Introduction

The year was 2006. I had recently gotten engaged, and my mother — Anne — actually lent me the money to buy the engagement ring. I paid her back. I picked the ring myself, and she thought it was perfect. I was 25 years old.

I had two much younger sisters, Megan and Sophie — 10 and 8 years old. My mother worked for the City of Saint John at the time. She was having problems at work with her boss. She felt she was being unfairly treated. She went up the chain, reached out to her boss’s superior — nothing. She contacted her union rep — still nothing. Eventually, she took a leave of absence. She couldn’t sleep, so her family doctor prescribed sleeping pills.

I can only imagine what she was going through. She had worked so hard to get where she was. She’d dropped out of school as a young single mom, fought her way through night school, and took course after course, year after year. And now it was all being taken from her. Everything — unjustly — and all the systems in place to protect her had failed.