Blind knitter supplying teddies for the needy

D’Entremont started knitting for the Teddies for Tragedies program in 2002. Her decision to volunteer was an easy one. She’s been helping others for close to 88 years. “I can’t remember when I couldn’t knit,” she said. “Anything that anyone wanted me to knit, I’d knit: jackets, sweaters, socks, afghans, most everything, really. “I must have been around six or seven years when I started knitting for the Rainbow Haven program in Halifax. It was a place for kids who belonged to low-income families, kids who didn’t have very much.”

Although d’Entremont has had macular degeneration with a hole in each eye for close to 20 years she manages to see her stitches if she “holds them up close”.

The youngest of four children, from age 10 to 16, she helped her parents during summers in their restaurant – Amiro’s Lobster Shop. “When we weren’t working at the restaurant we were taking them up to show visitors through the lighthouse (East Pubnico Lighthouse),” she said.

Her parents, Austin and Theresa Amiro, were lightkeepers for the now demolished beacon.

She later worked as a personal care worker at Tidal View Manor for a few years.

She says she’s trying to encourage others to knit, especially the younger generation. One of her 10-year-old great grandchildren, Megan, will be receiving a book on knitting for kids, knitting needles and yarn. “I want to see if I can get her started on it,” she said.

D’entremont recently sent in a collection of 29 bears for the Teddies for Tragedy project. Doctors who treat children in the third world have found that the teddy bears provided by volunteer knitters like d’Entremont are sometimes as important to healing as medicine.

Knitters supplying the Yarmouth group have provided hundreds of bears over the past five years to children in Mexico, Cuba, Honduras, Bosnia, India, China, Haiti, Nicaragua, New Orleans and for local church shoebox programs. “The kids around here, those teddies don’t mean anything but a child that doesn’t have anything is so happy to get one of those bears,” said d’Entremont.