In 1953, we left our one-bedroom basement apartment on 7th Street in Toronto to live in the small town of Tottenham, Ontario. We moved into a three-bedroom flat above a hardware store. There was no central heat or hot water, but I thought it was a palace, compared to the tiny apartment we had left. The centre of activity was the huge kitchen, where a massive Finlay wood stove kept us warm in the winter months. Pale green cabinets sprawled along the opposite wall. They came to an end at the four-burner Frigidaire range. Every week, my mother would get down on her hands and knees and apply a coat of Johnson’s paste wax onto the green-and-white checkered linoleum floor. When we arrived home from school, my brother Stephen and I would delight in wrapping old rags on our feet and “skate” all over the floor, bringing it to a glossy sheen. This was my mother’s Tom Sawyer act, and it worked every time. I have fond childhood memories of this time. (more…)

From We Were Not Spoiled, the memoir of Lucille Verreault Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. Lucille Verreault LedouxSummer of 1945 We left Lewiston and our wedding guests to travel to Albert’s base in Syracuse, New York, at 1:30. Since it was still summer and the sun was out late, we saw much beautiful country as we rolled though Massachusetts and New York. When we arrived in Syracuse, it was dark. We did not have reservations for the night, so we went to the Yates Hotel downtown not far from the station. The Yates was a big hotel, and they did have a (more…)

Memoir Network Coaching Client Ingrid Littmann-Tai Writes of The Emperor’s New Clothes I congratulate a writer I have been coaching, Ingrid Littmann-Tai, as she has had one of her stories published in The Globe and Mail. Enjoy her story of an outing with her children in Paris. At the Theatre, We Discovered the Emperor’s New Clothes “This is boring, maman,” my 11-year-old daughter said 15 minutes into the play. On my other side, my eight-year-old was already yawning, her little head leaning against my shoulder, eyelids slowly closing. In this production of The Emperor’s New Clothes there was no dialogue and (more…)

From We Were Not Spoiled, the memoir of Lucille Verreault Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. While my parents were immigrants to the US, they had not really come to be immigrants. My father’s health had been affected by the tiny, deadly filaments called asbestos dust in his hometown of Thetford Mines, Québec. Thetford was an important mining town—that’s how it got the “Mines” in its name—and beneath its streets were many tunnels into which men went down night and day to bring the asbestos filaments up to the ground surface. This process produced a lot of slag, and that slag was (more…)

It was the summer the city burned. The weather was dry and hot, but the real tinder was a mixture of frustration and anger, white and black, promises and demands. It was not a day when I though the sparks of young love would ignite. If I paused to consider these things, the pause was imperceptible. I stood at the edge of the pool contemplating whether to jump or dive, and finally, with one motion, I flung my body into an arc and parted the water with my outstretched hands. The water, bubbling from a nearby spring, was cold, shockingly (more…)

Lucille Verreault Ledoux From We Were n Not Spoiled / A Franco-American Memoir the life of Lucille Verreault Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. The Importance of education was not always accepted. As I was finishing my sophomore year in June of 1937, Robert was graduating from Holy Family School. As when I graduated, my parents did nothing special to mark the occasion. Unlike me, he had never liked school and had often been made to stay after classes were over for the day either to do extra school work or to be disciplined. That summer, he got a job (more…)

Making consistent use of your marketing pipeline has to be a paramount focus if you are to succeed as a memoir professional. When people contact you as a result of your general outreach, they enter your pipeline. Some people who enter your pipeline only want general info while others are ready to hire help for their memoir project. In a nutshell, these are your suspects and prospects. Suspects are far from ready to buy. Let’s look at three different sorts of suspects. Some suspects come to you wanting information about the feasibility of a memoir project and about you as (more…)

In this grandmother story, I look back on the life of my mother’s mother.

“Look at this,” my grandmother said. “Not a tooth broken.”

We kids looked at the comb. We were not impressed. This grandmother story had to offer more!

“I made this when I was 8 years old.”

I looked again. Now I was impressed. I was 8 years old, and I had no idea how to make a comb. This one was big, maybe eight inches long, thick and creamy white. Indeed, not a tooth was broken. It looked nothing like the flimsy black plastic one my father carried in his pocket. My grandmother kept this one in the top drawer of her dresser with her small assortment of jewelry. This grandmother story impressed me for sure. (more…)

The usual person gets four natural grandparents. Naturally, I got five. Or six. And for this Depression story, they were all in one body.

Both of my father’s parents passed away before I was born, victims of his absence during World War II as he fought the Germans on their own soil. My mother’s father died when I was six months old, a coincidence I believe, or so I have been told. (more…)

Childhood Memories: The Price of Happiness

By Gillian Hewitt

In 1953, we left our one-bedroom basement apartment on 7th Street in New Toronto to live in the small town of Tottenham, Ontario. We moved into a three-bedroom flat above a hardware store. There was no central heat or hot water, but I thought it was a palace… (more…)

The First Months of My Marriage

By Denis Ledoux

e left Lewiston and our wedding guests to travel to Albert’s base in Syracuse, New York, at 1:30. Since it was still summer… (more…)

Emperor’s New Clothes: Memoir Network Coaching Client Gets Published

By Ingrid Littman-Tai

“This is boring, maman,” my 11-year-old daughter said 15 minutes into the play. On my other side, my eight-year-old was already yawning, her little head leaning against my shoulder, eyelids slowly closing… (more…)

The Story of Why My Parents Came Down

By Denis Ledoux

While my parents were immigrants to the US, they had not really come to be immigrants. My father’s health had been affected by the tiny, deadly filaments called asbestos dust in his hometown… (more…)

Lightning or When Young Love Strikes

By Christine Terp Madsen

It was the summer the city burned. The weather was dry and hot, but the real tinder was a mixture of frustration and anger, white and black, promises and demands. If I paused to consider these things, the pause was imperceptible. I stood at the edge of the pool contemplating… (more…)