Venerari archives

I was born in Kingston and was brought up Roman Catholic. I went to a separate school board school and had a sheltered upbringing. On Sundays, I went to church, went to mass, and then went home. It was a day where you just did family things. I had a very comforting family life. When I turned 19, I went to Belleville Loyalist College. For the first year, I was in general education for being a social worker, and then I specialized in childhood and youth work at St. Lawrence Col

I got here roughly a year and a half ago. I was living in Summerland, and the CEO from the assisted living community I am at now came to a church I attended. He was telling us about this place, and it stuck in my head. Honestly, I was really bored where I was. Then, all of a sudden, I was given a notice to vacate by the people I was renting from. It came as a bit of a shock, and as I was thinking about where I was going to go, I remembered the place he mentioned and decided t

Growing up, it was just myself and my sister. We pretty much had our own friends in our youth, and we didn't interfere with each other. Back in those days, the parents pretty much told you what your career was going to be, and they didn’t want to waste money educating us because who would waste money on girls? You just didn’t at the time. There were some more liberal families that gave their daughters more direction and encouragement to move on educationally, but those were r

I was born in Taiwan, but I left when I was three. I did all my elementary school in South Korea, and when I was about to get into high school, my family moved from Korea to South America. Then I did my university studies in North America. As a child, I hated moving around so much because you lose all your friends and have to learn a new language, but later on, it became an asset. The world is becoming more globalized, so people want others who have experience with different

I’m 90 years old, almost a century. When I was a little one in Argentina, I lived with my mother. My father was working for the English railroad, and as a health chief in different places. But my father was from another generation, where education was very valuable. When Perón arrived in 1947 to power, in the first 24 to 48 hours, he said, “All the enterprises in Argentina are going to become nationalized.” People left. This is all to say so many factors produce change not on

In my childhood, I had one brother and three sisters. My dad and mom are both from Fiji, and we were born there too. It was like the story of the Mother Duckling: we were so young, so wherever our parents went, we just followed them. That’s how we ended up in Canada. According to my dad, we were actually supposed to go to New Zealand or Australia, but his younger brother was already here and said, “You’re going to leave me alone too?” So my dad changed his plans and decided t