Carrie Ann Edwards is best recognized as the sister of Shania Twain. Her sister Shania Twain, is a Canadian singer-songwriter and actress. She has sold over 100 million records, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time and the best-selling female artist in country music history.
Carrie Ann Edwards Early Life
Carrie Ann Edwards was born to Sharon (née Morrison) and Clarence Edwards. She has two sisters, Jill and Shania. Her parents divorced when she was three and her mother moved to Timmins, Ontario, with her daughters. Sharon married Jerry Twain, an Ojibwa from the nearby Mattagami First Nation, and they had a son, Mark, together.
Jerry adopted the girls and legally changed their surname to Twain. When Mark was a toddler, Jerry and Sharon adopted Jerry’s baby nephew Darryl when his mother died. Because of Twain’s connection to Jerry, the media have incorrectly reported that she is of Ojibwe descent. In an Interview she said,
“My father (Jerry) went out of his way to raise three daughters that weren’t even his. For me to acknowledge another man as my father, a man who was never there for me as a father, who wasn’t the one who struggled every day to put food on our table, would have hurt him terribly. We were a family. Step-father, step-brothers, we never used that vocabulary in our home. To have referred to him as my step-father would have been the worst slap across the face to him”
Carrie Ann Edwards Childhood Was Struggling
Carrie Ann Edwards as a child she was told by her mother that her biological father was part Cree, a claim his family denies. Her confirmed ancestry includes English, French, and Irish. Her maternal great-grandmother was a descendant of French carpenter Zacharie Cloutier. Her Irish maternal grandmother, Eileen Pearce, emigrated from Newbridge, County Kildare.
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She has said she had a difficult childhood. Despite the hardships she faced, she persevered and found success. Her parents earned little money, and food was often scarce in their household. She learned the value of hard work and the importance of frugality from a young age.
Twain did not confide her situation to school authorities, fearing they might break up the family. She was determined to provide for her family and never gave up, no matter what the odds. Her mother and stepfather’s marriage was stormy at times, and from a young age she witnessed violence between them. Her mother also struggled with bouts of depression.
Twain eventually convinced her mother to take her and the children and run away to a homeless shelter in Toronto, however Sharon returned to Jerry with the children in 1981.
As a child, Twain began singing at bars to help pay her family’s bills; she often earned $20 between midnight and 1 a.m. performing for remaining customers after the bar had finished serving alcohol. Twain disliked singing in those bars, but she views them as a roadside performing-arts school.
During the ordeal, she said, “My deepest passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought, ‘I hate this.’ I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived.” She states that the art of creating, of actually writing songs, “was very different from performing them and became progressively important”.
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