There is no answer at the door to the house. Julia Armstrong is where she can more often be found - her woodwork shop. Today she has a batch of cedar turtle boxes to cut with the band saw and posts to make for the balcony of the house she has just built with her daughter, Lena.

Armstrong is pleased with how well the boxes have been selling, but is off in her mind to the next project, which will be benches for the Salmon Arm Fall Fair to match the theme "Where People Meet." They will be a take-off on a commission piece she did for the Sorrento Library of a chair resembling an open book. There are sketches on the table. "I spend a lot of time in my shop," she said, "usually making things of my own design. It's my passion."

Armstrong also builds harps and plays the harp at weddings and anniversaries. Her life has been full of both music and woodwork since she was tiny, when her parents were homesteaders in the Kootenays. "I was playing the piano by four and a half. Dad gave me a hammer at the same time. For my ninth birthday I got a pocketknife and at ten a hatchet. I still have them. They are my treasures. At twelve I was actively involved in home building and as a teen I was hired out," she said.

Armstrong moved to the Shuswap from Kaslo in 1971 and married in 1972. In 1973 she and her husband lost everything to a forest fire and started again, building their present three-storey log house on 38 acres in Deep Creek. "It's an ongoing project," said Armstrong. "I finally got to the place recently where I have glass in all the windows. That was a major accomplishment."

Armstrong became certified as a draftsperson and as a teacher. She has designed many houses and has taught music in the classroom. In her shop she has also enjoyed teaching women to use woodworking tools. This combination of skills has led twice in the past decade to international adventures with Builders Without Borders.

The first was in 2000. "A friend told me that they were looking for a woman to teach woodworking to women in Turkey. I got goose bumps when I saw the email. It was three months after the death of my husband and I needed new direction," she said. She and a friend who makes paper were accepted to go to Istanbul by the Foundation for the Support of Women's Work there. After the earthquake they wanted women, whose husbands were out of work, to develop micro-enterprises.
In two months Armstrong set up two woodwork shops with power tools and trained 24 women, all through translators. She also made a shop manual for the tools and their maintenance. The women could only stand and watch when taught by a man, but were hands on with her. They were living in prefab settlements with a multi-purpose building with a kindergarten at one end that housed the shop. They learned how to make toys and frames for windows and later went on to make desks and room dividers. One of them wrote later to let her know that they had won an award.

In 2004 Armstrong was again contacted by Builders Without Borders, this time about a trip to Sri Lanka to teach carpentry. Julia and two Canadian men were sent for six weeks, landing in Colombo, where they were briefed about the ongoing civil war in the country. "We were told that World Vision (one of the sponsors) personnel were not targets. I thought, 'I know there'll be bombing, but it's not aimed at me so I can live with that.'"

She taught carpentry skills to women in the low-lying Ampara area where 80,000 homes had been demolished in the tidal wave and 29,000 had died. "I taught them how to support men at a construction site - about tool boxes, leaners and saw horses. We had fun communicating without using language. They're a warm, friendly, generous people. It's so hot there - 34 in the shade. We were dripping with sweat. Neighbours would bring chairs or juice. The children came up jabbering and rubbing my arm - trying to get through the white perhaps." she said.

Later she was teaching crews to use power tools and to build a more efficient roofing system than the one they had. They also worked on rafters, windows and doors. There was a sort of lottery system to get the houses being built. Meanwhile the people lived in galvanized sheet metal temporary shelters.

One day she was buying work clothes when suddenly the noise stopped and the street was deadly quiet. At the intersection a soldier with a gun at the ready was stopping traffic. They went to their rooms and stayed there. Their vehicle later was rerouted through military detours, where they saw a van exactly like theirs with military personnel in it and an orange towel in the window in imitation of the World Vision logo. Realizing that they were to be used as a human shield they decided to pull out a few days early and return to Colombo.

In spite of the dangers, Armstrong would go off across the world again if called. "When I have the opportunity to go somewhere to teach others to use tools to be self-sufficient in their lives I can't resist," she said.

Armstrong is writing a book about her experience in Sri Lanka. Her work can be seen at Shuswap Artisan Coop at DeMille's, just west of Salmon Arm, or at www.juliaswoodworks.com.

September 2007, Lynn Dewing