Strength and Fun in Community

Blog 7


While I lived in Germany, I had a close-knit circle of family and friends. After I moved to Canada, I was very lonely and depended only on my husband, which was a huge responsibility for him and led to a strain on our relationship.


I knew I had to find a new community to feel at home in this new environment. However, I used to be very shy, and making new friends and building connections was quite challenging for me. However, I have always been myself among my circle of friends who accepted the authentic me.


Joining the Orleans Newcomers Club, Arteast and Women Moving Forward offered me opportunities to mingle with others. In a Sunday morning life drawing group, I made more acquaintances, but I still missed having deeper relationships. My situation changed when I met artist Rebecca Dufton at an Arteast vernissage. We both loved dogs and bonded immediately. When we found out we lived only minutes apart, she invited me to join her group of outdoor painters. 

They had already met as a group for some time, but welcomed me warmly. Soon, I joined the Plein Air Ensemble for my first painting trip. Once I joined Helene Martin and Janis Fulton as the executive of the Galerie Belle Rive, I met even more artists. Soon, I also joined a painting group that went to Kamouraska in Quebec for a week each year. I finally had a life outside of my family and enjoyed the growing friendships with people who shared my interests and offered a support system.



Through my art, I connected not only with other artists but also with collectors and students, many of whom have become friends over the years. Art has enriched my life so vastly that I want to share the joy. My mission is to create communities of artists and students who inspire, support, and encourage each other. 


I also found a community in my local church, which I had never experienced before. In Germany, not many people attend church regularly aside from Christmas. There were no coffee hours or events outside of the church after the service. I never connected with any members, but those I already knew from the neighbourhood.

Drawing from my 2023 Summer Creativity Activities

These days, I feel blessed. I still have a solid group of friends in Germany and also in Canada. Most are artist friends, but I also have friends from church and the playgroups I went to. I am thankful that my work has helped me to be more open to approaching others. I enjoy building new friendships, especially as our children are adults and live their own lives. Friendships are essential to grow old surrounded by a network of like-minded people. Therefore, I welcome new friends into my life, like the members of a book club in my neighbourhood.

Someone asked me once why I needed friends. I cannot imagine life without them. I found my community of friends in Canada. If I were to leave now, I would miss my Canadian friends as much as I miss my German friends when I am in Canada. However, our bonds are strong. Technology has made it much easier to stay connected through email, texting, and video calls. No more waiting for snail mail that was already outdated when it arrived!


Thank you for being part of my community!

The Need for Human Connection

Image from my German course book 

Blog 6


Over the next five months, I will reflect on my decision to remain in Canada, considering my five core values. In this blog, I write about my hunger for CONNECTION.

While I lived in Germany, I had a close-knit circle of family and friends, most of them I could reach in 30 minutes or less. I could bike or drive to my parents in about 10 minutes. I regularly met with friends to go to the movies, have dinner, attend dance courses, and visit the gym. It was indeed the couple I went to the gym with who introduced me to my husband.

I had a close relationship with my colleagues and fellow students from my correspondence courses at university, and I often saw many of them outside of work.

When I arrived in Canada in April 1995, I hardly knew my fiance’s German family. His few friends from university lived at least 100 km away. Needless to say, there was a big void of human connection.

When Ingo took a part-time job with a family friend, I felt even more trapped. I wasn’t bored because I spent the time creating teddy bears and writing to my friends, but I have never been the adventurous type, and with little money and no connections, I didn’t venture out on my own. I was intimidated by the size of everything. Remember, I came from a small town.

We visited a couple of fitness centres, but many of them had separate sections for women and men, something we were not accustomed to and didn’t want. We tried a dance school because I had made many friends during my time at a German dance school. There were dance parties every Sunday and after our classes. However, the venues we visited around Mississauga left us disheartened because we only saw middle-aged people sitting at tables with food rather than a disco-like atmosphere.

After we moved to Ottawa in August 1995, where Ingo found full-time employment, I felt even lonelier and very homesick. To meet others, I registered with the Ottawa School of Art as soon as we moved to our new home in Orleans. I was very shy and never connected with the other participants. However, I was excited about the instructor’s encouragement over my slowly re-emerging painting skills, which I had neglected for a couple of years. My rekindled interest in art became my happy place.

Once settled in Orleans, we adopted a dog and joined the Orleans Newcomers Club. I met many pleasant people through the club activities, but most of the members were already a step ahead of us with kids and added responsibilities.

I also met some Germans but realized that a shared language alone was not a sufficient basis for a friendship. Additionally, Ottawa is a significant centre for the Canadian Army, which explains why many military couples focus on their families and not on connecting with people outside of their homes. I made a good friend, only to discover a year into our friendship that they would move away. I never heard from her again.

Once we had our first child, I connected with more women in our neighbourhood and several playgroups. Unfortunately, many of them went back to work after a year. However, one of my best friends is still from playgroup times, even though our friendship only grew once our kids were already in high school after we had lost sight of each other for some time. During the years with small children, the children were the focus.

some of the many portraits I created of loved ones and quick encounters

Joining Arteast in 1999 and attending art classes helped me meet new creative people. At this point, I felt more comfortable with the language and enjoyed the activities of the organization and the local art school. I found a wonderful mentor and mother figure, Margaret Clyde, who introduced me to the Blackburn Hamlet painting group and showed me how to frame my art. She also sold my first piece, a painting of white peonies, to her neighbour.


I also got a lot of encouragement and inspiration from the women I met at Women Moving Forward, an organization created by Pierrette Raymond to provide a supportive community of growth and inspiration. My first retreat with them opened my eyes to more fulfillment when I heard the stories of the many amazing women in the group. Suddenly, I saw possibilities for myself to define myself outside of my responsibilities as a wife and mother. 

Please check my July 25 post to learn how I finally found my community

From Small-Town to Super-sized World

Train ride along the Rhein River with lots of castles and vineyards

Blog 5


As an instructor, I love sharing my experiences while learning about my students' stories. By comparing certain aspects of life in Germany and Canada, I will tell you more about my background and transformation.


When I arrived in Canada, everything was new, exciting and scary at the same time. For most of my life, I had lived close to my family and friends. The furthest distance was during my six-month internship at a yarn company in southern Germany. It was less than a 3-hour drive from there to my parents' home.


Moving 6,000 km away to a metropolis like Toronto was inconceivable. I hardly knew anything about Canada. Until then, the only time I left Europe was for a summer vacation to the Asian part of Turkey. I was used to a small town of about 10,00 people. In comparison, Frankfurt, where I worked, seemed enormous, even with a population of only about 600,000 in the early 1990s.


Aside from the big cities, much of Canada is rural or wilderness, so travel between inhabited areas is often long. It's not surprising that Germans and Canadians have different perceptions of distances. While many Canadians view a 2-hour drive as a short trip, many Germans may even question such a trip for a weekend.


Arriving in Toronto, I experienced a culture shock. Everything was super-sized: giant homes, huge cars, wide roads, massive parking lots and shopping centres. Getting to the next bus stop required a long walk. Anywhere outside of the centre of town, you still need a car. 

from my sketchbook

I love the space Canada offers. In Germany, the small streets with on-street parking annoy me. The traffic volume is so bad that I prefer public transportation during my visits. It makes traveling less stressful, and I get endless opportunities to sketch. 

 

from my sketchbook

When I visit Germany these days, I still enjoy that everything is close. You can usually walk to a couple of grocery stores, bakeries and a multitude of boutique stores.


Many Germans frequently complain about the reliability of public transportation, but it takes you almost everywhere. As Germany is less than half the size of Ontario, it becomes clear why public transit is more available in Germany. With over five times the population of Ontario, the density in cities makes public transportation more manageable.


The densely populated German country also means that most people don't own a house. Roughly half the population rents their living space, especially in the cities. Many people move to the suburbs because they cannot afford the rental fees in the large cities. It is a struggle to afford a house in Germany without a second full-time income. Plus, most people stay in their homes until they are too old to live independently or die. Therefore, many children take over their parental home. This situation is slowly changing as employment decisions have forced more people to move.


In Canada, people aim to buy a house or apartment. For many, renting is a transitional phase. When I came to Canada, I could hardly believe that people moved, on average, every seven years. However, these days, the dream of owning a house is almost unattainable for many young people due to housing shortages and the high cost of living.


I feel happy in our neighbourhood. Our family could not have afforded a house with a large yard in Germany. It was the perfect place for our children to grow up. Plus, I love my spacious art studio.

 

I like that we live close to the Ottawa River and many green spaces. However, I miss the many paths through residential neighbourhoods, through fields and woods that link towns and make Germany very bike-friendly.

During the next five months, I will reflect on my decision to stay in Canada relating to my five core values:

• Creativity
• Community
• Connection
• Collaboration
• Curiosity

The Power of Stories

Along the Weser, watercolour

Blog 4


I returned from Germany and experienced so much that I have to take some time to process it.


Whenever I come to my native country, everyone asks me whether I could imagine living in Germany again. The answer is not that easy. I realize that my three or four-week vacation is not a realistic impression of life in Germany because I meet with so many beloved people that it’s more like a continuous party. I hardly face the everyday aspects of life in Germany.


When I moved to Canada thirty years ago, on April 21, 1995, I didn’t consider the long-term consequences of the decision. I saw it as a big adventure, not a permanent change. We had scheduled six months to explore the country and find work. I guess I did suppress the possibility of moving away forever. I had only rented out my apartment for six months. However, I wanted to live forever with my future husband, Ingo.


When Ingo received a job offer in Ottawa in early August, everything happened so fast that I didn’t have time to question our decisions. It was an exciting time. Within two months, we moved to an apartment hotel, purchased a house and married.


Would I choose differently today? Could I imagine moving back? I will try to answer these questions in the upcoming blogs.


When trying to answer the questions, I have realized the answer depends less on the location and more on the people in my life. There is truth in the saying, “Home is where the heart is.”


It has troubled me lately that my connection to Germany will be non-existent in a few decades. My children and any future generations (if there will be even any) won’t remember our German roots.


However, during this visit, I realized that even if you stay in the country at some point, the people who remember you will be gone. My mother wanted to return to her hometown, Minden, one last time. I am thankful that my parents were well enough for the trip, and my son Dominic was with us when we took this trip into the past. Even though he cannot relate to my relatives because he was only two when my last grandmother died and hardly knew many of the relatives close to me, he knows now where his grandmother grew up.


We drove past her parental home, which was bombed out and rebuilt after the war. I have never been inside because my mother moved to Gelsenkirchen-Buer in the Ruhr Area in the early 1950s. However, I still recognized my grandmother’s parental home when we drove by, which I remember from visits to her brother and his wife. My mother told us about the relatives and friends who have long died or moved away. However, some places she described were still standing, like the church where she was confirmed and my parents married. It was a very emotional trip. 

 

Vanilla Ice Cream With Rhubarb Compote, watercolour

It is all about the stories we tell and the traditions we pass along. I use my art to accompany my stories. My art helps me remember the things I encounter. During my trips, I usually create sketches related to my daily activities.


How do you keep your story alive? Does it matter to you? Do you tell your family history to your children?