FAMOUS CANADIANS:
FEMALE VOCALISTS:
This week, Tidbits looks at four dynamic Canadian female vocalists who’ve all hit the charts in a big way. • Ontario country singer Shania Twain began life as Eilleen Regina Edwards, and was raised in near poverty. She was adopted by stepfather Jerry Twain, a member of the Ojibwa tribe, and took on the first name of Shania, said to be a translation from that language as “I’m on my way.” She began singing in bars at age 8 to help the family make ends meet, wrote her first song at age 10, and appeared on CBS television at 13. From her humble beginnings, Twain has gone on to have sales of 85 million albums, has earned five Grammy Awards, and has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. • Although Ontario native Avril Lavigne is just 30 years old, she has already sold more than 30 million albums and 50 million singles. By age 16, she had already appeared on stage with Shania Twain, and had a $2 million recording contract in her pocket. She’s also a songwriter for other artists, having co-written the mega-hit “Breakaway” recorded by Kelly Clarkson. She has branched out into films, doing a voice-over for a character in the 2006 animated film Over the Hedge, and appeared in Fast Food Nation. She has two perfumes on department store shelves, and has launched her own clothing line, Abbey Dawn. Avril (whose name means April in French) gives back to the world through the foundation she founded that funds Easter Seals and Make-A-Wish, helping children and youth with serious illnesses.
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• Anne Murray paved the way for other female Canadian singers, as the first Canadian female to reach No. 1 on the U.S. charts. Her single “Snowbird” was one of North America’s most played songs of 1970, and earned her an American gold record, another first for a Canadian female. Born in Nova Scotia to a doctor father and a nurse mother, Anne began classical voice lessons at age 15, enduring a two-hour bus ride every Saturday. Yet she chose physical education as her major in college and taught P.E. at a Prince Edward Island high school for a year before giving it up to pursue her musical career. She’s had sales of more than 55 million records, won four Grammy Awards, 26 Juno Awards (Canadian music awards), and three CMA Awards. • Celine Dion is the best-selling Canadian artist of all time with record sales topping 200 million. The Quebec-born star got her start in her teens on French language albums. Her manager, who would later become her husband, mortgaged his house to finance her first record. Throughout the 1980s, she released a series of French albums, with her first English language album hitting North America in 1990. Those aren’t the only two languages she Dion can sing – she also sings in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. She’s known her husband/manager since she was 12, when her mother sent him a demo tape. They began a relationship seven years later when she was 19 and he was 45. They now have three children. Dion has won five Grammy Awards, including the ever-popular “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme from the movie Titanic.
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