About

As any child of immigrants knows, growing up as a first generation in a new country is akin to living a double life.

During the school day and week, Urve was a normal Canadian student growing up in suburban Toronto, attending the school around the corner and hanging out with her friends on the block. At nights and on weekends, Urve dedicated her time to her cultural heritage, something many of her friends couldn’t understand at the time. Her world was divided between being one nationality at school and another nationality at home, just like the thousands of other children of immigrants growing up in Toronto.

However, Urve’s childhood was a bit different from other children of immigrants because her culture and country were generally unknown to those around her. Few had heard of Estonia and even fewer could point it out on a map. Although, a map would have been of no help during Urve’s childhood, as Estonia was a country that didn’t even exist at the time.

While her name was impossible to pronounce to those delegated to her “Canadian” life, “Er-va” was as normal a name as they come in the Estonian community. That’s not saying much considering the language embraces a plethora of weird vowels (õ,ö,ä,ü), but it’s better than nothing. It was in this weird but beautiful language that Urve began attending Estonian school once a week from age 6, adding new cultural activities to her roster as she grew older: folk dance, choir, and Girl Guides.

The double life continued when Urve attended the University of Toronto, graduating with a B.Sc in Physical Therapy. After practising physiotherapy for a few years, Urve went back to school and earned an MBA, followed a few years later by a graduate diploma in Health Administration. She worked collaboratively with multi-disciplinary teams from Fortune 500 companies, hospitals, CCAC, home care and start-ups to develop creative and pragmatic strategies to create successful business ventures and manage complex change. All this culminated into over 25 years of leadership and management experience, owing to her strategic thinking and creative problem solving skills.

Urve never strayed far from the Estonian community and the stories from her immigrant parents about the history, people, and culture of Estonia stayed in the back of her mind. Inspired by those tales of stubbornness, ingenuity, and bravery, and other little-known stories of World War II and the Cold War, Urve started writing historical fiction for teens.

Her first book, The Darkest Corner of the World, is based on true stories of the Estonian people and their struggle to survive during the Soviet and Nazi occupations during World War II. Without embracing her Estonian side, Urve would not have been privy to the books and newspapers detailing daily life and folk culture that she applied to her writing. Those years of learning Estonian have paid off tenfold.

Urve is a member of CANSCAIP, SCBWI, and The Writer’s Union.