BARRHEAD - It was one of her life's most significant moments in her life.
That is what Michelle Martin, a former Barrhead resident and graduate of Lorne Jenken High School, told the sold-out audience moments after she performed her one-person show, I Carry Your Heart With Me, at Barrhead Composite High School's (BCHS) drama theatre on March 4.
"I want you to know that this is one of the most important moments in my life for my healing, and I want to thank you for coming and sharing it with me," she said.
The play, which Martin also penned, is about her journey of grief and loss, living without a mother, following her mother's death at 36 from breast cancer in 1980 and ultimately learning to let go, and how she found peace, acceptance and joy by getting to know her mother all over again as an adult.
At the time of her mother Cecile's death, Martin was 12.
Martin started working on the play about five years ago, but she truly buckled down when she returned to Barrhead in 2021 to celebrate the 41st anniversary of Cecile Martin Park's naming.
Martin had been slated to perform the show, which the Barrhead Arts Council brought in in January. However, weather, specifically a cold snap, hit the province, with temperatures plummeting below -30 C, forcing the show's postponement.
The Town & Country This Week spoke to Martin a few hours before the show, and she said she was apprehensive about bringing the show back to Barrhead, but that quickly dissipated.
"[Just as we were driving into Barrhead], my show is on the [Pembina West Co-op's digital board] ... and I said, 'Wow, that has to be a good omen.'"
Martin also said that she loved being back at BCHS, not only at the theatre, where Martin spent a lot of time with her mother, who was an actress and fixture in Barrhead Community Theatre, but just being able to walk down the halls of the school again.
"I loved it here. I had very, very close friends, and are still today after 40 and 50 years," Martin said, noting several still live in Barrhead and would be in the audience.
But Cecile's love for theatre and performing set her on her career path.
"Her passion was infectious," Martin said, adding that her first roles were as part of Barrhead Community Theatre productions, starting from when she was in Grade 2, often sharing the stage with her mother, including in Annie Get Your Gun. Cecile played the lead, Annie Oakley and Martin, one of her younger sisters.
After graduating from Lorne Jenken, she joined York University's theatre program and became an accomplished actor and producer based in Vancouver. Her Canadian theatre and television credits include Frequency, Dead of Summer, The Romeo Section, The Whispers, Supernatural, A Novel Romance, Accidental Obsession, CTV's Traders, and two seasons as a series lead on the CBC's evening drama, Riverdale. Martin also completed the independent feature film Backroads, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and the short film Sleepwalk, which won the Audience Choice Award at the New York City Short Horror Film Festival. She is also the founder of Egg Theatre Company.
Martin said although her mother is gone, the play allowed her to share the stage with her mother one last time.
She said when her mother was receiving her treatments at the Cross Cancer Institute, her father, Richard, recorded a 40-minute conversation she had with the medical staff.
Martin noted at the time of the recording, Cecile was "very ill", and she died six months later.
She also noted that her father, who was the principal at Lorne Jenken High School, while not an official part of the production, plays a prominent role in the play as Martin reads from her father's memoir.
"It is also a love letter to Barrhead, to my childhood, to my family as well as to my mother," Martin said.
For Barrhead residents who missed Martin's performance, she hopes to keep I Carry Your Heart With Me alive and find another audience through a documentary she is creating with the help of Frank Scholten and Scholten Productions. Scholten is also a Barrhead native.
"What we need is funding. It has been a lot to tour without Canada Council funding, and if we get it, maybe there is another life for this play, in a different form."
