Hanno, a resident of Tapestry at Wesbrook Village, has a lifelong love of nature that she credits in part to her upbringing in Germany. The 92-year-old still remembers the lyrics of a childhood hymn: Go out my heart and look for joy in the summer’s garden.

“In my generation we grew up with German folk songs and we had this close connection to the land,” Hanno says.

While this sounds idyllic, Hanno’s life in Germany was in fact very difficult leading up to and during the Second World War. Born in Stuttgart in 1931, she was just seven years old when the war started. “Our lives changed drastically,” she says. “My father was drafted on the first day, and my brother had to go to war as soon as he turned 16 (he was killed two years later in battle in Russia). Meanwhile, my mother and I spent many terrifying nights alone in our cellar,” she says.

After their home was badly damaged by a bomb that destroyed the home next door, Hanno’s mother decided they needed to move out of the city, and they found lodgings in the attic of a street cleaner’s house in a small town in the Black Forest. Unlike most Germans at the time, Hanno, her mother and their hosts didn’t go hungry thanks to the cows, goat, chickens, and vegetable garden the farmer’s wife kept year-round.

Despite the horrors and constant fear of wartime, Hanno found living on the farm a comfort. “We always had a garden. Before the war, we moved into a new house and my father said everyone could wish for something, and I wished for a little bit of land to plant seeds,” she says.

At the end of the war her family was reunited in Stuttgart and Hanno was able to return to school, where she says the teachers “managed to light a spark in our souls to ask the deeper questions about life. What had caused this war? Why is there cruelty in the world? How could we ever live with the fact of the Holocaust, especially knowing our parents’ generation had allowed it to happen by not resisting?” Hanno adds.

It was at school that Hanno first came across ideas such as social justice, service to society, and the responsibility each citizen has to participate in the political life of the state. The subsequent wars — including the Korean and Vietnam wars and the war in Iraq — and especially the use of atomic bombs and nuclear reactors, solidified Hanno’s passion for activism.

Hanno met her husband Ken at an international student ski camp in the Alps. While Ken had been studying chemical engineering in England, he had grown up in Saskatchewan so they decided to move to Canada. They were married for 55 years until Ken passed away and had four children, two of whom were adopted.

They couple initially moved to Calgary, where Hanno (who studied Chemistry in Germany) worked as a Chemical Technician for the City of Calgary, a job she was told she could only hold until a man was found to take over! After relocating to Vancouver, Ken taught chemical engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and Hanno studied philosophy and literature. Once their children came along, the couple decided Hanno would stay home with them and focus on volunteer work and her activism.

More recently, Hanno’s environmentalism led her to oppose the building of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. One of the ways she contributed was to make soup, which was delivered weekly to a protester living in a tree house on one of the local sites. “That kept him going for nine months,” she says.

Hanno moved into Tapestry six years ago, after she broke her arm and realized she could no longer take care of her house on her own. She feels lucky, though, that her previous home was just on the other side of the forest adjacent to Wesbrook Village, where she still walks close to five kilometres several times a week. “I walk rain or shine, and that’s how I got to know my beautiful forest,” she says.

Hanno’s deep connection to the land and nature drives her desire to help protect the environment. “It is up to the people to keep demanding a lifestyle that is sustainable and will allow future generations to live on this planet,” she says. This has included working to raise awareness among her fellow Tapestry residents about the importance of recycling and composting.

Something that brings Hanno joy every day is Tapestry’s seventh floor garden. “I just love being in nature, getting my hands dirty and feeling the wonder. You go out and you suddenly see the swelling of the buds, and that’s enough to make your day wonderful,” she says. “I am a great believer in the healing power of beauty. If that space up there is beautiful, it will help everybody,” she adds.

Hanno, who describes herself as “multi-religious”, believes in and continues to pursue lifelong learning. She has explored many spiritual paths including Buddhism, which she says aligns well with her environmentalism. She also practices Qigong for about 15 minutes each day (she had previously practiced Tai Chi from the age of 80).

Spry and bright-eyed and delighted to welcome a visitor to her Tapestry suite with tea and tarts, Hanno recognizes that she has been blessed with good health over her lifetime. “It’s just luck that I was born a very healthy person and have had very little physical pain in my life. I think that is a gift and I’m always grateful for that,” she says.

Even though her move to Tapestry was somewhat accidental, Hanno says she feels privileged to live here. “The environment is perfect for me. It is such a luxury to have an apartment to yourself and Tapestry has created this space to be as efficient as possible,” she says.

Hanno also appreciates the balance of the privacy of her own suite, with the option to connect with others in the community. “I am a people person, and I think we are all social animals. At Tapestry I have all the privacy I want, but if I need company, I always have it,” she says.

Staying physically and mentally active is clearly core to Hanno’s life philosophy and contributes to her longevity. “When I wake up, I say, ‘Now you have been given another day – use it the way you should’. And the way you should use it is to learn, and to love, and to be kind to people and help. There’s not a single day where I don’t learn something,” she says.

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Hanno is one of our company’s newest resident Ambassadors – volunteer community spokespeople who are pleased to share what they love about their life and living at Tapestry. We are pleased and proud to share Hanno’s inspirational story in print and video. We are inspired by Hanno’s commitment to living a life devoted to learning and to taking positive action that aligns with her beliefs.