Doreen's Story:

Growing up in a small rural town of Newfoundland with a sick mother and an absent father, life had its challenges.  Most of my dad’s earnings would have to go to buy my mother’s medications and of course food for us 4 children.  My sister Gloria and I would share a bed while my two brothers shared a bedroom beside us.  My sister and I would get two new dresses a year – one for graduating from that grade and maybe something nice and frilly and flowery at Easter.  I remember my mother wearing shoes with holes. 

At the tender age of 9, my responsibility was to look after my baby brother Craig after school, changing diapers became one of my after school chores.  We had several baby sitters but none that could replace our mother who was in and out of hospitals for much of our pre-teen years.  At the age of 12, I was given the news that my mother had 6 months to live.  

Attending school up to grade 6 in that small rural town and then being bused to a town 7 miles away for junior and high school while trying hard to get good grades and make my parents happy wasn’t easy. Continuously hoping and praying my mother would get a physical healing and be able to stay at home with us even after I learned my mother would be having an ostomy.  After the surgery another chore was added to my responsibility that being helping my mother with cleaning and gluing the ostomy bag to her side.  I became a little nurse.  

After completing high school in 1971 I decided to leave home and go to Toronto to get a job.  My boyfriend (who later because my husband) sent me $100 from which I bought a plane ticket and a suitcase.  I had $5.00 left in my pocket. I was not quite 18 and every interview I went on  asked me straight up if I was 18.  Finally a fire sprinkler insurance company hired me and I started in a typist pool typing fire sprinkler reports. (Thankfully my mother had given me a brother typewriter for my 14th birthday).  

One week after my 18th birthday I married my high school sweetheart.  (Only he was not so sweet after all).  He started to drink and beat me and my life was one of ALFRED HITCHCOCK Movies. Yet I wanted children and so did he so we had a daughter in 1973 and a son in 1975.  In 1981, I learned my husband was and had been having the affair for one and half years.  I approached him on the subject and he laughed as he said, “I have finally been caught”.  

The years of beatings were signs that he was a different person behind closed doors and I was made to feel it was my fault.  I was one who believed in a brighter, better future.  I kept telling myself next week I will be a better mother, tomorrow I would be a better wife.  I had NO IDEA that it really wasn’t about me.  I asked, “Why did you bring a Christian Virgin Girl to Ontario and abuse her?”  Life would have been different if I had made a different choice. No one wants to see their marriage end in divorce.

In 1981 two months after we had purchased our Bramelea home and I had learned about the affair, I woke up to MY LAST BEATING – one where I was being strangled while my 5 and 7 year old children were trying to help me – my son on his daddy’s back hitting his head with a magazine rack and shouting, “Leave my mommy alone, leave my mommy alone! “ My little 7 year old daughter leafing through a phone book to call the police.  It was then that my husband released my throat and said he would get a knife instead – and he went to the kitchen.  That was the last thing I heard as I ran from my house that Saturday morning and into the rain outside.  My two little ducklings ran out behind me. 

My sister who lived in Toronto came to get me after I made a call.  We lived with her until he came there and broke the chain on her apt door. The police said it was domestic and they would not come when I called for help.  We escaped through her basement apartment window and got away in my car. 

We hid in Scarborough at my cousins for a week, then a friend took us in for a month and in October we lived in a tent.  Finally I decided to stop paying a mortgage on a house I could not live in and asked a realtor from church to sell the house. To do so she would have to get my husband and I together even though there was a “peace bond” against him.

By November 1st I had a three bedroom townhouse apartment for myself and the kids. It had old indoor-outdoor carpet which did not appeal to me but I visualized what I could do with it.  I ripped up all the old carpet, then sanded the floor underneath and varnished it. A little wallpaper and new furniture helped it feel like home.  I had nothing but my paycheque that Friday when I ran for my life in August and now in November we had a new home  Cont'd At Right...