Brenda Hain - Bio

The first child of a blue collar working class family, Brenda Hain was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in the Western part of Canada. Brenda describes herself as being an odd child who loved nature and animals. Her summers were spent mostly outdoors and if she could have, she would have spent all her time communing with the great out-of-doors, She couldn’t stand boys or cleaning her room; as being in doors and around her two younger brothers bored her.

When the family moved to a plot of prairie land on the out-skirts of Regina, Brenda hated it. The winters were brutal; the wind cut like a razor and Brenda despised the school she was enrolled in because they called her stupid. But then something happened that showed her otherwise.

Age 9 marked a turning point in Brenda’s young life. That year she met and developed a warm and rewarding relationship with a Native healer, Maude Cutaway or “Many Colours,” her Native name. “It was a wondrous learning relationship” according to Brenda. “Many Colours” increased Brenda's power to communicate with nature.” More importantly, Maude also taught Brenda that she was not stupid.

After Many Colours death, Brenda immersed herself in the horse world. Horses are to this date Brenda’s favorite earthly creature; she loves the musky smell of these beautiful majestic animals.

The summer of 1963 was, in Brenda’s words, “the best and the worst summer of my life.” That summer Brenda became head groomer at Tiffin’s Stable, a much coveted position, she also became woefully sick with mosquito borne viral encephalitis. This sickness has confined her to a wheelchair ever since.

The series “Legacy” which Brenda hopes to have published was inspired by this short period in her life. It is about Maude Cutaway and her place in history. It is also about Brenda’s life and experiences of becoming disabled and labeled.
Brenda has also written a book about horses that she aims to have published.

Brenda is a bright woman, well educated, “perhaps over-educated for what I've chosen to do with the rest of my life.”

Brenda was and still is an artist. She has a degree in graphic arts and has attended the University of Regina studying art history; and also enjoyed a year of anthropology.
She is currently upgrading her writing skills at McMaster University.

“I was and still am an artist. I could draw flowers, dogs, birds, and my beloved horses. But, as I grew older my fingers stiffened and my drawing stopped. I've dabbled in oils, acrylics and watercolors. I like pencil sketching the most because I can always adjust my lines to perfect the picture.”

Brenda started writing when she was encouraged to keep a journal to record her feelings while she was battling her first cancer. She did this with hesitation. She was very angry at the world and God.

Nearly ten years to the date when her father died of cancer, Brenda faced having to decide on having her bladder removed after undergoing 6 months of chemotherapy.

“I'll never forget the date, September 12th. 1995
I thought, the nerve of some medic, telling me to part with an organ, which I've had blasted with chemicals for 6 months to rid these new tumors.”
“I thought I was seeing my friends for the last time, my head was the size of a medicine ball and once again I was totally paralyzed and on a flipping respirator for three or four days.”

Brenda wrote “Lizzy’s Secret World” out of frustration with the labeling and treatment of children who are different. The inspiration came during a writers block. Brenda had wheeled out to the kitchen, where she found "Shine" (Chelsey's mom) in tears. Shine and her 'different' daughter Chelsey, had been at a school meeting and Shine felt discouraged and frustrated.  Brenda truly empathized with Shine's sadness, anger, fear and frustrated spirit; she lived this same emotional mélange many years before. It seemed like yesterday to Brenda.

She was damn mad with the schools treatment of special needs students and set out to write about it. Shine stopped her in mid paragraph, and suggested that she lighten her thoughts a whole lot, and change the names, hence the name "Shine instead of Lori and Lizzy instead of Chelsey."
“Use that wonderful imagination Bren, go off into another world," she begged Brenda’s stubborn side.”

“Here I am two years and nearly three children's books later. The more I write about this child, now called Lizzy the happier my life becomes.”

The “Behind the Veil” trilogy was inspired by Lizzy and all the other children who have been labeled and whom Brenda coincidentally had also become.

"Lizzy’s world is dedicated to Chelsey Elizabeth Murla also known as “Lizzy” and to my own children who await me in Heaven and all the born and unborn everywhere else in the world. Also I want to credit the First Nation people, more so the old Natives that still respect Mother Earth and Father Sky."

After thinking that she had beaten a cancerous tumor in 1989, Brenda left the West in 1992 and moved to Ontario. Today she resides in Burlington, Ontario Canada.

"I am thankful for friends like "Shine" and Joanne Watson. "Shine" boosts my writing ideas and Joanne Watson supports my equipment needs, I mean she’s been an Angel sent by the Great Creator.

Therefore I thank and shall call these two wonderful ladies my modern day mentors as ‘Many Colours’ is with me in Spirit. I’ve started a new series of short stories in her name, I can smell her, I feel her mind as we write as one.

I work not in a quiet atmosphere but I write with all the love and anger that is Brenda Hain’s little space in this world."