Ilse-Christa Folkens loved the printed word – and made a career in Canada importing books | Canada Voices

Ilse-Christa Folkens: Mother. Book lover. Heritage keeper. Christian. Born April 5, 1934, in Hamburg, Germany; died March 13, 2024 in Burlington, Ont., of complications from dementia; aged 89.

Ilse-Christa Naegeler was five years old when the Second World War erupted. Growing up in Hamburg meant that her childhood was marred by air raids.

In July, 1943, during a night of intense attacks, she was sheltering in her basement when a bomb hit their house. The family was unharmed but unable to rescue their burning home. Ilse-Christa recalled seeing the red roses in her garden turned black with ash from the firestorm.

Her teenage years brought freedom as the world emerged from war and her school class took trips to neighbouring countries. This sparked a lifelong wanderlust and curiosity. She travelled throughout her life, eventually taking her own children on educational trips. Her Christian faith also began in those years, beginning with a tutor hired by her parents for remedial English lessons. The tutor gave her a Bible to study, which became central to her life.

Ilse-Christa loved literature, loved writing and considered a career in journalism, but in postwar Germany she was told that journalists were forced to lie. Not wanting to be a propagandist, she became a bookseller – a trade that required two years of schooling and an apprenticeship in Germany. She worked at bookstores until her mid-30s and retained a love of books throughout her life.

Her mother, concerned about her daughter’s unmarried state, found a “wife wanted” ad in a Hamburg newspaper: “Son of a German enterprising company living in Canada is looking for a German lady who would like to become his wife.” The wording was direct, as was typical for Leonard Folkens. Ilse-Christa was eager to have a family and agreed to a meeting. The couple met in Hamburg in the fall of 1968. They liked each other and the following spring she visited Leonard in Canada. He impressed her with visits to Niagara Falls, Algonquin Park and the Royal Botanical Gardens. Ilse-Christa’s spirit of adventure helped her decide to marry Leonard and immigrate to Ontario later that year.

Three children (Thomas, Norbert and Doris) were born in Burlington, and she embraced her role as a mother, imparting her love for travel, literature and faith. On Saturday mornings she held German lessons for her children in her kitchen, conjugating verbs, reading German history aloud and teaching them folk songs. Every Christmas she ordered a large box of Lebkuchen cookies from Nuremburg, Germany, which would be consumed over Advent.

When a primary school teacher noted her son Thomas wasn’t clever at math, she encouraged him. Years later, Thomas received the highest mark in his Grade 9 math class and Ilse-Christa returned to that primary teacher to inform him (kindly) he had been too quick to judge.

In Canada, she continued her career in books after her first son was born. She boldly presented herself as an importer of German books at the local library (she wasn’t, not yet). Her husband waited outside, expecting her to return with her head hanging. Instead, she received her first assignment to curate 100 books. A business grew from there. Within a few years, she was receiving orders from libraries across Ontario and one in Alberta.

Working in the garden was a joy and Ilse-Christa liked to grow roses, particularly climbing red roses outside the kitchen window. Perhaps the view reminded her of her childhood garden lost to bombs.

After her husband died, she struggled with the onset of dementia. She continued to teach her German lessons, now to her grandchildren, rewarding them with cookies afterward. Despite her disease, the core of her being didn’t change; she loved people and she loved God. She found comfort in connecting with friends on the telephone and in her daily prayers. She once confused the two; instead of ending her prayer with “amen” she said. “Well, that’s my message for now. Hope to hear from you soon, bye bye.”

If she were to summarize her life as a headline, it might be. “Book-lover kept her heritage and faith in Canada, where her roses bloomed red in her garden.”

Doris Folkens is Ilse-Christa Folkens’s daughter.

Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go online to tgam.ca/livesguide