The smell of freshly popped popcorn and grilled hotdogs permeated the air in Parade Gardens, Kingston, last Friday, signalling the impending festivities at the annual back-to-school treat hosted by Novelette Edwards-Tomlinson. Having spent her early years in the community of Tel-Aviv with her parents, Darrel Edwards and Angela Harvey, and six siblings, sounds of gunshots were a feature of daily life. Her family did not escape the grasp of poverty, but her father ensured that they knew education was their sole priority and the only tool that could uplift them from violence.
"He worked at the licence depot and he didn't even want us to go to the window. He made sure that we focused on our education; he did his best for us to come out to something. I was called 'Dirty Brain' because I was from the ghetto, but I was very educated.
I didn't let my background affect me, I was very intelligent," Edwards-Tomlinson joked. Her father's stern hand in her education reaped rewards as she completed her secondary education at the St Hugh's High School in 1982 and enrolled in the Kingston School of Nursing. She graduated as a registered nurse in 1986 and worked at the Bellevue Hospital, Kingston Public Hospital, and the Bustamante Hospital for Children before migrating to Canada in 1989.
It was there that Edwards-Tomlinson started her specialisation in pediatrics. "It's all about the children. Children are special, they appreciate what you do for them.
They are extremely grateful, but I have.