For Vittoria Calabrese, a career change happened unexpectedly—and it all started with a friendship.
Ms. Calabrese has been a dedicated employee in the facilities of CIUSSS West-Central Montreal since 2009, starting in the kitchen at the Henri Bradet Residential Centre before making the transition to Housekeeping, where she spent nearly a decade.
She never imagined that one day, she would end up as a Braille Technician at the MAB site of the Lethbridge-Layton-Mackay Rehabilitation Centre, transcribing educational materials for visually impaired students.
Her story is a reminder that a career at our CIUSSS can be an evolving journey. Hers began while on the job in Housekeeping at the MAB site, where she crossed paths with Eleanor Diamond, a long-time and beloved colleague in the Braille Production Service.
“She liked to show you what she was working on,” Ms. Calabrese recalls of Ms. Diamond, who has since retired. “And somewhere between those conversations about the machines, the students, the purpose behind it all… something clicked.
“I saw what they were doing, and I thought, ‘I want to volunteer here.’”
So she did. After finishing her housekeeping shifts, Ms. Calabrese would head to the Braille Department in the afternoon. She started to learn how to feed material through machines to produce tactile text and diagrams, learning the rhythm of the department. The more she saw, the more she wanted to learn.
Volunteering quietly turned into something bigger. Ms. Calabrese enrolled in a year-long online braille transcription course through the CNIB Foundation, a non-profit organization. Building her knowledge from the ground up, she learned the full braille alphabet, punctuation and specific codes. At the end of the year, she faced a certification exam that required a score of 90 per cent or higher to pass. She got a 97.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Braille technicians are a rare breed in Quebec. Only three centres in the province offer the service, and CIUSSS West-Central Montreal is the only healthcare institution operating in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, specifically to serve the anglophone population in Montreal and the surrounding areas.
For Ms. Calabrese, the impact of that work is clear.
“If we weren’t doing this, the students wouldn’t be able to read or learn in the same way.”
Vittoria Calabrese
When a part-time position opened in the Braille Production Service, Ms. Calabrese approached Program Manager Stéphanie Desjardins about applying. For Ms. Desjardins, the decision to bring Ms. Calabrese onto the team wasn’t a difficult one.
“She had the interest, she put in her personal time, she started the course on her own time and paid for it herself,” Ms. Desjardins says. “I knew the course was very hard and long and needed effort. So if she was willing to put in the effort, it was worth giving her the chance.”
Every week, Ms. Calabrese and colleague Emilia Milheiro work through requests to produce braille versions of tests, reading books and textbooks for young students. Team members carefully transcribes, proofreads one another’s work and ensures everything is ready before teachers pick up the material.
From the kitchen to a production service where she gives blind and visually impaired students the tools to read, learn and thrive, Ms. Calabrese is proof that reinvention is always possible at our CIUSSS.
Despite her achievement, Ms. Calabrese admits that fear almost held her back. “I was really taking a chance, and I don’t like taking chances,” she says. “I was so scared.” But she went for it anyway.
Her advice to others considering a career change in the CIUSSS? “If you have that feeling, go for it.”
