Our now small family of four left England and flew to Canada for a new start....away from my grandfather but also leaving behind everything I had ever known and all my extended family, including my grandmother who I loved dearly.
As we touched down and dis boarded the plane I remember being struck by how big everything was...and the sky seemed to never end! Our first home was a cottage on Lake Erie, which suited me fine! It was right on the water and I swam everyday that I could. My parents made new friends and even they seemed big...larger than life! We were surrounded by nature and even a huge deer head hung on the wall over the fireplace and we used him as a drying rack for our unmentionables and bathing suits!
Not everything was rosy though. My sister and I were teased terribly for our English accents, and that made it hard at school. Even some of the teachers seemed to be unforgiving of our cultural differences, such as using the the term naught instead of zero, lorry instead of truck, and our English penmanship was vertical in nature which was also wrong! Canadians slanted their writing, so we were chastised for all these errors, and subsequently teased.
There was another thing that had followed me to Canada that had resulted from my abuse at the hands of my grandfather and that was sexualized behaviour, totally inappropriate for a girl of 8.
My parents not knowing what I had endured found this to be quite repugnant and I felt their disapproval but didn't quite understand it. I thought that I was "bad" and I suppose I was, but I was confused at the same time. Why was I different from other children my age? Why was I so out of place. I had no way of understanding that my experiences with my grandfather had changed me forever. I didn't think the same way as other kids my age and the older I got the more apparent that was.
Once, at school, after being teased relentlessly and pushed and shoved to the ground over and over again, I attacked my perpetrator, threw her to the ground one recess and proceeded to tear off her clothing and throw it over the fence! It must have been awful for her but I was so enraged that I lost control and that was my revenge...totally inappropriate and I paid a hard price for that! I was attacked even more after that, being thrown onto gravel and dragged, being chased on my bicycle and thrown off into the ditch and beaten. Their revenge was unrelenting and by the end of that year we moved to a different subdivision and a new school. A relief but new bullies were ready to take their place and they did so with gusto!
It took some years to settle in but I did and had "boyfriends" in grades 4 -8, but something else happened by the time I was 12 that changed the game again.
My grandparents had decided to emigrate to Canada as well, and their arrival resulted in a new round of abuse, and a new perspective on my relationships with my family.
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