Hello, fellow readers.

I’m Thérèse Jeanne Grant.  T.J. for short. 

My bio? In a nutshell, I’m married. Three kids. An elementary teacher by profession. French Canadian by birth. And I love to write. That’s about it. Now, if you care to know more about me (I can't imagine anyone would) read on and try to keep up.

THE VILLAGE OF ST. MAGLOIRE   

My parents were born and raised in St. Magloire, a village in rural Quebec. St. Mag became the backdrop for my fictional historical saga. From 1910 to the early 1970s, many French families left Quebec to migrate to other provinces. Many migrants came to Welland, Ontario where they clustered in what would later be known as “French Town”.  Why do I mention Welland's French Town? Because that's where my siblings and I were born and raised.

SKELETONS     

When I started asking questions about my French lineage, it wasn’t easy to get to the nitty-gritty. Some things people had simply forgotten or just wanted to forget. With stubborn determination, I kept digging. Bit by painful bit, I accumulated some juicy stuff from both sides of my family tree. I unearthed long-forgotten tales and quite a few skeletons in the closet, some of which I happily weaved into my 4-book series. Some stories are true to life while others stem from my terribly vivid imagination. Which is which? I’ll never tell. Now I feel in a rambling mood so you best quit while you’re ahead. Fair warning.

BOOTLEGGERS, STEEL MILLS & LE COTON     

My father was just a young adolescent when his family moved to Welland. His paternal grandparents sold homemade hooch all over French Town and made a pretty penny, especially on Sundays when all the taverns were closed. I have to admit that it makes for some interesting storytelling. On the flip side, there’s a missionary, priests, and a gaggle of nuns somewhere in my lineage so that evens the scales as far as I'm concerned. Like most kids in that generation, my dad never finished grade school and worked at one of the steel mills until retirement. 

My mother never finished grade five. In her late teens, she ventured to Quebec City and worked as a domestic (the should be a book in itself!). And a few years later she moved to Welland to join her cousins. Like them, she worked at Wabasso Cotton Mill - or 'Le Coton' as they called it - until she met and married my dad. I worked at Le Coton for a while as did many of my fellow Frenchies.

FRENCH SCHOOLS     

There were so many Quebecers getting married and procreating in Welland that this predominantly English town eventually created a French school system to accommodate the hoards of French kids. Here’s a funny story. 

Before the French school system came into existence, French kids had no choice but to attend English schools. Being a French kid in an English school was not pleasant. My father got pummeled more than once in the schoolyard for being a Frenchy who couldn’t speak a lick of English. It was "that damn Frenchy" against "les têtes carrées" (square heads aka English kids). He evened the playing field by growing a few inches and learning a bit of English before beating the crap out of those bully boys. Thankfully, by the time his own kids were old enough to attend school, the French school system had been solidly established and my siblings and I were spared the cross-cultural bullying - at least when we were at school.

THE WELLAND CANAL   

I can’t speak for my siblings. But when I was a kid, I had no idea the Welland Canal was so famous. The canal went right through the centre of Welland. Back in the day, this blue-collar town offered very little in view of excitement. So whenever a big ship sailed through the canal, our two vertical lift bridges (better known to us townies as the Main Street Bridge and the Ontario Street Bridge) slowly - ever so slowly - rose and inevitably stopped traffic. My pa would curse and stop the engine of his beloved beat-up pick-up truck while my siblings and I yipped in pleasure and jumped out the back to line up at the railing to see the show up close. And what a show. The ship propelled itself through this narrow canal like a slow-moving steel behemoth. We’d wave at the men on deck and they’d wave back and the captain blew the horn as it passed under the lift-bridge. 

Years later on the other side of town, the St. Lawrence Seaway was built, the lift bridges stopped rising, and the Welland Canal became home to the International Flatwater Centre. Aside from the various regional water competitions, it also hosted the 2013 Pan American Games.

NIAGARA FALLS     

Welland is near Niagara Falls and its fame was also beyond my childish comprehension. In fact, the only time we bothered to visit the majestic falls was when our Quebec relatives came dow for visit. After a dozen such trips, I found it uneventful though I always went along. As I said, there was not much to do in Welland back in the day and we kids jumped at the chance to travel the sixteen miles to 'les chutes'. If we were lucky, maybe we'd get treated to an ice cream cone.

Just to keep things real, Welland eventually got a McDonald's, a mall, and … wait for it… a Cineplex movie theater where they still offer six movies at any one time for your viewing pleasure. Yep. Welland was very progressive.

MONTREAL & MARRIAGE     

After I graduated high school - École Secondaire Confédération - I moved to Montreal where I worked as a secretary for an English company. I don’t know why they hired me because my English skills were atrocious back then.

I moved back to my hometown where I met my husband who couldn’t speak a lick of French – he still can’t and I suspect he did this on purpose so he'd have a good excuse not to speak to his mother-in-law, sneaky devil that he is.  My non-French-speaking friends (including my husband) never could pronounce my name so they started calling me Teresa, Treese, Terry, T.J., honey, hey you, anything but Thérèse. I was OK with that. Anything was better than listening to them mangle my real name.

STORIES OF DAYS GONE BY     

I grew up hearing plenty of stories on how it was like living in rural Québec during the first half of the 20th century. I can't imagine what it was like to raise a dozen or more kids in a farmhouse without electricity or any plumbing to speak of. In my grandma's time, most homes did not have a kitchen pump and made do with a water well and bucket. We all know this in theory but think about it… a dozen kids with no inside toilet or kitchen pump??!! Madness I say! Madness! Imagine having to haul well water in winter - not to mention doing laundry for their large family. Yikes!! No matter the season, this water had to get boiled on the wood stove before any real work got done. By "real work" I mean bending over a scrub board. Women made lye soap, candles, butter, bread. Man, those were the days. Many have romanticized that era. Not me. I'd still rather check the thermostat, flush the toilet, turn on the automatic washer, and make a quick stop at Superstore any day of the week. ​Are you bored yet?   

MOTHERHOOD, THEN & NOW     

I will never forget the day I happily announced that I was expecting my third baby. My mother said and I quote – "Oh non!  Pas encore!” (Oh, no!  Not again!)

I didn't understand her reaction to my happy news and it stung. Why was she not happy for me? My life was perfect. My husband was a GM toolmaker who made a good wage with plenty of overtime. I was a stay-at-home mom living in a big house with all the fixings: three cars, an electric washer, dryer, disposable diapers, and even a microwave - a handy kitchen appliance that no housewife should do without. I couldn't understand my mother's trepidation. But I figured it out eventually.      ​

My mother and her numerous siblings had it rough growing up - not that they knew any better. My mother was the second oldest daughter in a family of - hold on to your hats - 20 kids. Like other farm kid, she left school to help with house chores and tend to the youngest children. I’m not making this up. My grandmother birthed 20 children and raised her larger-than-average brood of children in a two-level 1,600 square foot home with no electricity or plumbing - not even a kitchen pump.  My grandfather and his sons cut down trees for firewood to heat the wood stove that kept the house warm during the long 7-month winter. They slept 3, 4, sometimes 5 to a bed. And they didn’t sleep on fancy mattresses either. They had straw pallets that eventually flattened and turned to dusk and had to get emptied and refilled every harvest season. Can you imagine the allergies? And what about those bed-wetters? With 20 kids, there had to be a few. Tugs at the brain a bit, don't it? I don’t know about you but it’s hard for this modern-day city gal to get her head around all that misery.

Yes, my mother's upbringing was harsh. And although she raised her own six kids in a house with electricity, heat, a flushing toilet, and a wringer-washer (any of you remember getting your fingers caught in those infamous double-wringers?) my dear maman grew up with a strong work ethic beat into her. Even after she moved to “the big city” she continued to work from sunup to sundown and then some.

In the evening, she’d rarely sit down to look at TV with us (what joy the B&W TV brought to us kids… even if it was all English shows that none of us could understand, at least not at first). Nor did I ever see my mother take the time to read a novel or visit friends on a weekday because, with "only" six kids, there was always too much to do and no time to waste. After we were tucked in for the night, we’d hear her heels clicking all over the house, doing chores that had to get done before she retired for the night. Women like her sewed, canned, gardened, and were the original recyclers - never throwing anything away, always finding ways to reuse old clothes, rags, etc.  Something broke? No problem. Dad would head to his garage and fix it in a jiffy. Tossing out an old pair of shoes was unthinkable. The shoe cobbler two blocks away was busy busy busy and 25 cents got us a new pair of leather soles. Mothers were industrious, penny-pinching housewives. And like her mother before her, my dear maman was devoted to her family, and her selfless sacrificial worldview was as natural to her as breathing. ​

Having said all that, why was my mother so discouraged for me when I told her I was expecting my third baby? Because she thought that I could do no less but adopt that same 'selfless sacrificial worldview' as hers. And one more kid meant that much more work.

Uh, nope.

Though I had plenty of respect for my mother, she needn't have worried. I love my family but modern living has changed the meaning of family and our general work ethic. That said, compare to my dear maman, I’m a lazy slug.

My life as a modern wife and mother was very different from my mother's. I had plenty of downtime to read, go on date nights with hubby, long hikes with the kids, or drive them to sports activities with a large double-double ready to cheer them on and chat with other like-minded parents. Now that I’m an empty nester, I toss in a load of laundry in my automatic washer and turn on my Roomba.  I sometimes head to Starbucks for a coffee, relax with my iPhone or iPad to Facebook or text my sisters and friends. "I have learned to enjoy leisure activities without the burden of guilt," she says while enjoying her Toffeedoodle cookie and caramel frappuccino while reading another E-book.  

Unlike my mother, I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to milk the cows, or feed the wood stove to cook three meals a day for 22 people or bake a batch of bread every two days, haul in well water or bend over a scrub-board for hours at a time. I never had to cut down wheat with a sickle in a hundred-degree weather, or slaughter and pluck chickens for the Sunday meal (ya, my puny 90-lb-mother did all that).  Nor have I ever had to empty a chamber pot or crap outside in the field or near the manure heap (thank God).  As a wife and mother, I never EVER needed to plant an acre vegetable garden or can 200 jars of vegetables and fruit for a winter store (though my sisters and I helped my mother do this loads of times).  My mother could have bought that stuff at the grocery store but she never did... at least not until she was in her mid 70's. She just turned 92.  Tough ol' gal and the best mom in the world

A WRITER IS BORN     

I haven’t been a complete slug. Once my kids were in school, I went to university to get my B.A then my B.Ed. For years, my house was in a perpetual state of disorder (thank God my mother lived miles away!) as I hit the books and wrote essay after essay in both French and English (being married to an Anglophone had its advantages and my English skills had improved quite a bit by then).  While in university, I discovered I could write a half-decent story. 

FAMILY TRIPS TO QUEBEC     

The St. Magloire stories I heard growing up made a real impression on me. So much so that one day I decided to put all those tales to pen and paper.  One story led to one book which led to an entire series.  Although the storyline and characters are fictional, I have tried to keep the cultural integrity of the early 1900s. Mind you, I'm no historian. But I have had long discussions with my mother and other French relations.

As a child, my family traveled to Quebec, eight in a car sans safety belts.  Two kids in front with my parents, my father chain-smoking, my mother navigating with a big-ass road map in hand, and four kids squeezed into the back seat. We could have made the trip from Welland to St. Magloire in one day but we never did. Day one, first stop: Valleyfield to visit my Godparents, Oncle Martin, Tante Jeanne and their two kids.  Day two, second stop: Laval to visit Oncle Jean-Louis, Tante Yvette and their family. Then - oh, joy! - on the third day we'd finally arrive in St. Magloire. 

I was still a child when my grandparents sold the farm to move to a smaller house in the center St. Mag. When we came down for a visit, the men often yakked on the porch chugging cold beers while the women stayed indoors to gossip over tea.

I remember my grand-maman Elzire (it's no fluke that the series' heroin is named Elzira!) sitting in her rocker with a blanket over her lap to keep her fragile legs warm while surrounded by the women who loved her. She enjoyed listening to the others talk about their children, the latest family news and hullabaloos.  Now that her children were grown up and her days were her own, this old woman had plenty to say and when she opened her mouth, everyone hushed up and listened. She was soft-spoken but the stories she told were often wondrous tales of days gone by.  

It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how incredibly fortunate I was to have had the opportunity to literally sit at her feet. Those visits were precious to me.  And her stories, priceless. It was indeed a privilege.

Fast forward many years later. Though separated by a vast distance, I often phoned my mother with new questions at the ready, questions about her childhood in St. Magloire. A few times she refused to answer or elaborate, so painful were the memories. But I'd get to the bottom of it eventually. My dad also contributed: he once explained how to bleed a pig and why they had eaten so much blood sausages. 

All those stories impacted me.  So much so that one day I started writing a book.  Than two.  Then… 

My four-book series is entirely fictitious, although I must admit that I had loads of fun weaving many of those true-to-life stories into the storylines. If you pay close attention, you may come across a few of those long-buried skeletons that I mentioned earlier.

To wrap this up, I am married to David Angus, and we have three wonderful children and three lovely grandchildren.​ My husband and I love to travel. We've seen a Fuji mountain sunset, walked the Great Wall of China, strolled through the Forbidden City, and enjoyed the wondrous island of Maui. But home is where the heart is, and we now call British Columbia home sweet home. I still visit St. Magloire from time to time. And if some of you have relatives in St. Mag, St. Camille, or anywhere in the county of Bellechasse, there’s a good chance we're related *wink*

Until then, dear readers, remember.  Life is short.  So live, laugh, and love my friends.  ​.