Michelle S - Vancouver

I just got a card from my daughter today that said “However hard you try, you end up like your mother”. I now know at 61, that being more like my mom would actually not be such a bad thing. Yvette Lebel-Bourbeau passed away at 88 some 10 years ago now. Yvette was one of the most humble, gracious, generous people I have known.

She longed to be more educated, being the “chosen one” to stay home after grade 3 to cook and clean at 9 years of age for the other 11 members in the family. She taught her own 6 children the art of hard work and that nobody hands you anything on a platter….you work for what you want in life (yes, we are all workaholics). However, no amount of formal education could improve the values & behaviors that were just part of her persona. This was a woman who knew the difference between right and wrong and steadfastly stuck to her principles. She taught me to have a disdain for smoking (I concur), that you should only marry French-Catholic people (I didn’t listen), that spring cleaning is good for the soul (just getting that message now), that making grand-peres for dessert when there is nothing else around will thrill your visitors (amen), to keep the door open for anyone who wants to visit and that you stop to talk to them (no i-pods to interfere back then) and above all else, family is the most important part of your life (getting this message late in life I am afraid but none-the-less, getting it!). Merci maman for all the gifts you gave me and bonne fetes des meres!

From the baby of the family, Michelle

We've had an exciting year trying out all kinds of ways of telling our mothers' stories. After the successful Mother's Day show with 20 women gracing the Granville Island Stage, we were asked to create a distinct show for Western Gold Theatre, a company that specializes in programming for seniors (http://www.westerngoldtheatre.com/) Six of our more mature cast members developed a fuller telling of their mothers' stories for a 60 minute show that toured community centers around the Vancouver. Again the audiences (who ranged in age from 8 to 80) were moved and enchanted by our simple storytelling and went on to tell us their mothers' stories in return. We were so thankful for this opportunity to share, in a more intimate setting, our combined histories.

After the success of the 10 person show we created for the Vancouver Storytelling Festival (http://www.vancouverstorytelling.org/) in February 2009, we've been musing about what other ways we could tell our stories. For years people have been telling us they wished we had more performances of our shows so their friends and family could also enjoy them, and our actors have always been keen to tell their stories again. But the logistics of creating and financing an ongoing show with a cast of 20 has been too daunting. Still, the thought persists that there must be a way to get beyond these single performance shows we've been able to create for special audiences or occasions. We've also wondered what we might be able to create if we hired a director and designers and had rehearsals - oh the possibilities! We might even have a show that could run for weeks instead of days! And maybe we could encourage all kinds of people to write and tell their mothers' stories!

To that end, in the manner by which this whole project has continued to unfold, we just decided to make it happen. So we've applied for grants, have started to solicit sponsors, and will spend time in a rehearsal hall this spring 2010 with a director - Britt Small of Victoria's Atomic Vaudeville company (http://www.atomicvaudeville.com/) - creating a show that will feature 10 of our actors telling the stories you've come to appreciate from shows of the past, plus all the theatricality you'd expect from any big downtown show. Keep your eyes on this site for more details.

"It's all about creating the ground under your feet. It's kind of a process of self-invention, so that you're standing with your feet planted, you know who the hell you are, you know where the hell you came from, you know where the hell you're going." Michael Ignatieff in Globe and Mail April 18, 2009, on writing the truth about family.

How many ways can a life unfold?

In 2004 we began collecting the details of women's lives - just the facts: where and when she was born, to whom, and what happened next. We limited our experiment to 2000 words. And we started with the stories of our mothers lives. Wow! You wouldn't believe what came back. Check out Ultimate Stories.

This website is where you can add to the collection. Tell us about your mom: How did her life unfold? Submission details in Ultimate Challenge.