In the spring of 2009, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) presented an opportunity to school boards across Canada to enter a contest to carry the 2010 Winter Olympic Torch. The contest guidelines were vague and open for interpretation. Applicants were invited to answer the question: How does your school or school program pledge to make Canada a better place? My colleagues and I decided to put the challenge of responding to the contest question to our students. Without hesitation, one of our grade 11 students with low vision took the lead and began gathering ideas and stories from her peers in the Toronto District School Board Vision Program about how they could make Canada a better place. She soon discovered and shared with us that many of the students in the Vision Program were already doing their part to improve Canada: students who are visually impaired volunteer in their local communities, contributing to society at large; they reach out to others in their integrated school settings to educate and share their experiences with sighted peers, improving their school environments; and they contribute regularly to the Vision Program's newsletter, sharing their stories and connecting to other visually impaired students in the school district, strengthening the bonds that exist within our own program community. No matter what activities our students were engaged in--whether they were attending braille clubs, learning Tamil dancing, participating in co-op placements, or volunteering--they were, by the very nature of showing up and participating in an integrated setting, advocating for the rights of students who are visually impaired. This interaction with the community at large, we argued, makes Canada a better place. Twelve students contributed to a package of essays, videos, and newsletter articles that were submitted in braille and print as the artifact representing their pledge to continue to make Canada a better place through providing education about and promoting understanding of people with visual impairments. The staff members at the RBC Torch Relay Contest agreed that our students were doing their part to improve Canada, and they selected our group to carry the torch December 17, 2009, in Markham, Ontario, during the Oshawa-to-Toronto leg of the journey. Canada is a large country, covering six time zones. Vancouver, the city where the 2010 Winter Olympics took place, is a five-hour flight from the Toronto area, where our school district is located, and it can seem very far away. …