Hi! My name is Angèle. It’s pronounced like Danielle or Michelle, but with “An-gelle.”

I’ll be 74 in April.

I spent my career as an administrative assistant, first at Université de Moncton and later with the Federal Government. My husband also worked for the Federal Government for 35 years.

The past ten years have been challenging. In 2015, my husband suffered a cardiac arrest that lasted 40 minutes. I performed CPR with the guidance of a young woman on the 9-1-1 call, and when the paramedics arrived, they administered seven shocks before they finally got a faint heartbeat. He was rushed to the hospital, placed in an induced coma for two weeks, and spent three months recovering in the hospital. It was miraculous that he came back to us in fairly good health. (The doctors had warned me that I may have to place him in a nursing home.)

After a couple of years, his health went downhill again and he suffered with depression. He developed a cirrhosis of the liver, other organs started to shut down and we lost him in 2021.

Last May, my son underwent his sixth open-heart surgery. This has been an ongoing problem since he was a baby. He was born with a coarctation of the aorta and has faced many ups and downs—tests, interventions, and multiple surgeries—throughout his life.

This is why we’re both ready to “hit the road” and just enjoy life for as long as possible!

I’m a proud mother of two—my daughter, Monique, and my son, Martin. Between them, they’ve blessed me with five wonderful grandchildren: three girls and two boys. How time flies! My oldest granddaughter is 24, and the youngest is 17.

Martin, who will be traveling with me, is a pure creative with a huge heart. His health problems affected his outlook on life. First of all, he didn’t think he would live to be 30 so he focused on living day by day, never planning for the future. He’s impulsive.

His life was a bit of a roller-coaster ride, forever starting over after surgeries and recovery periods.

About 20 years ago, he opened his own business as an artist promoter. With no education in the field and no experience, he approached agents and brought to Moncton many well-known country and bluegrass artists, such as Merle Haggard, Travis Tritt, Ricky Skaggs, Pam Tillis, IIIrd Time Out and more. For the French community in Moncton, he brought in artists from Québec (Jean-Pierre Ferland, Claude Dubois and others) and the beloved Francis Cabrel from France. After fifteen years working with his partner Denis, they closed the company.

An anecdote I find interesting is in the very beginning, he placed a call to Nashville to speak with Dolly Parton’s agent. The secretary told him the agent wasn’t in but Miss Parton was. “Would you like to speak to her?” “Yes, of course, thank you” he replied. He was caught off guard!

Last spring, Martin underwent his 6th open-heart surgery. This time, for an aortic aneurysm. It was a complicated one because of all the scar tissue from previous interventions. His kidneys started to shut down during surgery and both the surgery and recovery took longer than expected. He spent over a week in intensive care and months recovering. He’s doing quite well now, although he still has pain in his ribs and suffers with tinnitus (ringing in the ears).

In December, he received a job offer from the Federal Government to which he had applied in the fall. For him, this meant that he would finally have some financial stability. In early January, he was advised that training was cancelled because of the instability of the Federal Government. Prime Minister Trudeau was stepping down and who knew what the future would hold as far as employment in the Federal Government. Martin was very disappointed. It wasn’t a dream job in the sense of fitting his personality but it was a stable one.

This is the point where he and I renewed our discussions about travel! I haven’t been out west and I want to go across Canada. I’d been pondering the sale of my house, so instead of going to an apartment right away, I’ll wait until we’re done traveling. In the meantime, we’ll put things in storage and get rid of a lot of stuff. Martin will focus on blogging and affiliate marketing.