Andrée-Anne Boisvert’s earliest memories take her back to Sept-Îles, Quebec, visiting her grandparents on the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The sandy beaches, the salty air, and the taste of fried capelin—a smelt-like fish that, well, smelt—are still vivid in her mind.
“To a young kid, looking out on the gulf was like looking out on a vast ocean,” she recalls. “Such wonderful memories.”
Boisvert was in fact born in Sept-Îles, but moved as a toddler to Montreal when her mom was pregnant with her sister Marie-Hélène.
“We moved because my mom wanted us to go to English school and to grow up speaking English as well as French so we would have lots of opportunities,” she says.
Boisvert, her sister, and their parents Jayne and Ghislain had a good life in Montreal. Jayne held administrative jobs and then took time off to raise the girls before returning to the workforce to run a daycare centre. She still lives in the suburban Montreal home where Boisvert was raised. Ghislain worked in information technology in the aerospace industry for many years, and passed away a few short years ago—a devastating loss for Boisvert.
The family made many summer and Christmas visits to Sept-Îles, and a number of other road trips, including one memorable journey to Maine in an RV after an unsuccessful tent camping adventure. As a child, Boisvert was “bookish” by her own description. While other kids were playing with Lego, Boisvert says, she voluntarily read “Western Classics 101” textbooks and gleefully answered the discussion questions at the back of the book.
That love of reading and her love of English led her to pursue an English literature degree at McGill University. She was mentored and inspired by Professor Brian Trehearne and focused her learning on some of the famous Montreal poets, like A.M. Klein, Leonard Cohen, and Irving Layton. After graduation, she traded the wide open ocean views of her youth for the wide open skies of the prairies, enrolling at the University of Manitoba in pursuit of her Master’s degree. And she traded a focus on urban poetry for the literature of rugged prairie life, including a thesis about author Frederick Philip Grove. She fell in love with Winnipeg quickly after moving nearly two decades ago at the age of 22.
“Manitoba is home,” she says. “Honestly, coming to Winnipeg—a more down-to-earth, connected, rooted place—allowed me to truly find myself and establish a lot of deep, meaningful friendships that I’m not sure that a big city like Toronto or Vancouver would have allowed for.”
After earning her degree, Boisvert decided not to pursue a PhD. She had gone as far in academia as she wanted to go. She took on freelance editing jobs while working part-time as a medical assistant before becoming the editor of Mosaic, the University of Manitoba’s prestigious literary journal. After seven rewarding years in that role she moved on, ultimately taking a position in 2019 as an editor with the Manitoba Department of Justice where she continues to work.
Her stable life was rocked unexpectedly in 2021 by a devastating diagnosis—stage 3B cervical cancer. Things got very real, very fast when she was told that she needed a procedure immediately to prevent her kidney from being damaged by the growing cervical tumour. The nephrostomy involved inserting a catheter to drain urine into an external bag, thereby bypassing the blocked urinary tract and protecting her kidney.
On the advice of medical professionals, she got her affairs in order and hastily made a will (making a mental note to do a better job of it when she was feeling better and less rushed).
After the kidney procedure, Boisvert underwent chemotherapy and radiation, which had little impact. The only solution, she was told, was major surgery including a radical hysterectomy, which was performed by Drs. Erin Dean and Alon Altman. Needless to say, the experience was overwhelming, heavy, and frightening, but she emerged from her 18-day hospital stay with grace, gratitude, and perspective.
“I don’t believe that the people who work at HSC just execute tasks. I think they look after people. They look after hearts and souls,” she reflects. “They look after extremely vulnerable people who need comfort and care. They don’t just open your body to provide a solution; they are shepherding you through something terrifying.”
Boisvert’s gratitude extends beyond the surgeons who saved her. The nurses who offered words of comfort and reassurance, the aides who got her on her feet after surgery, the cleaners who energized her with good conversation—they were all a part of her healing.
When she recovered, Boisvert decided to redo her will as she intended, and made a point of including the HSC Foundation as a beneficiary. “No one asked me to do it; I just knew it was something I wanted to do. It’s the right thing,” she says. “And thanks to the expert care I received, I can realistically envision that they won’t actually receive my gift for a very, very long time.”
Today, Boisvert remains engaged by her work, still reads voraciously, and she is focused on fitness—including Pilates, dragon boat paddling, weightlifting, and spin classes. “It’s been fun to rediscover my body and get even stronger than I was before cancer,” she says.
She has also developed a deep passion for gardening, a hobby that occupies her summer and the backyard of the Garden City home she shares with her partner Louis. Gardening gives her joy; it has also provided her with a powerful metaphor for life.
“When you plant seedlings, some survive, some don’t,” says Boisvert. “I’m a seedling that survived and I feel blessed. It is my responsibility to live my life with grace, intention, and generosity.”
