Mona Fournier, the oldest of six siblings, was born and raised in Port Alberni. Her father was a grapple operator and worked in camps mostly in the Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii). He also built stock cars from the 1970s until a year before his passing. Her mother, and grandmother, along with her siblings moved from Ontario to Port Alberni when she was 12 years old.
“My mother, who raised six of us almost by herself, was a strong willed woman, who taught me that I could do anything if I put your mind to it,” says Fournier. Mona studied and graduated from Alberni District Secondary School in 1974 and married her husband Larry the following year. Her working experiences began at Woodward's, McDonald's, Ackland's, among others. And in 1995 she began working at the North Island College, a job she still holds, now as an assessment clerk.
“Then, I decided to further my education as an older adult and earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Vancouver Island University in 2007,” before travelling to Florence, Italy for further studies.
Her passion for travelling to far away areas of the world began after she got the “travel bug,” as she puts it, when a co-worker of hers said that she was going to go to Europe with the Wrestling Club in 2005. “I attached myself to the wrestling club even though I didn’t have anyone who was a wrestler. It was a turning point in my life to be able to tour all the places I read about as a child,” Fournier recalled.
In 2008 she went with the group to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, with Travis Cross, a Port Alberni wrestler representing Canada. It was an exciting moment on her first time ever to the Olympics. Her last trip with the Wrestling Club was in 2012 at the London Olympics.
“I continue to travel and am a life-long learner.”
Because of the various trips that she and her husband had taken to Mexico, she decided to learn Spanish by enrolling in introductory language courses. “But I soon realized that if I didn't use it I wouldn't retain any of what I had learned, including the difficulties of pronunciation.”
She learned that Spanish lessons were taught in the basement of Abbeyfield House in Port Alberni and felt motivated to join a group of adults who, like herself, were eager to learn this language. With a strong determination and passionate approach, Fournier is now a regular student at the weekly Spanish lessons.
“I don’t care how long it will take me to become a Spanish speaker, if the teacher is willing to teach me!”
During the coronavirus pandemic, Fournier continued her interest in furthering her knowledge by taking courses of her personal interest, such as Forensic Science. In 2023, she took part in an educational excursion to Jordan and did an archaeological dig with her North Island College Anthropology class.
She had this unique opportunity to experience a culture of historic areas of that country that she would not otherwise have been able to do in her lifetime. “I went to Petra and saw the red sands and rock formations of Wadi Rum (southern Jordan, near the border with Saudi Arabia). I took part in digging for ancient artifacts too,” she said.
In addition to her working career and trips abroad, Fournier has also being actively involved in volunteering in her community, including her past participation in the planning stages of the KUU-US Crisis Line Society, a non-profit registered charity that provides 24-hour crisis services, and her one-on-one work with immigrants in need of English language tutoring at Literacy Alberni Society.
“One of my students was a wrestler's wife from Moldova, in Eastern Europe," she said. "I saw the barriers people learning English as a second language faced."
As a wrestling club member she helped raise funds for the club by volunteering at the Alberni Valley Bulldogs' Junior A hockey games, where she is a season ticket holder.
Mona and Larry are parents to four children and grandparents to three grandchildren, (two of them play hockey), and will soon have been married for 50 years. The couple enjoys the beautiful nature of Port Alberni and take daily hikes on the popular Alberni Log Train Trail, which stretches for several kilometres along the Beaufort Range.
