When I started to sing, my mother would have me engaged to perform at the Women's Christian Temperance Union national or annual meetings. I would hate doing this because I wanted to play baseball or go off skiing.

Making a living in the arts, though, creates so many jobs for other people.

I had a wonderful childhood, but I was a wanderer from year one.

It makes one a better person to have had hardships and to have overcome hardships and not to blame anybody else for your mistakes.

Another turn in my life happened when I took on the Canada Council.

I thought I should go to New York because it was the place to go to study. I went and tried to get an application from the Juilliard School but they wouldn't even give me one because I didn't have my high school graduation.

My mother was a wonderful, wonderful woman with a lovely voice who hated housework, hated cooking even more and loved her children. She was always arranging church activities such as a bazaar.