Barbara Godin is a graduate of Athabasca University. She writes the “”Dear Barb” and the “Women of Interest” columns. As well, Barb has written many personal interest stories and enjoys connecting with others through her writing. She has been writing for The Voice since 2003.
If you enjoy reading Dear Barb, you can also purchase her curated collection, Dear Barb: Answers to Everyday Questions at her website, http://www.barbgodin.com.
My sister, Mary, and I were incarcerated in Ontario Training Schools for Girls, at 12 and 13 years old. Training schools are better known as reform schools. At that time, all I knew about reform school was what I had seen in movies and on television shows. Reform schools were portrayed as a place where… Read more »
Dear Barb: Bah Humbug! This is going to be the worst Christmas ever. This COVID virus has devastated so many of my family and friends. Although I don’t know anyone who has actually got the virus, but the fighting has ruined so many relationships. The people who believe the doctors and health officials want to… Read more »
Dear Barb: This is going to sound like a crazy thing to do in the middle of a pandemic, but my boyfriend and I want to get married. It’s crazy because we just met when the pandemic started, so we’ve been together ever since. Obviously, we haven’t been socializing with very many people because we… Read more »
Dear Barb: As Christmas approaches I have been feeling more down than usual. I haven’t seen my parents for almost a year and my kids haven’t seen their grandparents. My parents both suffer from health issues and I don’t want to take the chance and put them at risk. We are doing zoom visits but… Read more »
Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi was a teacher, writer, medical doctor and was actively involved in the suffragist movement, publishing several articles. She was the first woman to study medicine at the University of Paris and the first woman to become a member of the Academy of Medicine. Jacobi was considered to be the leading female… Read more »
Dear Barb: Hi, I am in a terrible situation and I’m not sure what to do. My husband and I have been married for five years and we recently decided to try to have a baby. We had wanted to wait until we finished school and were established in our careers, which is where we… Read more »
Dear Barb: I don’t know what to do; after many years my father has contacted me. He left my mom, me, and my younger brother when we were really young. My mom raised us as a single mother with no help from him. He never even contacted us in over 25 years. We just assumed… Read more »
Dear Barb: My husband and I have been married seven years and are the parents of two young girls. Our marriage has been good, for the most part. We have had the usual problems with a hectic lifestyle and two young children and now with the virus things are more stressful. I always thought we… Read more »
Dear Barb: Hi, my neighbor has a small black dog that has a huge growth of some kind on its stomach. It is so big it almost touches the ground. The poor dog walks awkwardly because of the weight of this thing. I have talked to her and she always says, “oh its fine, he… Read more »
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) spent five decades fighting all manners of inequality and changed the world in far too many ways to be included in this short article. Ginsburg was nominated by President Bill Clinton as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1993 and held the position until her… Read more »