Carmel Cioe loved being called "the Queen". She certainly dominated her household, which comprised her beloved amiable husband of 79 years, Merky and her daughter Paula.
Carmel grew up in an Italian Canadian working-class family in the heart of Depression-era Toronto. She didn't speak English until she went to school where the nuns whacked her left hand when she attempted to write with it. One of Carmel's family chores was to relieve her father of his paypacket at the Wheatsheaf Hotel where he stopped after work on Fridays. Carmel wasn't ashamed of her gritty upbringing but she was determined to surmount it.
Carmel was justifiably proud of her looks, she was a very attractive woman and she enjoyed the attention. She was unjustifiably embarrassed by her intelligence, she left school at 14 to work in a factory. In fact Carmel was a shrewd, highly intelligent woman. She employed this intelligence to devastating effect on crosswords and bingo. In another era she might have become a CEO but Carmel was content to be the CEO of her own house. "My house!" was a proud monument to middle-class achievement and Carmel was a paragon of middle class morality.
Carmel was formidable but she could poke fun at herself: "I'm the Queen" she would purr, and she liked being teased. She was fiercely protective and generous with her immediate family: her husband, her daughter, her grandchildren Tristan, Rebecca and George and her "rotten son-in-law", Julian.
