Venerari archives

I was born and raised in Digby, Nova Scotia. It was quiet. It was a small town with only about two thousand people there. We had one movie theatre and three churches, but it’s known around the world for Digby Scallops. I am the oldest of five, and I’m still close with my two sisters. We get together every summer to go to a cottage for a week. I then went to Halifax and trained as what was called a “certified public nurse.” When I moved to Toronto, it was changed to “registere

I was born in Timmins, Ontario, a city in Northern Ontario near Sault Ste. Marie. When I was three and a half years old, my mother contracted tuberculosis, and that broke up our whole family because in those days there was no cure for tuberculosis. When you had it, you went away to what was called a sanatorium, a place where everyone there had tuberculosis, as they thought it was contagious.

I grew up in Etobicoke in Ontario, and I lived in various places in the province before coming to Kingston. I had two brothers — 10 and 13 years older than me. They were good. One brother would pick on me sometimes, but that’s what brothers do. It’s funny because they didn’t realize that I was a lot faster than they were. He would try to catch me, and he did end up catching me, but the only reason was because I couldn’t stop laughing.

I grew up in England in an area where most of my mother’s family lived. I went to school with my cousins and we all went to the Catholic Church. I came to Canada when I was 10 years old with my parents on a ship. After the war, that was the least expensive way since Canada needed people to fill it up, so they would pay for half of your passage. Australia would pay for your whole passage, but my mother thought that it was too far. It was an absolute shock coming here since we

I was born in Mexico, one of 13 children. We were very poor, we had no food, nothing. We lived with our grandparents who had money, but they did not give us anything. My parents struggled to keep us alive and raise us.  Growing up in poverty shaped who I am. It taught me to appreciate everything and made me determined to give the best for my children because I do not want them to suffer. In university I didn’t have food or a place to stay, but I kept going because I am very a

I was born in 1961 in Kingston. We moved away briefly and then came back. When we returned, my dad didn’t have a job, so he went back to school, and my mom went to work in Ottawa, so we got to live with our grandparents in Quebec. My grandfather was a barber, and his shop was right attached to the living room, so we could see him at any time. When we came back to Kingston, we moved to Rideau Heights in Kingston, Ontario and I stayed there through university before moving to H