Humans of Burnaby

Building Community

"I’m Maori, a native of New Zealand and I was brought up in a very small village of about 200 people. The only other people around were nuns and priests. When the nuns called my house to tell my mom your daughter wants to become a nun. So my mom said “which daughter?”

They said my name and my mom said “She’ll never become a nun she’s too much of a tomboy” and that’s what I was (laughs).

When I was 15 I went to boarding school. The nuns used to say you have to walk like a lady no running, and no whistling. After, I went to Australia for 3 years and did my teachers training over there. I came back to New Zealand to start teaching. I taught preschool for 20 years. Then I decided I wanted to leave the convent and I came to Canada in 1984 as a nanny. I’ve always wanted to be a nanny.

My first job as a nanny was with a family of four children. The two older kids were first nation’s children who were adopted by a Canadian family. The first week when I went to go pick up the kids from the school and the other mothers were there waiting to pick up their children. And they knew this family had a new nanny but no one introduced themselves or talked to me.

Maybe it was about 2 or 3 weeks then I noticed there was another nanny. So I went up to her and I introduced myself and told her who I was looking after. And she said she was a friend of the family I look after. So then we got together every Friday and we would go down every weekend to the pub where we met a group of nannies. It was like nanny club, it was fun. The guys who came down to the pub would suddenly see this table of women, they were surprised. First, there was 7 of us nannies and it increased to 12. I felt I was able to build a community. I was actually ready to go home, I even booked my plane ticket but after I met the group I’m still here 34 years later."

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