Shania Twain was born in Windsor Ontario Canada on the 28th August 1965. Then she was known as Eilleen Regina Edwards.Just a few years later her parents Clarence and Sharon were divorced. Sharon took the children up to north to Timmins Ontario where she would marry an Ojibwa (Native Canadian) by the name of Jerry Twain, he adopted Eilleen and her two sisters, Jill (the eldest child) and Carrie ann (the youngest). Soon after they married they had two more children, first Mark, then Darryl. The family grew up in relative poverty and Shania's mother Sharon was often depressed. Sometimes they would join the local native reservation to hunt for food, usually in the winter months when there was no work and no money coming in. They would often eat things that her friends and school mates wouldn't dream of eating. But if they didn't eat things like deer and partridge, they simply would have starved. And in redbook magazine in 1999 Shania talked about what it was like back then, ''Most kids feel inferior if they don't have the right jeans on, I was way beyond that. I was worried about what was in my lunch. Nobody knew we were hungry, and I did everything I could to hide it.'' Shania would often take bread with mustard on, just to make it appear that she had a lunch, terrified that the authorities would find out and take her away from her family.But throughout all this Shania's mother was determined to nurture her daughters obvious talent early on. When she was just 3 years old she remembers her mother putting her up on counter tops to sing. Then when she was just 8 years old she was performing her parents favorite country songs in old people's homes and bars (after hours when they had stopped serving liquer). Soon she was even appearing on TV shows. Behind all this was the support of her parents, who wanted her to succeed. Sharon was booking her in everywhere and Shania loved to sing, as her sister Carrie Ann once commented, ''Shania would always be singing, even just walking down the street. I'd be so embarrassed.'' From the age of 10 Shania was writing her own songs and dreaming of a much better life. When she was in her teens she had a job at mcdonalds after school, she worked on her dads reforestation business and at the age of 16 she played in her first band. A band named Longshot, ''We were pretty good actually, pretty dangerous for my home town and pretty popular.'' (FHM 1998) |
