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Shania Twain to host national CBC Radio program

Millionaire superstar tackles the issue of being a poor child

The Timmins Times
By Len Gillis
January 7, 2010

CBC Radio has confirmed that Shania Twain will be hosting the flagship morning news and current affairs program The Current. The national CBC program which usually tackles national and international issues has invited Twain to sit in the host chair on Friday, a spot normally reserved for other well-known journalists and interviewers. Twain will be promoting a new national children's' charity.

In an interview today to promote Friday's program, host Anna Maria Tremonti, outlined Twain's superstar musical accomplishments.

"There is another side to Shania Twain," said Tremonti. "On you are probably less familiar with. That is the side that really struck me," Tremonti said of a meeting with Twain last fall.

"It became clear she has deep empathy for underprivileged kids who all too often fall through the cracks," said Tremonti.

"Shania Twain's passion for helping kids in need has prompted her to start a charity called Shania Kids Can. She will be the exploring issues affecting underprivileged children when she hosts The Current tomorrow."

At that point Tremonti introduced Twain as her in-studio guest and Twain admitted it will be the first time she has hosted a radio program.

Twain admitted that she had difficulties in her childhood, that "she really never opened up.

"Well I have been involved a little bit over the years, especially through touring, with food banks, donating to food banks, raising money. I think I associated more publicly, or opened up a bit more publicly about being hungry at times as a kid. But really never went beyond that explaining really how I grew up, up north, and the other struggles that surrounded the whole situation. So it wasn't just about not having enough food, although that was often the big part of it." Twain explained.

She said the reason she decided the create the new charity is because she doesn't think other children should have to go what she went through.

WAS IT REALLY NECESSARY?

Twain said she has no doubt her parents loved her enormously and tried to do their best, but she wonders if things could have been different if she was raised today.

"This is a bit of a mystery that I am trying to unravel at this point now in my life, looking back and peeling back the layers and saying 'Okay, what happened?' Was it really necessary for us to go through all these lows, growing up?"

Twain said she suspects part of the situation might have been the fact her parents were too proud to accept handouts or welfare. She said her father Jerry Twain, who she described as very bright, talented and capable, was determined "not to be another native on welfare."

Twain said there are a lot of things she doesn't have answers to and she is not placing any blame, but her parents were working poor people who had to make hard choices for such things as which bills got paid. Sometimes it would be the phone bill, she said, other times it would be putting gas in the car or spending money at the Laundromat.

"It was just this endless chain of trying to get by all the time and live in a society of the'haves' when you're a 'have not'."

She recalled the difficulty of being a young person who felt humiliated by poverty.

"I would say that was the most difficult part of growing up poor," said Twain. "You were embarrassed by it. You were humiliated by the fact that you went to school , you know, maybe your clothes weren't clean, you hadn't been able to do the laundry yet; going to school without a lunch, or a makeshift lunch just to save face, you know, stale bread or you know whatever you could put in your bag, just to say you had a bag," Twain remembered.

"You instinctively try to protect yourself from being embarrassed and being identified as somebody who is poor or has less. You don't want to stand out in any way," she said.

The Current will be broadcast in Timmins on FM 96.1 tomorrow at 8:37 a.m. immediately following the Morning North program.

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