Margo Kane - Early Life

Early Life

Margo Kane was the only First Nations child adopted into a white working-class home. Her adoptive father had re-married three times. Kane grew up with an abusive and overly strict stepmother, and eventually found herself alienated from her family later on.

Kane found an interest in dance at an early age. She was an honours student in school; however, her teenage years led to severe depression. She has described her early life as having a sense of “cultural schizophrenia”. Kane remembers that she knew she was native before her father had even told her. Of her first encounters with the children bussed to her school from the residential school, Kane recalls that “we just stared at each other like cows in the field. Just looking wide-eyes, wondering who was going to make the first move.”. By the time Kane graduated high school she had, what she describes as an “inferiority complex”.

By the age of twenty, Kane had taken up residence on Skid Row, was living off social assistance, and was dependent on drugs and alcohol. Eventually, Kane was able to disentangle herself from her substance abuses, and move away from Skid Row and enroll in Edmonton’s Grant McEwan College for performing arts; it was here that she excelled in dance, acting, and singing. Her performance at McEwan College led to scholarships with Banff School of Fine Arts and Circle in the Square Theatre Company in New York.