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Linda Otilia EPPLER

May 4, 2008

(nee Albrecht)

(Aug. 8, 1923 - May 4, 2008)

In the wee hours of a Sunday morning in May, while robins sang over the twinkling lights of our sleeping city, Mom quietly slipped away.

She was born at home, of Russian-German stock, near Kandahar, Saskatchewan, and was the second eldest of nine children.

During the Depression, when the family farm was lost to the bank, she and her family piled into an old Buick and came to B.C., sleeping in abandoned buildings along the way. They settled in Vernon, where she worked alongside her mother in the vegetable fields of the Coldstream Ranch.

At 16, she was the cook for the boy’s prep school there. (Forever after, she made the world’s best homemade bread and jam, not to mention other baked goodies. All the kids in the neighborhood were waiting on her back steps when her cinnamon buns were in the oven.)

As a young woman, she followed her soldier to Kamloops, where they raised two children and an orchard full of apples. Later, when her soldier-cum-DND fireman was transferred to the Coast, she followed him again. First to Victoria, and then to Chilliwack.

For the past five years she made The Cedars here in Victoria her home. A place like no other. She loved the deer by her window and the ducks by her door.

She leaves behind a brother Bert; two sisters: Verna and Dorothy; numerous sisters-and-brothers-in-law; and many, many nieces and nephews, and friends, as well as son Richard, daughter Sharon and son-in-law Henri, and grandchildren Jurrien (Shannon), Aniane (Mike), Ruan (Patti), and Rudi (Jackie).

She’s gone now to join her soldier, and her parents, brother, and sisters.

While we’re down here saying “There she goes” they’re up there singing, “She’ll be coming round the mountain, driving six white horses wearing red pajamas and we’ll all go to meet her when she comes!”

Memorial at a later date.




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