Carolyn Mary 'Carol' Kostenchuk

Carolyn ("Carol") was born in the small town of Kettering, Northamptonshire, England on January 15, 1932, completing the family of Ivy and Arthur Gautrey along with older sister, Pam. She is remembered so fondly by many family and friends, growing up in the East Midlands of England. Their family was a traditional English one; her father was a County Clerk in those early days, her mother the homemaker. They lived in a modest home on a street called The Oval. She remembers her little town being served by horse-drawn milk cart service, and a "rag & bones" man. There were probably very few motorcars about, at that time. Before her birth, her eldest uncle, Wilfred, a gunner aboard HMS Lion, had died in service in the Battle of Jutland during the First World War in 1916. By the time Carolyn turned 7 years old, World War II erupted upon her peaceful England. These 6 years of war, followed by continued post-war hardships, punctuated her school school years. Those WW II years claimed the lives of all her remaining uncles; Henry, David, and Reg. Her father's service to the war effort was to continue as a civil servant, in capacities of increasing responsibility. At the beginning of the war, when London was being heavily bombed by the Germans, a civil servant came to their house to determine if they had any extra room. It was decided that Carolyn and Pam could share a bed, which left a single bed available to shelter a London child. For several months, two London children, one after the other, were billeted to stay with them in their Kettering home and attend their local school. After each child had returned home safely, a nurse working at a local hospital then occupied the bed and lived with the Gautrey family. As the war progressed and The Battle of Britain raged, and the risk of enemy invasion grew more imminent, the British government decided that British children ought to be relocated to a safer country. Their mother Ivy had written "Pam" and "Carol" on government-provided name-tape and sewn these labels into all of their clothing. Pam remembers the sisters were preparing to be relocated to Canada until conditions were safer in England. However, as history tells it, the first two such ships loaded with children were torpedoed by U-Boats! This abruptly ended the program of relocation, and hence the plans for Pam and Carolyn to be separated from their parents. After the war, she finished high school and then learned embroidery design at Barret-Street Technical College in London. She was hired at 18 years old, right from college, by a clothing designer in New Zealand. She travelled to Dunedin, N.Z. aboard steamship H.M.S. Atlantis and taught her skills to the dressmakers there for 2 years, before returning home to England; but she didn't stay home for long. Post-war London was not a place of great opportunity for young, career-minded women, as there would be many years of necessary rebuilding. She and her older sister's school friend, Janet Hopwell, decided to travel the world for adventure! Steaming to North America aboard H.M.S. Queen Mary, they landed in New York in the spring of 1957. Three days later they caught a Greyhound bus to Montreal and secured jobs with The United Services Club, as servers aboard the St. Lawrence Riverboat "Tadoussac". (Her first paycheque there was $15, minus 10 cents tax!) They worked their way slowly westward, through Ontario and eventually on to the little "cow-town" of Calgary, Alberta by mid-1958. They stayed briefly with friends before touring the Rocky Mountains and continuing their journey southward through the United States and on into Mexico as their diligent work and frugal living enabled them to save enough money for further adventure. These 20-somethings drove (on the right!) in their rusty 1951 Chevy "Mathilda" with a questionable clutch, south through the entire North American continent together, camping in a little tent they had packed from England, living on a shoestring budget and unshakeable self-confidence! In a few months, Carol and Janet -- two British young ladies with such adventurous spirits -- found themselves deep inside Mexico with a completely burned-out clutch, limited means and neither Spanish language skills nor family contact to help solve their problem. All part of the adventure! Within a few days, a handy Mexican mechanic "el Maestro" had a new clutch brought in from the USA, and did the repair for a price they could afford. Carol and Janet simply carried on with their adventure. Not to disappoint, Mother Nature brought down such a flood while they were driving through the Mexican State of Chihuahua, that the entire earthen roadway was washed away! As the raging flood waters slowly receded, they had to be towed across a valley floor by a local farmer's big-wheeled tractor to escape! They had planned to complete their tour of North America (before moving on to other continents) on the Western Canadian coast; but by late 1958, having driven back up through the centre of the continent, they had exhausted their total savings of $725, and found themselves as far as Calgary once again.
In Calgary, they settled in for the winter. Both secured jobs. For fun and to meet other people their own age, they both joined a theatre company called The Calgary Players, which performed at the Southern Jubilee Auditorium. There, Carolyn worked on set and costume design. The ladies both became specifically fond of two other members of the Calgary Players - and it was mutual. By the spring of 1959, they had both become engaged to be married! This was a game-changer, prematurely ending Carol and Janet's planned world tour. Carolyn married Manitoba farm boy and new business graduate, Mike Kostenchuk on May 16th of 1959, at St. Michael's and All Angels church in Canmore, Alberta. Together, through the '60's, '70's, and '80's they raised Jon, Michael, and Sally. The family followed oil patch opportunities through a series of small Southern Alberta towns: Cessford, Olds, Red Deer, finally settling in Calgary again by the time their children reached school-age. Mike and Carol bought their home in North Haven for $15,000 in 1966, which remained a stable, happy, family home for the entire school and early adult years of their three children. Each Thanksgiving and Christmas was punctuated with wonderful family meals and gatherings at the Kostenchuk home and at the Duncans (Janet Hopwell's new family), on a rotating basis. Carolyn and Mike provided more than stability to their children. Each was morally-supported through post-secondary institutions. Carolyn encouraged and supported each child to achieve independent careers and importantly, home ownership. Carolyn had the savvy, the sense, and the ability to motivate and inspire all of her children to succeed in the world for themselves.
Those three Calgary decades were also her most prolific times as a fabric artist. For several years, she designed and sewed elaborate stage costumes for the Young Canadians who performed annually in the Calgary Stampede. This earned her a certificate from the Stampede Board, who relied on her as a vital component of the Grandstand Show success, in the "Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth"! Carolyn also created a Soft Sculpture business, where countless, unique, fabric-based creations were born. Wall hangings made from her artful quilting techniques and exotic-materials collection were exquisitely crafted into unique works of art, which have not been replicated by anyone since. Learning silk dying techniques lead to another venture, 'Wild Silk" which yielded jewelry and silk scarf creations, also uniquely Carolyn. She sold these treasures at craft fairs around Calgary for years, then supplied retail customers for many more years more. She truly had an eye, a soul, and a skill set for art in many forms, especially fabric-based. While she operated as an independent artisan for pleasure and for profit, she also worked part-time at Woodward's for many years, while she raised her family.
Gardening was another of Carolyn's passions. She eventually came to know almost everything there was to know about which flowers, trees, and foods could be grown in her adopted, Zone 3 city. She read the books, dug the soil, planted the seeds, weeded the "volunteers", and showed others how to grow plants too. She had an over-the-top stunner of a rock & flower garden in the front yard of her North Haven house, a shady patio garden behind the house, and a handsome-sized veggie patch further up and back. Inside, the house was a forest of potted plants, all selected for their unique beauty and cared for expertly. Carolyn lost her husband Mike to degenerative dementia in 1993, after 34 years of marriage. She was his noble caregiver during the final years of that difficult disease. After his death, she soon recovered her zeal for new horizons and suddenly found herself the impulse-owner of a large, Chemainus, B.C. house which she declared would be her "Blue Sea B&B"! This sparked her move from Alberta to B.C. For her last 22 years, Carolyn lived on Vancouver Island, where she felt so much at home. She liked the flowers, hummingbirds, friends, pathways, and shops. In recent years, she shared her home for several months with two grandchildren who were in a phase of life which brought them together. The benefits were mutual. She always looked for opportunity and had the talent, luck, work ethic, social skills, common sense -- the total package -- to keep herself moving toward a better situation. She never limited her self-image to what she had achieved in the past. Visualizing the most optimistic outcome, she worked confidently toward each vision, which included being a fearless, self-taught investor. She read, learned and invested in many different directions: land, rental properties, coins, art, mutual funds, equities, etc. She continuously conducted her evolving ménage of ventures like a symphony orchestra: there were times of harmony, exhilarating crescendos, and unfortunately, cacophonous train wrecks! In the end, thankfully, enough remained to support her chosen, fairly simple life>Everyone will remember Carolyn's larger-than-life spirit! She always treated her body well, with good nutrition, healthy habits and regular exercise. Unfortunately, she had more than her fair share of terrifying close-calls regarding her health. At age 40, she fell victim to a heart attack followed by emergency hospitalization. Being neither overweight nor a smoker, she could only surmise this may have had to do with the combination of stress and a ‘flu virus she had struggled to overcome months earlier that year. She recovered, but one third of her heart muscle had died, permanently. This heart damage dogged her for the rest of her life and came back to almost do her in, with another 2 cardiac emergencies, on separate occasions, 35+ years later. She had battled cancer and won. Once, she fought clinical depression and won. She rallied to live independently in her final years and won. (Her mind-over-matter strength even allowed her to convert her lifelong Orange Pekoe, Tetley Tea-drinking habit to consuming nothing but Green Tea, for health - though she never really liked it!) Her final struggle was with an unknown, silent infection. Whatever is was, it laid her very low for 3 weeks. Despite attentive care from her family and steadfast, childhood friend Janet, as well as Victoria General Hospital staff, her kidneys failed and heartbeat faded away overnight on December 30th, 2016. We believe Carolyn Mary Kostenchuk died, peacefully, in her sleep. And so it is that we say goodbye to this adventurous traveller, creative artist, handy gardener, courageous business woman, beloved mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, cousin and friend. Carolyn is survived by her three children, eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren: Jon (Jacquie), Justin (Jen), Tia and Lareina Kostenchuk Mike (Melanie), Thomas (Amaanda) Riley, McKenna, Maci and Ben Kosten Sally, Andreas, Evan, Octavia, and Vienna Gautrey Carolyn is also survived by her older sister Pam Savage and niece Helen (Ian) Thompson, their son Robert and nephew Martin (Angela) Savage and several childhood friends and cousins in England and around the world with whom she kept up regular correspondence. Carolyn is also survived by her faithful, lifelong friends Janet & Dave Duncan and their family, who all remained as close as kin, throughout her lifetime. Carolyn's cremated remains will be interred at Queen's Park Cemetery in Calgary, beside her husband Mike's. Her infinite spirit will continue to be a companion for all who knew and loved her! In her own words, "Let The Spirit Soar!"

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