Harte, Edith Varslavans

Born deaf in Latvia; when the Soviet Union annexed Latvia in 1945, her family fled to a refugee camp in Germany, where she first attended a school for the deaf. In 1950, the family emigrated to Canada, settling in Montreal where she went to the Institution des Sourdes et Muettes, leaving school after the 10th grade. Various jobs, mostly clerking for an insurance bureau and for a police department.