|
Kate Vician – An Indomitable Lady |
|
|
|
 Kate Vician is the kind of strong and independent woman that I have always admired. Even the word indomitable seems inadequate to describe her. She has survived the loss of her mother to tuberculosis at age nine, being unwanted by more than one stepmother, the bombing of Berlin during WWII, the atrocities inflicted on her by enemy soldiers at the tender age of 17 and the recent death of her husband after 50 years of marriage.
When WWII ended Kate was in Dresden where she had been put to work in a hotel occupied by the Russians. She walked back to Berlin, a distance of 200 kilometers, only to find that she was not welcomed by her stepmother. Kate trained to be a nurse and that was her ticket to independence. She left Germany and arrived in Canada on April 14, 1957, at the age of 31. She was completely on her own, with no friends or family to greet her in Toronto and she spoke no English. She quickly found a place to live, a job and a husband and shrugs all of that off as if to say “So what? It’s nothing.” 
Kate and her husband John worked hard together. They moved from Toronto to Burks Falls in the Muskoka area of northern Ontario where they operated a fishing camp. Kate worked fulltime as a nurse in the hospital, raised two sons, did her own housekeeping and that of the summer cottages. They caught the RV travel bug in the ‘70’s and eventually travelled all over North American. They started with a tent trailer, graduated to a used Class C motorhome and then in 1982 purchased a brand new Class A, 24’. John wasn’t confident driving the bigger rig so Kate, undaunted, took the wheel. They travelled south to Florida, north to the Arctic Circle, to Newfoundland in the east and west to British Columbia. Kate fell in love with the Rocky Mountains and when the couple retired, they sold the summer resort and made Peachland their home. When John had to go into care, Kate moved to Kelowna to be near her one true love.
Among her many accomplishments is painting though she’s had no formal training. A scene of the Tunnel Mountain and the Bow River she titled Tranquility hangs in her living room. While employed as a nurse in the hospital at Burks Falls, they weren’t allowed to hang pictures in the children’s ward. Kate thought the children needed something to cheer them and painted murals on the walls of story book characters. She later repeated these figures on the walls of her grandson’s nursery.
Kate began writing her life story through a writers’ group at the Society for Learning in Retirement in the fall of 2004. Mosaic of My Life, a Memoir, has been self-published with the help of a friend who acted as editor. Kate has left nothing untold and found that writing her story has given her peace. The depression that used to accompany thoughts of the sadder times in her life is gone.
Failing eyesight does little to impair Kate’s life or dampen her spirit. She continues to write using her new Macintosh computer. She is in the process of self-publishing two children’s books and is writing a novel. There is no stopping this enduring and endearing woman who smiles as though she has never had a care in the world. Indomitable? Yes, she is all of that and more. I am blessed to call her friend.
|
