Marie Broere was born in 1926 in Rotterdam. As a teenager, Marie witnessed the Rotterdam Blitz of 1940. Marie remembers her daily life, living under the German occupation of Holland. She remembers her father being taken from the streets by German soldiers, and managing to escape and return with his family. Being the eldest child in her family, and wanting to help her family through the severe conditions of the Hunger Winter, Marie went to stay with her grandmother, where she worked on a farm in Lekkerkerk until the end of the war. Marie witnessed the liberation of the Netherlands, and in 1958 she immigrated to Canada with her husband and two children.

We met Marie Broere in April 2017 at the Castle Peak Retirement Suites in Bracebridge, where she presently lives.  Marie is one of several authors/editors who assembled At Your Age, a collection of stories of those who live there.  The residents felt it was important for them to record their stories, which serve as a great entry point into their generation’s collective experiences.