Louise Wolterson-Blom

Louke was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the third of four children of Ir. Frans Willem Cornelis Blom and Anna van Stolk. In 1939, the family moved to Voorschoten where they endured the anxious war years, forced to billet German officers while also hiding Jewish refugees. After the war, she briefly moved to England to work as au pair and farm labourer, before returning to the Netherlands where she married her sweetheart Johannes (Jan) Aleid Wolterson, a university friend of her brother, Gerard. Louke and Jan first lived in her family’s country home in Bosch en Duin near Zeist, where their son, Rutger (Roger) was born. In 1949, Jan left the Netherlands to work on the west coast of Canada; Louke and Roger followed a year later.

Louke and Jan loved Canada and never looked back. They settled and built their first home in the Horseshoe Bay area, where they raised their four children and Jan worked in the forest and engineering industries.

Even though Louke was reserved and even shy, she was a risk-taker with a strong sense of personal style, generosity, responsibility, and adventure. This meant for much fun and excitement, including frequent house guests, large dinner parties, car-camping outings, skiing holidays, raising canaries, poodles and English Staffie terriers, and building an off-the-grid cabin in the West Chilcotin. She especially enjoyed the cabin for its wilderness solitude and the many delightful, rustic summers spent swimming, fishing, and learning about Chilcotin life. She briefly worked at Murchie’s in West Vancouver in the early 1970s after Roger died, and for the last seven years of Jan’s career, they moved to Montreal and then to Pakistan. After Jan retired, they built a new home in Ryder Lake in the east Fraser Valley, where they re-lived the rural lifestyle they so enjoyed in 1950s Horseshoe Bay. In 2006, they built their final home in Parksville.

Louke loved family gatherings and intellectual conversation. She was a terrific cook and host, a fashionista, an appreciator of art and fine craft, a prolific reader and letter writer, a meticulous housekeeper, a quiet gardener, a lover of animals, birds, wildlife, and nature, and was hugely interested in the world around her. Even at 97, she loved to telephone and email, read the papers, watch her favourite tennis, curling, or news programs, and putter in her garden. In this way and with the help and companionship from her two wonderful caregivers, Monette Rata, and Angela Jupe, she maintained a strong connection with her family and friends.

Louke was predeceased by her son, Rutger, son-in-law, Robert Fontana, husband, Jan, and most of her immediate generation. She is survived by her three daughters: Eveline (Ken Jeannotte), Anna Fontana (step-grandchildren Kaitlin and Callie), and Fennya (Lindsay Jones and grandchildren Russell (Amrit) and Megan (Nigel)). We will elprofoundly miss her elegance, her sense of adventure and her firm, but loving resolve. She was a wonderful mother, grandmother, daughter, sister and aunt, and an exceptional role-model.

Funeral arrangements by Yates Memorial Services in Parksville, BC. In lieu of flowers, please make donations in Louke’s memory to the Nature Conservancy of Canada or other conservation organizations.