When her daughters became anorexic in the 1980s, Claude-Pierre dropped out of school at UVIC to become a full-time counsellor for her daughters and other patients like them. Her method of healing, involving "constant love and attention";, proved more effective than the tradition treatments. In 1999, she founded the Montreaux Counselling Centre with her husband in Oak Bay, B.C. She wrote The Secret Language of Eating Disorders (Random House, 1997) and appeared on TV shows such as Oprah and 20/20. The Montreaux Counselling Centre was shut down after its license was revoked when former employees spoke out against the Centre in 1999 claiming patients were force-fed and often too sick to be without medical care. The scandal surrounding the Montreaux Centre became the subject for a book by Province investigative reporter Barbara McLintock called Anorexia's Fallen Angel (HarperCollins, 2002).

[BCBW 2003]