Shania Twain goes into detail about her traumatic childhood in Timmins, Ontario, working in bars and dealing with domestic violence

For 30 years, Canada’s own Shania Twain has been an international superstar on the pop-country charts with mega hits like “Man, I Feel Like A Woman,” and “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” In that time, she has opened up several times about all of the tumult she’s experienced in her life, from her marriage to her producer Robert “Mutt” Lange breaking down after his affair with her best friend, to finding love again, and also her struggle with Lyme disease.

She has also from time to time spoken about her turbulent childhood in Timmins, Ontario, where she lived in poverty with her family, and then was forced to raise her siblings herself after her parents died in a horrific car crash.

Now, in a new interview, she’s going into detail what those early days in Timmins were like, how she had to sing for change in rowdy bars from the age of 8, and how domestic violence forced her family into a battered women’s shelter.

Speaking with Louis Theroux on his eponymous podcast, the “You’re Still The One” crooner revealed that after her other discovered Shania (who was born Eileen Twain) had a singing talent, was encouraging her daughter to sing for change in bars she had no business being.

“Let’s start from the beginning, even before I knew how to speak, I was singing and humming,” Shania explained. “As soon as my mother discovered I had a talent for voice, she was putting me up on restaurant countertops and getting me to sing to the jukebox and perform for people in the diner.” 

“It’s when my mother started taking my singing more seriously, she began taking me to public appearances, and I started feeling really intimidated,” she continued.

She then explained how she, at the age of 8, was allowed to be in these bars, singing for drunkards and unsavoury characters. “I would only be allowed on stage after midnight because of the liquor law. After the last call, the bar would technically be closed, but the tables were still loaded with everyone's last drinks and people would stay until two, or three in the morning.”

She continued, “Fights breaking out now and then, people are stumbling all over the place, and it was hard to keep their attention. That was intimidating for an 8-year-old.”

When Theroux asked why this happened, Shania, replied, “It’s how we put gas in the car.”

She added, “I didn’t start making money in bars until I was 11. Officially, so when I was 11, I was a taxpayer. I was earning money under contract in the bars,” and also gave her former child self some grace by acknowledging how harrowing those early performances were for her.  “I think if I’m being really fair to my history, and the history of the anxiety, I would say that it really was initiated from childhood and being in those bars where it was a very intimidating environment. Because I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to go up on that stage. I’m like, ‘Oh, but I did it for my mother.'”

During their conversation, the “(If You’re Not In It For Love) I’m Outta Here!” singer also spoke about having to bundle up her siblings and her mother at the age of 13 to escape her abusive father.

“I guess around the age of 13, while at the age of 13, I declared that that was the worst year of my life. (I said) to myself, like literally out loud: ‘This is the worst year of my life. And I am not going to get any worse. I’m going to make sure that this is the last horrible year of my life’.”

She recalls hatching a plan to escape the “abusive cycle” that was taking over her household, recalling that both her father and mother had confided in her that they wanted to kill the other. “I really thought he was capable of killing us.”

She says she knew they had to drive from Timmins to Toronto to get to the domestic abuse shelters, but at 13, she needed her mother to drive.

“I waited til my dad was at work. And I brought my mother a coffee and a cigarette in bed. I got all the kids in the car. And then when everyone was ready, I got her out of bed. And I said, ‘Get dressed, we’re leaving.’ She was quite confused. But I was able to convince her.

“I said, ‘Look, everybody’s already in the car. Everything’s in the car. All you got to do is get behind that wheel and drive. That’s all you got to do.’ And she did. And we drove to Toronto, which was a 10-hour drive. And we find something to do with battered wives.

“So I say, ‘Mom, you’re gonna have to talk, because they’re gonna know I’m a kid. And they’re not going to take me seriously.’ So we went to the shelter that was like a general homeless shelter. And then we were placed into a battered women’s home.”

Shania’s recent documentary “Not Just A Woman” explores how she managed to lift her family out of poverty by singing in Toronto, and at the Deerhurst resort in Hunstville, and became the sole breadwinner when her parents died in a car crash.

These days she lives in Switzerland with her horses and her husband Frederic Thiebaud.