Anne-Marie Robinson
speaker
409 appearances
10 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Anne-Marie Robinson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
After I walked out of my high school, after Walker, I hadn't touched the French horn. It was like a thing far, far, far in my past.
He had to be dead and I know one of the psychologists that I worked with, she described it as me being delusional as a way to feel like I could survive in the world if he didn't exist.
I was invited by one of the instructors to go join the National Capitol Concert Band. And so that was in September of 2014. And it was exciting for me because it was recovering something that I had lost because of Walker. And the first rehearsal, they introduced two new members. It was myself and Douglas Walker.
When I heard his name and I heard his instrument, I thought, you know, the Doug Walker that I knew, Mr. Walker, my teacher, he played trombone. But I thought, OK, it's not that uncommon of a name. And I looked back and at first I didn't think it was him or I wasn't sure it was him. It was an old man and I, you know, I was older too.
And so at break he came up to me and I looked at him and I said, you remember me? And he said, of course I do. Like I was so shocked. I couldn't be me if he existed. And I know that sounds a bit crazy, but I had spent my life trying to build a strong person. And that person was just so different from the person he left behind.
At that point in my career, I was the president of the Public Service Commission. I was a deputy minister, and I remember saying to myself, okay, this practically destroyed me when I was young, but I'm strong now. And so I said, well, I think we should talk, and let's go for coffee next week.
I was actually sexually assaulted at this school by my teacher in the 1970s. Oh dear.
If I wanted to move forward in my life, this might be the only time in my life that I could say something to him. And so I basically spent the whole week deciding what I was going to say to him.
Just wanting him to know that he had abused me, that he had affected my life. I wanted him to realize what he had done was a terribly bad thing and it was really wrong.
That's really what I remember most is the music room because that's where my trauma took place.
I want to be in the building. I want to walk through those hallways and not feel powerless.
So the next week we both showed up at rehearsal and after we walked up the street to the coffee shop.
And so we sat down. I had this whole long list of things I wanted to say. But then he spoke first. He started in the place where he left off when I was 16. Like the first thing that came out of his mouth was, I'm sorry for what it was and for what it wasn't. You were the love of my life. And I remember thinking...
Like I was so, I can't tell you how shocked I was when he said that because it was just so immature. And then he started talking about how his wife was going out of town and did I want to have a drink sometime. So I realized very quickly in he was, I guess, hitting on me. I don't like that expression, but that's how it felt. And I was just like so shut down. I mean, I couldn't say a thing.
I couldn't get one single thing out. I was just like in shock and like, I think I was like a block of ice. And then he switched right away. It was like switching on a dime. He started talking about how poor he was. He couldn't afford to buy lunch. He'd lost all of his teacher's pension in the stock market. We were there for all of 15 minutes. We just walked out and I said goodbye and he left.
We went one way, I went the other way and I never saw him again.
It was like having a box that you put in the basement and you don't look in that box for years and years and years and then suddenly you go down and you open the box and it explodes in your face.
I had just done a parliamentary committee, which for many of us in the public service, those are tough, hard challenges. And it had gone well, and I thought, OK, I'm feeling good about myself. I'm going to sort of tackle this.
I wanted him to acknowledge that he caused me pain and that he hurt me as a child. Like I wanted him to And to say what he did was wrong, that it was unbalanced and, you know, that I quit high school, like I... It changed the trajectory of your life. It did. And there was no follow up from either the school board or him or anything. I just kind of floated away from school one day.
A few months later, I had a complete emotional collapse, and I walked out of my job at the Public Service Commission. That was the hardest thing in the world for me, honestly, because I loved my job.
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