Christa Koehler
1936 – 2022
It is with immense sadness that we announce the sudden passing of Christa Koehler on Sunday, March 20 at the age of 85.
Christa was born in the Sudetenland (Bohemia), Germany. Although WWII made life & resources challenging, she was happy in the spa/ski town of Johannesbad. At the tender age of 8, the war ended & so did her childhood. Separated from all family, she & her mother were stripped of all belongings & became prisoners of war having barely been spared from execution. They were brutally forced into East Germany & suffered immensely from poverty & starvation. Eventually, her father found them & smuggled them into West Germany. They settled in Wuppertal where she met & married Wilhelm Koehler, her husband of 53 years. They immigrated to Canada in the early sixties & moved to Kamloops in 1970.
Christa was an extremely hard working, proud individual. She was a professional seamstress (once handmade a mattress for the Queen), bookkeeper, helped run the family business, gardener, kept a spotless home & took care of her family. She always made an effort to look her best, even when she was seriously ill.
She loved the opera, was a master with plants & a fantastic knitter. For years she knitted hats & scarves for orphans in the Ukraine but most recently she loved knitting beautiful sweaters for her little granddaughter.
Christa will be greatly missed by her daughter Britta Shepard of New Hampshire, USA, her son-in-law Daniel Shepard, and her granddaughter Kismet Shepard. Christa is also survived by daughter Sabine Sackiw of Edmonton, Terrence Sackiw, and her grandsons Alexander Sackiw and David Sackiw.
Although she & her husband died 12 years apart, they left this earth within feet of each other. She always knew that she would be with him again. She is finally free from pain, happy, and with the love of her life.
A private Celebration of Life will be held on Sunday, April 3rd, 2022
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Eddie Takahashi
Dear Britta and Sabine and families,
Please accept my sincere condolences on the passing of your mother/grandmother. She was an amazing woman and a loyal patient, (as was your father), at our clinic for many, many years which I truly appreciated.
I will miss our chats when she came for her eye examinations.
She also met my mother during her stay at Berwick senior’s home.
We will never forget her.
Yours truly,
Ed Takahashi Jr.