The Story Behind the Story with Ginette Goguen of Shediac, New Brunswick, Canada.

 

Let’s welcome another new author/auteure to the Scribbler.

The first of the New Year. 

I met Ginette last fall at a book event in Shediac. She has kindly accepted my invitation to be our guest this week.

She writes in both French and English. 

Each version is generating a lot of excitement in the book world. 

Read on, my friends

 

 

Born and raised in Shediac, New Brunswick, Ginette Goguen grew up in a bilingual area where French was a minority and English the dominant presence. This reality shaped her mission: to strengthen French pride and illuminate the deep, often forgotten connections between Canada’s two official languages.

A graduate of the Université de Moncton, she holds a Bachelor of Education with majors in French and English, as well as a Master’s degree in Special Education. For 30 years, she taught in francophone high schools in the province, guiding thousands of students and witnessing firsthand the challenges and beauty of bilingual life in Atlantic Canada.

For over 3 decades, Ginette also collected words the way a stamp collector collects stamps—carefully, passionately, and with a sense of wonder. From Acadia to France and England, she documented linguistic twins, cousins, echoes, and roots that link French and English in surprising and intimate ways.

A mother of two and a lifelong learner herself, Ginette originally dreamed of creating a travel vlog while exploring Europe. Instead, her discoveries grew into something larger and more enduring: a book that brings together memoir, etymology teachings, and history, inviting uniligual readers to see the other official language not as a mountain, but as a familiar landscape already embedded within their own.

 

Title:  GARAGE

 

Synopsis:

GARAGE is a unique blend of memoir, linguistic exploration, and educational storytelling. Written by an Acadian educator who spent her life collecting bilingual word-pairs like a pirate gathers rare treasures, the book reveals the deep, often overlooked connections between French and English.

Growing up in eastern Canada — where French is often a minority language living beside a prevailing English world — Ginette Goguen learned early how fragile French can feel, and how powerful it becomes when understood through its history. Her decades as a high school teacher only strengthened that insight: many francophones feel intimidated by English, and many anglophones see French as a mountain too steep to climb.

GARAGE dismantles both illusions.

Through personal stories, classroom anecdotes, travels through France and England, and hundreds of linguistic discoveries, the book exposes a truth hidden in plain sight:

French and English share more than people think — and learning one opens the door to the other.

Words that migrated, transformed, survived invasions, crossed oceans, and reinvented themselves become the quiet heroes of this narrative.

With warmth, humour, and deep humanity, GARAGE shows that bilingualism is not a burden but a legacy — one that can reignite French pride in French speakers while making French finally feel accessible to English speakers.

Part memoir, part linguistic journey, and part love letter to French and English, GARAGE invites readers to look at everyday words with new eyes and to discover that these differing languages are not strangers, but relatives.

 

 

The Story Behind the Story:

I come from a small town where French has always lived in the shadow of a nearby majority English population. Evolving in this bilingual environment shaped everything I would later become — an avid reader, a teacher, a collector of words, and eventually an author.

After completing my postsecondary studies, I enjoyed 3 decades of teaching in local Francophone schools. Along the way, I raised two wonderful children at home, and at work, listened to thousands of teenagers navigate language, identity, and confidence.

For years, almost without realizing it, I had a hobby of gathering words as some people keep coin collections… especially French terms that crossed into Anglophones’ speech.  English vocabularies that, in a sense, still carried a French heartbeat. In my view, they were little linguistic gems picked up during my research and then travels from Acadia to England and France.

I once imagined I might turn these discoveries into a documentary style video while travelling in Europe… but instead, my creative outlet became a teaching memoir — GARAGE, a blend of autobiographical and linguistic storytelling.

Today, I aim to celebrate bilingual life, to make French feel accessible for Anglophones and English accessible for Francophones, rather than intimidating, plus to remind readers that languages are not barriers… they are bridges.

 

Visit Ginette’s Facebook page by going HERE.

A question before you go, Ginette.

Scribbler: Who was your favourite author, or story, growing up?

Ginette: I never had one particular favorite author, instead I’ve always loved all kinds of books. During my childhood, I chose comic books such as Astérix and Tintin, whodunit genres such as Nancy Drew Mystery Series, and the New Testament I received at my local church, etc. When I got older, I enjoyed Teen magazines and Archie Comics. As an adult, I prefer self-help reads, personal growth and wellness guides, motivational manuals and empowerment books.



An Excerpt from : Garage

Part 1

Chapter 1

The morning mist was clearing in Shediac, a small town in the southeast part of New Brunswick, in eastern Canada. Among its few thousand inhabitants lived a young girl who would choose to call this coastal community home for most of her life.

The sun peered through the white lace curtains hung in the family’s large living-room window. Its orange glow radiated on the floor, spreading light that matched the color tones of her wide-legged checkered pants. Of course, bell-bottom trousers were the in-thing of the seventies.

That day, the 5-year-old, hearing the doorbell ring, rushed to the front door to see what the milkman had left outside on the concrete porch. Blacky, the family dog, followed her every move. Two thick glass bottles were waiting to be brought inside: one containing plain white milk, and to her surprise, the second was filled with chocolate milk. Her brothers and sister would be pleased. They didn't often have the opportunity to indulge in this tasty treat.  

"On a eu du chocolate milk sur le step!" ("We got some chocolate milk on the step!") she excitedly shared with the others in a part French, part English dialect the locals called Chiac.

They would usually have to mix regular milk with Quik, an appropriately named cocoa-powdered flavoring that quickly resulted in a cold chocolaty drink. The outcome was the same, with a little effort; but this week, they would have the real deal. 

After bringing in the dairy bottles, she hastily returned to fetch two folded newspapers –L'Évangéline and the Times which also sat on the front porch.  First published in 1887, L'Évangéline,² as was printed in bold letters on the front page, had been one of the Acadian population’s principal French-language source of newsprint for nearly 100 years.  But she would only learn all that later.

                                                              ***

For the moment, her family was lucky enough to have access to both a French and an English daily, six days a week. The youngster would eagerly sift through the newspapers as soon as they arrived, hoping to find a few pages of colored comic strips to admire. However, it wasn't Saturday yet.  She realized this by the tiny section of black and white comics she found well -hidden in that day’s paper.  She then remembered that, as with her Saturday morning cartoons on TV, she would have to wait for the weekend. 

"Pas de funnies ou de cartoons aujourd’hui," ("No funnies or cartoons today,") she’d sigh.

As per usual, her mother would turn on the radio perched on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. The family’s breakfast routine was to listen quietly to the English-speaking announcer from the CKCW radio station share that day’s weather forecast in addition to the local news. As soon as ads or music began, the conversations would resume, and the kids would talk over each other during the weekday morning chaos. Soon, Glen Campbell's melodious lyrics could be heard playing in the background... 

"Like a Rhinestone Cowboy… ♫"

   

Chapter 2 

Each sunrise would bring about the wonderful aromas of a full breakfast that easily spread throughout the bungalow.  Bacon and eggs or warm oatmeal often fared on the menu. Although, sugary cereals or toasted bread with homemade jam were the preferred offerings.  Bright and early on weekdays, the family always congregated for the most important meal of the day. It was the beginning of a long workday for the father, a school day for the school-aged children, and a typical day for the stay-at-home mother and youngest daughter. Regardless of the scheduled activities, the first feast was loved by everyone.  

"J’aimerais des toasts au jam demain," ("I’d like toasts with jam tomorrow,") requested one of the siblings.

On this particular morning, pancakes were for breakfast. Everyone covered theirs in molasses. They also poured, into small restaurant-style glasses, orange juice which they had freshly made with their manual juicer. The beverage’s tangy taste stung the tip of their tongues and awakened all their senses. 

Since it was a weekday, the youngest said goodbye to her dad as her two brothers and sister got ready to leave for school. Through the dining-room window, she watched her siblings with envy, carrying backpacks on their shoulders while walking up Hamilton Street, only to disappear around the corner of Midtown Garage. 

The three school-aged family members went to École Saint-Cœur-de-Marie, or S.C.M. as they called it, for grades 5 through 8. In the youngster’s mind, school was a huge mystery. She eagerly wanted to go there like the others, but she was not quite old enough yet.  

"J’aurai un school bag moi aussi en grade un," ("I’ll have a school bag too in First Grade,") she mused.

                                                          ***

The weekdays felt long at home alone with her mother, so she would settle in and watch an episode of Sesame Street, then Les 100 Tours de Centour and Les Oreillons. In that era, a square antenna made of iron rods on the roof gave them access to three television stations: two English stations – CTV (Canadian Television Network) and CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) – and one French station, CBAFT (Canadian Broadcasting French Television: Radio Canada). There wasn't much on air in the afternoon, other than a soap opera called Another World or game shows like Definition and The Price is Right. She would suddenly see Bob Barker and hear the announcer calling out:

"Come on down!"

That was her cue to take time away from the black and white television set and play with her toys while her mother watched her favorite TV shows.

"Va jouer avec tes catins pi tes teddy bears," ("Go play with your dolls and teddy bears,") her mom would say.

She spent hours playing school with her many dolls and stuffed animals like Baby Alive, Raggedy Ann, Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird. Since her Weeble Wobbles were too small, she would line up all her biggest make-believe students on a bench. Using a small green blackboard and some white chalk, she would teach them the day’s lessons: how to draw an eyeball, a dog, and all sorts of simple things. Had her toys been able to talk, they would certainly have been the smartest of their kind in her neighborhood…

Buy the English version HERE.

 Buy the French version HERE.

 

 Thank you for being our guest this week, Ginette. We wish you continued success with your writing.

 

 

Thank you to all our visitors and readers.

Feel free to leave a comment below.  We’d love to hear from you.