Born: August 28, 1965
Place of Birth: Windsor, Ontario
Major Notes:
Shania Twain was brought up as Eilleen Regina Edwards in Timmins, Ontario, where her parents lived under sometimes impoverished conditions.
In her pre-teen and teen years, she was given extensive support for a singing career by her mother and step-father.
When Twain was only 10, she was writing her own songs and her parents started encouraging their daughter to perform live anywhere possible; community and senior
centers became "concert" places for Shania.
Twain and her father worked in the summers with a reforestation crew where she learned to use a chain saw.
Unfortunately, her parents were killed in a car accident and, at 21, Twain became guardian of her three younger siblings.
She was able to find employment at Ontario's Deerhurst Resort where through John Kotowski, she learned much about the entertainment business.
Twain's life changed where her younger siblings all, in time, were able to go out on their own.
She made a demo tape and through some contacts was able to record and produce a CD; however, it only had one of her
own songs.
Twain, while in London to produce a new CD, was introduced to Mutt Lange who became her manager and, later, her husband.
Lange and Twain were able to take the songs she had written and produced them on her next CD "The Woman in Me" and it became
an enormous hit.
Although she was known as a country music singer, the CD became Twain's cross-over to the field of pop music.
She is credited with changing the rules of country music in that now the female artist is on equal par with their male counterparts.
Twain has continued to set records with the release of each CD and she has an extensive list of awards including Grammys, Entertainer of the Year, Best Singer of
the Year, and Best Country Singer of the Year.
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