Henderika van Bosch

Ria grew up in a small town in The Netherlands with her parents, Aagje and Pieter and her three younger siblings, Lies, Piet and Agnes. Ria’s teenage years were marked by the hardships and hunger endured in WWII in the occupied Netherlands. The memory of those years stayed with her all her life.

Ria always had a talent for numbers and, after the war, trained as a bookkeeper, working in business offices first in her hometown, then in Amsterdam. It was during her commute between her home and Amsterdam that she first met Walter, the charming sailor who became her husband and life-long love. Walter’s work with the Dutch merchant marine took him around the world for months at a time after their marriage but, after the birth of their first child, to Ria’s joy, he left life at sea to become a landlubber and learn a trade. Eager for greater opportunity, Ria and Walter took the challenging step of leaving their homeland and families behind, and packed up their baby and their belongings and joined the many thousands of Dutch farmworkers and trades people immigrating to Canada in the 1950’s. They settled in Calgary where their second daughter was born. As new immigrants, their early years were often difficult and for the first few years, Ria struggled to find a job in her field because, as occurs still today, her qualifications were not deemed sufficient without “Canadian experience”. The friends made at the new Calgary Reformed Church, comprised mostly of Dutch immigrants, became an important network for both spiritual and social support. Ria and Walter were very active in the church and Ria held volunteer positions throughout the years as church treasurer, deacon and Sunday School Superintendent. After more than a decade in Canada, Walter and Ria fulfilled another dream and started their own small plastering business supported by Ria’s strong managerial and financial talents. After retirement, Walter and Ria left the Calgary winters behind to take up residence in West Kelowna and enjoy their two grandchildren, their beautiful view of Lake Okanagan and the natural surroundings.

Ria inherited her “green thumb” from her father and she created flower gardens that were an oasis of colour and fragrance. Her bountiful vegetable garden in Calgary provided food for the family almost the entire year. She loved nurturing houseplants to have flowers all year long. Her daughters learned all the traditional domestic skills from Ria but she focused even more on fostering self-reliance, economic independence and promoted the importance for women to obtain post-secondary education. In her sixties, Ria embraced new technology and became very adept at the computer and used her tablet daily till her early nineties. Ria loved light classical music, was a very fine seamstress and embroiderer and enjoyed learning new crafts after retirement, during winters spent in Arizona. Her biggest joy was to spend her evening reading a novel.

After a full life of 96 years, Ria follows her beloved husband, only four months after his death, and gifts a lifetime of memories to her daughters, Agnes (Graham) and Donna (Alan), and her granddaughters Cailie (Kyle) and Lindsay (Martin). She was predeceased by her parents and her brother Piet and sister, Lies. She will be greatly missed by her sister Agnes and the extended family in The Netherlands, as well as her sister-in-law, Emmy, and nephew and niece Gordon (Bettie) and Lynn (Andy) in Canada and the US.