Claudette Bradshaw 'sliding doors' moments altered the course of my life

This is a First Person column by Jessica Forbes Ferguson, a volunteer, civil servant and mother in Moncton. She met Claudette Bradshaw at the age of 12, and says Bradshaw's influence altered the course of her life. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

Claudette Bradshaw died on March 26 at her home in New Brunswick, surrounded by her husband and two sons. The former MP and cabinet minister was well-known for her warmth, hugs, and social advocacy work.

Without question, my life would be incalculably different if it weren't for Claudette.

In sixth grade, my dad and I delivered food boxes in late December for Moncton Headstart, which Claudette founded, and I distinctly remember the slap in the face of realizing that true poverty existed in my city.

It wasn't where the "For the price of a cup of coffee a day" people lived, an ocean away, but right here, living next to the schools I went to every week to play basketball.

Suddenly, I understood it was possible that kids in my class did not have electricity on in their homes when they left our playground at night, that their Christmas trees were not flush with presents the way mine were.

That realization was both jarring and physically painful, as it completely cut through every privilege I didn't even know I'd had up to that point.

I told Claudette so many times — probably to her annoyance, as she once compared me to a hyperactive puppy and later to Anna from Frozen — that this moment set the course for what I set out to do every day in my adult life. It became my goal to give those children every skill I have and help balance systemic inequalities that can keep families in poverty for generations.

I would not be the teacher, civil servant, human I am if not for that moment.

At 16, I spent a week with Claudette at her apartment in Ottawa, shadowing her as she worked as a member of Parliament. It was the beginning of a love affair with that city that will last the rest of my life.

I remember the feeling of standing in the National Gallery, next to a travelling Picasso exhibit, and thinking to myself, "This is a place where real, giant things happen. This is not pictures in a book, this is really real life."

The same feeling I had four years later, while a student at Ottawa U, standing in line at Centre Block to view Pierre Elliott Trudeau's casket lying in state with my floor mates, and countless times since.

I left Claudette a letter at the end of that week that she often referred to in her speeches as having meant so much to her, encouraging her to keep going in politics even when it was hard, because I saw who she was and what she really wanted to accomplish.

In Grade 12, I was in Ottawa for the Forum for Young Canadians. By then, Claudette had gone from being a no-name Liberal backbencher to a prominent federal cabinet minister, so her time was much harder to come by.