Melissa Rowe was born as the middle child in a large family in Jamaica. As a young woman looking for opportunities to work abroad, she discovered the Domestic Workers Scheme through print advertisements looking for nannies and maids to work in Canada. She moved to Shirley’s Bay near Ottawa in the 1970s, initially working for a British family living in Ottawa. Below she tells her story about her reaction to arriving to the country in the middle of the FLQ crisis to establishing her life in the national capital region.
