Celine Dion: I was a victim of bullying
Celine Dion has revealed she was bullied as a child growing up in Charlemagne, Que.
Fondation Jasmin Roy, a Quebec-based charity, recently recruited Dion for a PSA against bullying. In the French-language video, the 45-year-old songstress explains how she suffered in her youth.
"Because I myself was a victim of bullying at school, I can understand the distress that young people go through," Dion says in her native language.
In 2013, Dion admitted that as a child growing up in Canada, she was nowhere near as poised as she is now.
"I was definitely not very good at school. I was not the cool dude, I was not good looking, I was feeling awkward," she said. "It was hard, my teeth were all crooked and we were poor a little bit so the clothes were passed on from my brothers to my sisters, to me."
Aside from her own troubles at school, Dion also comes at bullying from a parent's perspective: She has three children, 13-year-old Rene-Charles and 3-year-old twins Eddy and Nelson.
"As a mother, I can also understand the despair of parents who can no longer see light in their child's eyes, or joy in their child's heart, because they have no friends at school," Dion says in the video.
Fondation Jasmin Roy, named after the local actor who produced the antibullying documentary "Intimides," was established to combat the intimidation of primary and secondary schoolchildren. Dion's PSA was uploaded on March 13 and has already amassed more than 33,000 views.
