth guide dog,” Kilpatrick told Global News. “She’s a great little dog. She’s a very serious, conscientious worker.”
Kilpatrick and Ginger are in Calgary performing Raising Stanley/Life with Tulia, a show about guide dogs at Lunchbox Theatre. She’s a visually-impaired storyteller and disability rights activist.
After a performance on Sunday, Kilpatrick ordered a ride from Calgary United Cabs via an app — something she’s done before without issue while visiting the city.
Stepping outside Calgary Tower, a sighted colleague saw the cab waited across the street, so Ginger guided Kilpatrick across and her colleague followed.
“As we got closer, (the driver) said, ‘No dogs in the car,’” Kilpatrick recalled. “And we both said, ‘This is illegal. You need to take the dog. This is a guide dog. This is a service dog.’
“He said, ‘You can put the dog in the trunk.’ We said, ‘No, absolutely not.’
“Then he said, ‘I don’t want any dog hair in my car.’”
She cancelled the cab — a cancellation that later showed as “unable to find” Kilpatrick — and got another taxi. But she was faced with more pushback from the dispatcher.
“The dispatcher told me I had to book a pet-friendly cab and not all drivers like dogs in their car,” Kilpatrick said.
“And I told him this is illegal, too. This is not right.”
Kilpatrick then called 311 to register a complaint into the city-regulated cab industry.
Proclaimed into law in 2009, Alberta’s Service Dogs Act enshrines the rights of people with disabilities who are accompanied by qualified service dogs to enter any location where the general public is allowed. There is similar municipal and federal legislation enshrining those rights.
Calgary United Cabs said Kilpatrick’s experience with their driver was “totally unfortunate” and the company has a zero tolerance policy for these types of incidents.
“The company suspended the driver immediately after receiving the credible information and (City of Calgary’s Vehicle for Hire office) imposed a $700 fine on him,” a Calgary United Cabs spokesperson said in a statement.
“Although the Livery allowed him to drive, the company extended the suspension for additional 12 hours and directed him to redo the necessary training in the office.”
The cab company said it sent out a message to its entire fleet that refusing a ride to service dogs would result in termination.
“We wish to meet Ms. Kilpatrick directly and extend our management’s support and apologies to her.”
The city’s vehicle for hire office said there is “no excuse” for refusing a guide dog.
“By not providing the service, you’re not following the Service Dogs Act and you are also potentially putting both the person and the service dog at risk, and nobody wants to see that,” a city spokesperson said.
City bylaws say any business that doesn’t allow a service dog could face a fine of $1,000, and cabs could be hit with a $700 penalty.
“We encourage anyone refused service to contact 311.”
Kilpatrick said Ginger gives her freedom to move around the world safely, and is a partner in her life.
Sandra Cramer with the B.C. and Alberta Guide Dogs has seen how service dogs help enable independence.
“A lot of times these people are just not able to navigate without that dog. So if they’re ever denied access anywhere, it makes that whole process even harder,” Cramer told Global News.
Kilpatrick, a former para-swimmer and current blind rights advocate, kept a bit of humour around the incident.
“It is a bit ironic that we’re doing a show about guide dogs and this happened, but I’m just glad that the city took it seriously.”
This isn’t the first time such an incident has happened in Alberta recently.
In late December, a woman who uses a wheelchair and a service dog and was stranded outside Rogers Place in downtown Edmonton when the taxi company she booked never showed.
Another woman told Global News she is filing a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission against a different taxi company, saying its drivers denied multiple rides to her and her service dog in Leduc, Alta. in December as well.
— With files from Phil Heidenreich, Global News