Dorothy...

We lived in Burton when our kids were just little. It seemed they always wanted a note for something. I would have to go from Burton to Fredericton where my sister lived. She would write me a note. I saw many cold days, putting those little kids in the car to get a note for school. That always seemed to be one of the things that was hardest for me and I did not have the ability to write it. Because my sister was a director of nursing, I did not want to say things that my grammar would give away that I did not have an education. I was always trying to hide that fact.

Our daughter went to the unemployment office and saw the pamphlet about how to learn to read and write in the privacy of your own home. That very night I was able to sign up and Thelma Kolding, the coordinator, set me up with my tutor, a retired schoolteacher. My husband and I, we went together. My tutor, Margaret McGibbon, said she never had a student in all her teaching that was so eager to learn as I was. I was just like a sponge. If she and I could not meet, we would do our lessons on the phone. I learned to read because we took it slowly. I continued until I graduated.

At the storefront youth program, the teachers thought they were gonna teach me math. They did everything they could one day. When I left, the whole three of us were crying, because they tried so hard. I took them flowers and said, “Math is NOT my thing!”

I like to talk to people who can make a difference, like doctors and health professionals who have no idea. You know they’ve never cleaned their teeth with haemorrhoid cream or Brylcreem. I have done those things when I wasn’t able to read. Even to this day, I stay clear of yellow labels. If anybody ever needs to know what to do with consomme soup, ask me. I have bought that so many times for tomato soup because it looks like it. I’ve worked with groups out of Ottawa on packaging and labelling. I’d go as a learner and when they’d show me something and describe it, I would say, “No, I wouldn’t have any idea what that was.” I feel that I have made a difference in so many people’s lives. To me, the more I speak, it’s just more of a challenge. My career was telling people of the need of literacy (training). Thelma Kolding always says, “You have been our missionary.”

An excerpt from an interview with Dorothy Silver, Fredericton NB