Periodic proofreading
“I kept the diary of my adolescence over the moves and periods of life when we get rid of what accumulates in our drawers and our libraries. Being passionate about genealogy and history, I hesitated at different stages of my life to part with it, re-reading it periodically. It is the reflection of the woman I have become, of what forged me through the people and events that have furnished these seasons of discovery of oneself and of the other. For my 65e birthday in July, I’m thinking of getting rid of it in an intimate bonfire ritual on the banks of my river behind my house. I think he played his part and it’s probably time he shut up forever. You have revived the reflection to this effect and the feeling of happiness that the writing, reading and re-reading of this teenage diary gave me! »
Danielle Boudreau
Never boring memories
“I started writing my personal diary at 16, and continued until my mid-thirties, although less diligently in later years. I was writing this diary for my future children, and the vagaries of life meant that I became a mother very late, at 45 years old. My daughter will soon be 9 years old and I consider that she will have the maturity to read my diary in a horizon of 8 to 10 years. I kept all my notebooks in which I wrote my life, my loves, my disappointments. I happen to reread passages to remind me of certain episodes in my life, significant (for example: the Polytechnique massacre, which I witnessed when I was 20, a second-year student in chemical engineering at Poly), pathetic or insignificant, but never boring. »
Julie Vaillancourt, engineer and mom with a teen heart
A vital need
“I am now 72 years old and I have been writing for a long time. I wrote diaries at the age of 12-13 in 1963 when I was a boarder in a convent for nuns. I destroyed two, deeming them tasteless, and kept one, the first. It is one of ten magnificent notebooks that I have been writing for seven years now. They each have a different function: moods, memories, fictions, family stories, specific themes, etc. I hide them. My children and my grandchildren will find them when they empty my house. They will then discover their mother and grandmother in a very different light. I encourage all young people to write, it’s an outlet for sorrows, difficulties… It’s a reflective mirror that makes you think. For me, it is a vital need today, just like food. »
Suzanne Duquette
A habit that remains
“I have been writing my diary since the age of 9, I am 50. The first diary was that of the Nathalie Simard collection. At 9 years old (in 1982), I said that I ate spaghetti and that I had lost my mittens. I kept all my journals; this habit of self-writing has never left me, it’s the surest way I have to find myself. »
Sonia Pelletier
Save the life
“I will soon be 80 years old. I like to think that writing a diary saved my life. My existential anxiety having diminished for a few years, I haven’t been back for a long time. Several notebooks were filled with my tight handwriting, and my latest thoughts took the form of millions of bytes. I think I needed to write to contain or circumscribe my inner confusions. »
Richard Goulet
representative of life
“I have kept my diaries since 1979 (I was 12 years old). At first, the entries are quite short, but representative of my life. I have never stopped since, even if sometimes there were breaks of a few months. Even today, at 56, I write in my diary regularly. »
Nathalie Ebacher
Relive by rereading
“I have preciously kept only one diary of my youth, that of the year when I was 16 that I spent in Brazil on a student exchange with AFS International. I left home to do my 5e high school in February 1981 to return in January 1982, southern hemisphere and staggered school hours oblige… Before the era of the Internet, my only means of communication with my family in Quebec was the good old post office, when they were not on strike ! And the best way to keep a lasting memory of my last year of high school was to keep a journal. This diary has therefore collected my thoughts, my schedules, the recipes of my “Brazilian mother” who taught me to knit, to cook, and above all, with the help of other family members and classmates, to speak Portuguese, a language that I still use easily today, on the eve of my 60s. AFS was an unforgettable experience that I relive periodically by re-reading little bits of my diary, and I remember this year which forged part of who I have become. »
Pauline Jubinville