Rita MacNeil (May 28, 1944 – April 16, 2013) was a Canadian singer from the community of Big Pond on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. Her biggest hit, "Flying On Your Own", was a crossover Top 40 hit in 1987 and was covered by Anne Murray the following year, although she had hits on the country and adult contemporary charts throughout her career. In the United Kingdom, MacNeil's song "Working Man" was a No. 11 hit in 1990. In 1990, she was the bestselling country artist in Canada, outselling even Garth Brooks and Clint Black. She was also the only female singer ever to have three separate albums chart in the same year in Australia. Through her career MacNeil received five honorary degrees, released 24 albums, won three Juno Awards, a SOCAN National Achievement Award, four CCMA awards, eleven ECMA awards, was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame and was named to the Orders of Nova Scotia and Canada. On the eighth anniversary of her death, April 16, 2021, it was announced that Rita MacNeil would be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame post-humously in May of that same year. Personal life Early years MacNeil was born in Big Pond to Catherine and Neil J. MacNeil. She was born with a cleft lip and palate. MacNeil was the fifth of eight siblings; she had three brothers and four sisters. Her father owned a local store and was a carpenter, and her mother worked in the family store. As a young girl, MacNeil was molested by her great-uncle who lived down the road from the family home. For many years she kept this to herself, only revealing it for the first time in her autobiography, recalling years of sexual abuse and noting that he had done everything short of raping her. She noted that the sexual abuse eventually ended, unsure whether it was because someone had found out about it or that her family moved away from Big Pond. She called it a point in her life that profoundly affected her because it was a traumatic passage out of innocence. 1950s In the mid-1950s MacNeil's parents sold their store and began a big move that would take them to Sydney, then to Toronto. MacNeil's father worked as a carpenter, her mother worked at Eaton's, and her sister Mary worked at a local grocery store. Alcoholism, already