Véronique Bergeron, by herself.

Véronique started writing and illustrating stories in elementary school when she discovered her father's typewriter. Elementary school was not kind to this quiet introspective child: she became the bane of her teachers' existence by learning to read before it was permitted. While everyone was learning vowels, Véronique was reading books by Sophie Comtesse de Segur and learning what fate awaited young girls with unbridled imaginations and a lazy streak. This was in the late '70s in the Province of Quebec where the biggest classroom management issue was precocious readers.

Fast-forward to high school and Véronique is excelling in French, learning English by reading Agatha Christie and failing in math and science. A slow STEM death by a million unanswered questions: "If you were listening, they said, you wouldn't have questions." Véronique graduated high school in 1991 with a diploma, a repressed creativity, and the certainty that she was not as smart as people thought she was. She abandoned her dream of becoming a midwife and applied to Law School after acing the LSAT as a dare.

Law School conformed to the contours of her brain. For the first time, Véronique saw decent grades appear on her transcripts. To avoid taking Law School for granted {or maybe because she didn't know how babies were made?} Véronique got pregnant the following summer. And again the following summer. And again just before graduating. In a strange twist of fate, she learned as much about normal pregnancy and childbirth in Law School as most students do in Med School.

With her law degree in hand, Véronique decided to stay home to care for her three young children. She hung her diploma on a nondescript wall and carried on the anonymous life of the mother of many, adding one more twig to her fruitful family tree.

We are not sure if Véronique got bored by the quiet with 4 children or if she thought she could get a pee break by finding a real job but she applied for a Master's in Law with specialization in biomedical ethics while expecting her 5th child and got accepted on her due date. When her infant son was 5 months old, she started commuting from Ottawa to McGill University in Montreal to complete her Master's degree.

During her time at McGill, Véronique published two Scholarly Articles with Very Serious Titles, including My idea of natural childbirth is 'no make-up': {re-titled for publication The ethics of cesarean section on maternal request.} Her practicum were at the Montreal Children's Hospital neonatal intensive care unit and the Children Hospital of Eastern Ontario neonatal intensive care unit. Her thesis topic was informed consent in neonatal intensive care through the lens of legal pluralism. Or something.

After graduating, she lectured in bioethics at St-Paul's University in Ottawa and found work as a legislative assistant for a federal Member of Parliament, a job renowned for requiring no education whatsoever.

Véronique had her sixth child while working as a political staffer. Shortly before the Canadian election campaign of 2011, Véronique got pregnant with her seventh child and accepted a position as her boss's campaign manager because why the heck not. That's when the universe thought "Let's see what she does with that one!" and threw her a curve ball: in the thick the election campaign Véronique found out that she was expecting twins. Babies number 7 and 8 if you are still counting.

Véronique delivered a successful election campaign and won a pair of babies in 2011 {but was mostly noticed for paying more in childcare than she earned on the Hill}. In a spectacular feat of poor timing, Véronique was offered a bioethics consultant position for a healthcare institution in Montreal halfway through her twin pregnancy. She turned down this unique opportunity, fearing that her Master's degree would end-up being giant money cigar. To avoid being proven right, she started writing a novel based on the adjoining worlds of law and medicine since it worked so well for John Grisham. Véronique’s retirement plan is still based on writing a bestselling novel, selling the rights to Hollywood and living off residuals.

In 2000-something, and the year after that, {it's a bit of a blur thank goodness for journalists} Véronique was invited to participate in the Ottawa Human Library Project. In 2014 she gave birth to her 9th child {or so the papers tell her.}

While on bed rest hatching her twins in 2011, Véronique started her first personal blog Vie de Cirque (Circus Life), offering the no-nonsense perspective of a mother of many to a small but loyal readership. Vie de Cirque eventually morphed into Fearless Family Life, and morphed again into this newsletter. While her writing and ideas are often complimented, her Internet fame came from spending only $25 per kid on Christmas gifts in 2015 {but not for real}.

From 2018 to 2020, Véronique worked at Ottawa City Hall for a newly elected member of City Council, Glen Gower. While in Glen’s office, she published two well-received op-eds and was instrumental in helping Glen become a thoughtful and well-read politician on matters of planning and transit. Thanks to Twitter, her tenure in his office is only remembered for the revelation that two years after her departure, the two fell in love and moved in together, adding “political woman of intrigue” to Véronique’s resume and making her unemployable in her field. Consensual relationships between two adults who once worked together are a career-ending move for women in politics. As the Rick Chiarelli affair demonstrated, it is much safer to be a man and abuse your staff while everyone looks the other way.

Véronique's most spectacular failures include -- but are not limited to -- homeschooling her children, living in the country, marriage, and losing two jobs in 8 months in a tight labour market. She came within a tenth of a point of graduating summa cum laude and has never won a single writing competition, including the CBC Short Story Contest. She will likely remain anonymous, remembered by no one but her family as someone who tried, but not quite hard enough, to become a writer. The dog will remember her as the person who fed her. Until someone else does.

Veronique has 9 children — 5 girls and 4 boys — aged 27 all the way down to 9 and lives in Stittsville with her partner Glen. She is the author of two newsletters on Substack: Hey Véro! and Zoned Out. Choose wisely!

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Mother of 9 children, writer of many words. I have two newsletters on Substack. Choose wisely.