{"id":413,"date":"2012-07-21T00:05:49","date_gmt":"2012-07-21T04:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/?p=413"},"modified":"2012-08-08T20:54:18","modified_gmt":"2012-08-09T00:54:18","slug":"an-encounter-that-changed-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/?p=413","title":{"rendered":"An Encounter That Changed My Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, I participated in a local writing contest, held by Good News Toronto<\/a>, called the True Story Contest. The challenge was to write about An Encounter That Changed Your Life, in 450 words or less.<\/p>\n

I wrote about my young friend Sierra, who, barely out of toddlerhood, taught me how to be a better person and inspired me to have a family. My piece won third place in the contest and was published online<\/a> in December 2011.<\/p>\n

Six months later, I happily learned that \u00ab\u00a0Sierra\u00a0\u00bb, the prize-winning nonfiction piece, had been printed in the hard copy version of Good News Toronto. How thrilling; not only is there tangible, inked evidence of my story, it’s even illustrated by Toronto artist Rosie Pea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The best consequence of seeing the story in print, though, is that I was able to share a few copies with Sierra herself, who read it for the first time last week. Her reaction? A pleased smile hidden by an admonishing: \u00ab\u00a0But now everyone<\/em>‘s going to know me!\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

They would be lucky to.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
To read "Sierra" online: http:\/\/www.goodnewstoronto.ca\/2011\/12\/good-news-toronto-true-story-contest-3rd-place-winner\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, I participated in a local writing contest, held by Good News Toronto, called the True Story Contest. The challenge was to write about An Encounter That Changed Your Life, in 450 words or less. I wrote about my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[159,164,160,97,162,163,161,99,12],"language":[7],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-m","tag-contest","tag-good-news","tag-matte","tag-newspaper","tag-rosie-pea","tag-sierra","tag-toronto","tag-writing","language-en_ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=413"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Flanguage&post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}