“I have kept the diary of my adolescence over the moves and periods of life when we get rid of what accumulates in our drawers and our libraries. Being passionate about genealogy and history, I hesitated at different stages of my life to part with it, rereading it periodically. It is the reflection of the woman I have become, of what forged me through the people and events that have furnished these seasons of discovery of oneself and of the other. For my 65th birthday in July, I’m thinking of getting rid of it in an intimate bonfire ritual by the river behind my house. I think he played his part and it’s probably time he shut up forever. You have revived the reflection to this effect and the feeling of happiness that I received from writing, reading and rereading this diary of adolescence! »
“I started writing my personal diary at 16, and continued until my mid-thirties, although less diligently in later years. I was writing this diary for my future children, and the vagaries of life meant that I became a mother very late, at 45 years old. My daughter will soon be 9 years old and I consider that she will have the maturity to read my diary in a horizon of 8 to 10 years. I kept all my notebooks in which I wrote my life, my loves, my disappointments. Sometimes I reread passages to remind me of certain episodes of my life, significant (for example: the Polytechnique massacre, which I witnessed when I was 20, a second-year student in chemical engineering at Poly), pathetic or insignificant, but never boring. »
“I am now 72 years old and I have been writing for a long time. I wrote diaries at the age of 12-13 in 1963 when I was a boarder in a convent for nuns. I destroyed two, deeming them tasteless, and kept one, the first. It is one of ten magnificent notebooks that I have been writing for seven years now. They each have a different function: moods, memories, fictions, family stories, specific themes, etc. I hide them. My children and my grandchildren will find them when they empty my house. They will then discover their mother and grandmother in a very different light. I encourage all young people to write, it’s an outlet for sorrows, difficulties… It’s a reflecting mirror that makes you think. For me, it is a vital need today, just like food. »
“I have been writing my diary since the age of 9, I am 50. The first diary was that of the Nathalie Simard collection. At 9 years old (in 1982), I used to say that I ate spaghetti and that I had lost my mittens. I kept all my journals; this habit of self-writing has never left me, it is the surest way I have to find myself. »
“I will soon be 80 years old. I like to think that writing a diary saved my life. My existential anxiety having diminished for a few years, I haven’t been back for a long time. Several notebooks were filled with my tight handwriting, and my latest thoughts took the form of millions of bytes. I think I needed to write to contain or circumscribe my inner confusions. »
“I have kept my diaries since 1979 (I was 12 years old). At first, the entries are quite short, but representative of my life. I have never stopped since, even if sometimes there were breaks of a few months. Even today, at 56, I write in my diary regularly. »
“I treasured only one diary of my youth, that of the year of my 16 years that I spent in Brazil as a student exchange with AFS International. I left home to do secondary 5 in February 1981 to come back in January 1982, due to the southern hemisphere and staggered school hours… Before the era of the Internet, my only means of communication with my family in Quebec was the good one. old post, when it wasn’t on strike! And the best way to keep a lasting memory of my last year of high school was to keep a journal. This diary has therefore collected my thoughts, my schedules, the recipes of my “Brazilian mother” who taught me to knit, to cook, and above all, with the help of other family members and classmates, to speak Portuguese, a language that I still use easily today, in my early 60s. AFS was an unforgettable experience that I relive periodically by rereading little bits of my diary, and I remember this year which forged part of who I have become. »
