About Ann Mary Stanton



Ann Mary currently lives in Villereal, a bastide town of South West France where she moved in 1999 with her husband Willem Wijgerse, a retired ship’s pilot from Rotterdam. Together they have renovated several houses in France, with the Montreal home replacement being in Marseillan on the Etang de Thau. They have developed skills in working with lime including fresco painting and different wall finishes and in designing spaces. 

As one of the Baby Boom generation, Ann Mary grew up in the London suburb of Whetstone where her father was a marine engineer and her mother a teacher. After two world wars had negatively affected parents and grandparents, there was a determination to build a better world and the optimism of that time influenced her spirit of discovery. She went to North London Collegiate School and trained as a Speech Therapist, fascinated by language and communication. She was academic but always interested in art and writing, theatre and music.

After initially working in England, she went to Canada getting a job because no Canadian had been found for it in six months and this gave her an entry to the country, as a Speech-Language Pathologist. She worked in Ontario and Quebec and then did her Doctorate in New York. As the head of the speech and language department of the Montreal Children’s Hospital, she developed a consultancy in Baffin Island working with Inuit and expanded this when she worked later in private practice.

Time in France has allowed her to return to her earlier passions such as sculpture and pottery, and to write.