Although she lacked proper teaching qualifications, Sveva was offered a job at St. James Catholic School, an elementary school in Vernon. In 1970, she went to the University of Victoria for two years to get a secondary school teaching certificate. Sveva did not have enough money to pay her university fees, so a group of friends loaned her the money that she needed. She returned to Vernon and taught art and social studies at Charles Bloom High School in Lumby for the next eleven years. Sveva loved children, and she was described as a born teacher. Sveva never married or had children of her own, but she found joy in her students, her friends, and her art.

Sveva took up painting again when she was in her 50s. She had painted as a child and a young woman. However, her mother had discouraged her artistic talents. Ofelia even destroyed some of Sveva’s paintings. An art teacher at the University of Victoria urged Sveva to start painting once more. In 1975 Sveva began planning her largest project. This would be a series of watercolours she called Recapitulation. She wanted to show the journey of her life in a series of paintings. Perhaps painting these pictures also helped Sveva come to grips with painful memories of her father’s death, her mother’s solitude, and her own confinement.