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Renee Marquis had a dream, a vision really, to open a chain of family restaurants.

To give customers healthy, tasty, home-cooked fare — with lots of fruits and vegetables — and packed with down-home Newfoundland goodness and everything else she wasn’t offering in her day job as the owner of 10 KFC (aka Kentucky Fried Chicken) restaurants scattered around the province.

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The more she thought about this dream, the more she was tormented by it.

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She couldn’t sleep. And when she wasn’t sleeping, she couldn’t stop thinking about the arc of her life, about spending another decade doing the same old deep-fried thing, a thing she didn’t feel quite right about doing anymore, knowing what we know about the health merits of fast food, but something she couldn’t just up and quit.

“Colonel Sanders’ family and my family were personal friends,” Ms. Marquis says.

“I have pictures of myself as a little girl sitting on the Colonel’s knee eating a chicken leg. Mildred Ruggles, his daughter, was like a godmother to me. I got Christmas presents, birthday presents and just-because presents from her.