The youngest of fourteen children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse Tanguay, both of French-Canadian descent, Céline Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken, but, by her own account, happy home in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada. had always been a part of the family (Dion was named after the song Céline, recorded by French singer Hugues Aufray two years before her birth), as she grew up singing with her siblings in her parents' small piano bar called Le Vieux Baril. From an early age Dion had dreamed of being a performer. In a 1994 interview with People magazine, she recalled, "I missed my family and my home, but I don't regret having lost my adolescence. I had one dream: I wanted to be a singer."
At age twelve, Dion collaborated with her mother and her brother Jacques to compose her first song, "Ce n'était qu'un rêve" ("It Was Only a Dream").] Her brother Michel Dondalinger Dion sent the recording to music manager René Angélil, whose name he discovered on the back of a Ginette Reno album.] Angélil was moved to tears by Dion's voice, and decided to make her a star. In 1981, he mortgaged his home to fund her first record, La voix du bon Dieu ("The Voice of the Good God"), which later became a local number-one hit and made Dion an instant star in Quebec. Her popularity spread to other parts of the world when she competed in the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, Japan, and won the musician's award for "Top Performer" as well as the gold medal for "Best Song" with "Tellement j'ai d'amour pour toi" ("I Have So Much Love for You").
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