Bury's Fury

North Bay's Joanne Bury has returned to the area after a 20-year absence, and BayToday.ca has got the award-winning writer.

Bury become's the site's newest editorialist/columnist, and she'll also do the occassional book or play review.

She began her writing career in 1985 at the Gravenhurst News, and her column, A Parent's Perspective, won the Ontario Community Newspaper Association Award for best general interest column in 1987.

Bury has two daughters and had worked on several contract jobs until landing at the Muskoka Parry Sound Health Unit in 1992.

But damage from a 1990 bout with viral meningitis forced her to stop working outside her home in 1993.

Since then, Bury says, she has had to live "a life of poverty," struggling to "maintain my dignity (and sanity) while being forced to endure innumerable indignities" as a single mother on social assistance.

"Because of my disabling illness, I cannot work and my income is less than $11,000 per year. I have to tell you that I hate mentioning this this, but do just to illustrate how badly people like me are treated. Spartans were much more humane, they just put us on a mountain top to die. Mike and Ernie have tortured me for years and Dalton has continued this treatment unabated," Bury said.

"I am angry and cannot enjoy the wonderful life I could have here on Lake Talon with my honey. I can't because there are other Joannes like me out there who are trying to raise their kids and being beaten down by the government rules and regulations - most quite unnecessary."

Bury is a self-described "community agitator," a former NDP candidate, Muskoka’s Woman of the Year in 1996, an alumnus of York University’s Department of Theatre and "a keen observer of life in Canada," she said.

You can catch her column, Yonge Street North, every Tuesday on BayToday.ca.