Our mother and grandmother Susanne (Susi) Haeussler died quietly at home on January 13, 2023 at the age of 92. Susanne Brauch was born December 27, 1930 to Sophie (Reingruber) and Wilhelm Brauch in Gerabronn, a small town in southern Germany. As the eldest of six children, she grew up amid music, literature, and art during the difficult years of the Depression, World War II and its aftermath. After high school she trained and worked as a kindergarten teacher and reconnected with Raimund Haeussler, a childhood family friend. When Raimund emigrated to western Canada in 1952, Susanne and Gisela (Raimund’s sister) followed in 1953. Raimund met their ship in Quebec City and they made the first of many adventurous Canadian road trips to BC. They married in Prince George and soon after moved to North Vancouver where Susanne worked at St. Paul’s Hospital until daughter Dorothea was born. In 1954, Raimund found work at Alcan’s new aluminum smelter, and along with many European immigrants, they moved north to the busy new townsite of Kitimat. Daughters Sybille and Cornelia were born there.
Susanne was a homemaker in the best sense of the word, providing a welcome, stable home with great food for her extended family. She excelled at sewing, knitting and crafts, was an enthusiastic gardener and adaptable cook, stretching the budget with homegrown produce, wild-picked berries, moose meat and salmon. She entertained neighbourhood children with puppet shows and educational games from her kindergarten teacher days and volunteered as a Brownie leader and at the Child Development Centre. She completed Grade 12 through correspondence and night school classes and as an adult learner at the High School and throughout her life was well-read and informed on current world and regional affairs. She raised her daughters to be conscientious, broad-minded Canadian citizens. She loved camping, the outdoors and mountains in particular and had a deep appreciation for the landscapes, histories and indigenous cultures of northern BC. Though she never achieved her dream of seeing the Andes, she was an avid armchair traveler and enjoyed her daughters' Facebook and blog accounts of their adventures. In her forties, she was a proud member of the first female treeplanting crews in the Kitimat and Skeena Valleys.
When their girls finished school, Susanne and Ray began their next great adventure, moving up the Skeena River to Kitwanga where they built a beautiful hand-crafted log home on 160 acres of forestland. Susanne maintained large vegetable and flower gardens and honed her sustainable lifestyle skills. During 28 years in Kitwanga, they hosted many visitors and enjoyed excursions in their truck camper, making it as far as the Yukon and the Florida Keys. In 2004 they moved to Smithers, where among other amenities, she enjoyed the Sunday night foreign movies and local music. After Raimund’s death in 2007 Susi remained proudly independent at her home in Smithers, keeping up her house and yard, walking to the local shops and cooking healthy meals until a few weeks -before her death.
Susanne was predeceased by her parents, siblings Eckehart, Marlene and Martin Brauch, and in-laws Gisela and Max Muller. She will be greatly missed by her daughters and their partners Leo, Dave and Richard, grandchildren Andrea and Sonja Coates, Chris and Stephen Neate, great-grandchild Orca, brothers Stephan and Konrad Brauch, sisters-in-law Gisela, Christel and Ursula, 10 nieces and nephews, long-time friends the Koehrers and Monika Ziegler. Thanks for always being there for us.
(Obituary by my sister Sybille with a few additions by me)
My mom and I having a good laugh in 2019, both of us in sweaters she knit.
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