Brother Broken



Alf Reads a Foreword Clarion Review...

Brother Broken is a powerful memoir about family love and the tragic impacts of mental illness and suicide.

Shared with humanity, dignity, and wit, Cecile Beaulieu’s memoir Brother Broken is about the devastation of mental illness and suicide, though it also recognizes the beauty of life and interpersonal relationships... to read more...




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   Brother Broken Photo taken at John's funeral May 1990:  Front row l to r, Pauline (Pauly), Mom, Dad, me (Céc) , with John's photo between Mom and Dad. Back row l to r, Mitch, Gerard (Gus), Roger (Rod), Denis Good morning Sunshine. I think it's time for you to meet the family. Dad was a WWII vet. He had served in the Royal Canadian Navy. After the war, he pedalled a bicycle four hundred miles north of his parents’ home in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan. He bought land and started a farm. Dad caught the eye of my mom with his drop-dead good looks. She was the cute little farm girl whose family lived nearby. She stole his heart, and they married in 1949. Marguerite and Jean were their names, but most people called them Margaret and John, the Anglicized version of their French names. They were French-Canadian Catholics, expected to populate with more French Catholics, so they started une famille . Their first-born was my sister, Pauly. After Pauly came Rod, Denis, John, m...
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  Brother Broken Meet the protagonists: Denis, John and Mitch.  Their stories begin in the 1950s and 60s, in a village, in Saskatchewan, somewhere north of normal. It's not one that's dark or depressing, it's a story of hope and gratitude, with a touch of ridiculous. Some parts are complicated, because there is nothing straightforward pertaining to broken. I remember my brothers with words, I share the story of their lives. l tell of what decent boys they were, what they meant to me, how their lives were ordinary and sound before all the trouble started happening. I write, so people will learn the goodness of my parents, the wholesomeness of my extended family, that my kin weren't lowbrow hicks, who screwed-up raising kids. Brother Broken Foreword  Clarion Review   https://www.brotherbroken.com/ Follow on:    
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  Brother Broken Here's Johnny! ... this goes waayyyy back, like 1963... I wasn’t allowed to follow John the day he started school. I wanted to go with him, but Mom held me back. I had a difficult time being left behind. Going to school was hard for John, too. The school was run by nuns, even though it was a public school. The nuns taught Grades 1 through 12, and attendance peaked at about 120 students. Most students were bussed in from the country, which meant John met new kids. School administrators had an ass-backwards way of staffing teachers. Grade 1 students should have a kid-friendly teacher, but that was not the way schools operated in Northern Saskatchewan. Perhaps it was done on purpose, to have the strictest nun initiate the new students—a sure-fire way to pre-establish order in the school room. John told me a bit about his first day of school. It sounded like he approached the classroom and lingered in the doorway. The teacher nun was waiting inside to greet all t...
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