The Rest Of My Family

(from oldest to youngest)

Written in early 1999 so it's getting pretty dated...

Annemarie and Winfried Wandel

My parents, Annemarie and Winfried Wandel. My dad makes custom furniture and has built the tourist camp which my mom mostly operates in the summmer. They are very self-sufficient country folks. My dad has built almost every structure at the farm and the camp, and all the interior stuff like furniture, doors, windowframes, wood stoves and so on. He grows his own tobacco. My mom grows vegetables, makes all the homemade beer and wine and apple cider, bakes five different kinds of bread, sews cushion covers, makes lamp shades, does most of the sanding and finishing work on my dad's wood products, and that's just the stuff I can think of at the moment.

Matthias Wandel

My brother Matthias. Initially lackluster at school, he came into his own in high school and broke all the grade records there. Trailing behind me in computer knowledge and initially studying mechanical engineering at Waterloo, he succumbed to the inevitable and now manages firmware development for portable digital radio products. He makes much more money than I do, he has his own house, had a web page long before I did, and is generally ahead of me in everything. He lives in Waterloo. And yes, he knows more about computers than I do now too.

Johanna Wandel

My sister Johanna. She lives in Guelph, where she works part time at the university while working toward her Ph.D. in Geography.

Marlene Wandel

My sister Marlene. She was just six when we moved to Canada, yet she speaks German as well as all of us, partly because she spent a school year on exchange at my old school in Germany. She has finished her bachelor's degree in Ecology and is wandering all over, not quite ready to settle down; as I write this (March 1999) she is in British Columbia getting ready to plant trees, as she has done for several summers. This picture is a few years old but it's one of my favourites.

Meow!

And who can forget this family member. Alas, due to an altercation with some unknown animal in the woods, he is R.I.P.

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