CAVERS, CHRIS
Published | By
Chris Cavers
February 22, 1935 – October 27, 2018
Chris Cavers (nee Christa Mary Benedict) was born on February 22, 1935, in Kitchener Ontario, Canada to her Canadian born mother, Mary Lavinia (nee Mary Lavinia Harbord)
and German born father Gunther Benedict.
In 1937, due to World War Two, her father moved the the family to Germany, fearing the rumours of internment camps being implemented for Germans at the time.
Despite her traumatic childhood in Germany, during the war, Chris became a vibrant, outgoing, intelligent and beautiful young woman.
She met her first husband, Jim Willer, on one of several Atlantic ship crossings, in 1954 and they eventually settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
where they had a daughter, Kathleen, in 1958.
The couple separated in 1963 and Chris, as a single mother, attended the University of Winnipeg
(then called United College) where she obtained her b.a. as a mature student.
There she met, and married, her second husband, Michael Cavers and in 1970 they had a son, Douglas.
The family moved to England in 1971, Chris having had fond memories of the country her family had
eventually escaped to from the devastation of Germany. England and Europe felt more like home to her than the land of her birth.
In 1973 Chris was once again a single mother, this time in an isolated midland town.
Through all her struggles and hardships, it was her love of literature, art, culture and ideas that kept her alive.
She continued to read, and she taught herself to play the piano and draw and paint watercolours. She had amazing talent for this, and she also
wrote extensively, keeping her diaries with her at all times for ideas and impressions she observed in the world. She wrote short stories
and a few were published in a literary magazine.
She raised her children with great love and freedom and took them on travels exposing them to art, culture and adventure.
Education was important to chris and, having attended a waldorf school for one year in her childhood, she enrolled her own
children in waldorf schools in england when they lived there.
She also benefitted from the community of people and friends connected with the school.
Chris made her life rich through ideas and insights and celebration of life, and she made good friends wherever she lived throughout her 83 years.
She was very politically informed, astute, involved and active her whole life and she ran for the NDP, twice, during her time
in Winnipeg MB. She tied with another opponent in the second election she ran in 1969.
She generously supported many important causes as well as helping those less fortunate. An example of her generosity is while
attending university she anonymously paid the tuition for a fellow student who faced dropping out due to lack of funds.
In Chris’s later years she grew interested and passionate about plants and slowly transformed her barren back and front yard into a magical healing garden.
Chris was a very courageous, generous, intelligent, beautiful woman and her whole life and being encompassed far more amazing and
interesting traits than can be sufficiently described in an obituary.
She died with great courage and dignity of pancreatic cancer, in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, on October 27th, 2018.
She is deeply mourned and missed by her children, wider family, friends and all who knew and loved her.
If mourners are moved to donate do so to your special cause, or to ” Doctor’s Without Borders ” or “War Child”.
When i was a small child in the 1960’s my mother Chris was a young woman and, for much of it, a single parent and university student.
She was one of the early members of ” the voice of women “, a grassroots feminist group which did major work to
forward the interests of women in Canada at the time.
She was also part of a group of women who went out to the maximum security prison,”Stonewall penitentiary”, just outside
Winnipeg, where they sang regularly to the prisoners. This was at a time when prisoners had virtually no entertainment or
nourishment for the soul, so being sung to by a group of women was likely a valued event in these men’s lives.
She seemed to have had a special compassion for prisoners ,as one of her last wishes was to have her beloved books
(and those of you who knew her will remember how vast her book collection was !) donated to the John Howard Society
– the organization that protects the interests of prisoners in Canada and maybe elsewhere. She wanted her books to be
available to as many prisoners as possible.
She studied esperanto, when i was young, and would speak to me in the language for fun.
Our mother was also always active in the NDP (New Democratic Party) in Winnipeg, Manitoba and later in Lethbridge, Alberta.
She ran twice for the party when i was a child, and she was secretary for the group in Lethbridge for many years.
Also, in Lethbridge, she volunteered at the main library branch and helped create a little book shop within the library while trying
to save many of the books the library was culling due to the changing times of internet use.
Our mother seemed to be a magnet for photographers covering protest events, and many times she was caught by the cameras
holding a sign among a group supporting everything from world peace to anti-nuclear armaments, protection of health care
and nursing rights in canada and at rallies in Britain. We attended a G8 summit together held in Calgary in the early 2000’s and she learned how to treat and protect herself from the possible effects of tear gas.
She wrote letters for amnesty international and brilliant letters to the editors in newspapers wherever she lived.
Our mother had a tremendous sense of humour and sometimes we almost died laughing!
She became a vegetarian after marrying my dad, and she encouraged my love for animals and instilled a love for nature in me.
When she married Douglas’s dad he brought nature into our lives through his love of the wilderness and particularly canoeing
in the wilds. He took us on wonderful canoe trips and even Douglas was with us when our mom was very pregnant with him on one of them!
Chris was always interested in people, and what made them who they were. She listened with her full attention and was very present in
whomevers’ company she was in.
She was generous with praise, encouragement and with her time.
Although her main passion was reading and ideas she also used to sew, and when i was a child she sewed beautiful clothes for me and
for herself and knitted things for Douglas and others .
I was afforded great freedom by my mother and never felt restricted in any way — be it how i thought, where i wanted to go, be or do.
She taught me how to stay safe and streetwise at a young age , when we lived in an apartment in Winnipeg’s downtown core, and later
how to navigate travelling alone between Sus and Northamptonshire, criss-crossing london when i was at boarding school. The same applied when i went to school north of paris and had to travel through the city and cross the channel to get home.
She and i went on camping trips during many summers after she returned to live in manitoba and Alberta, and had various adventures
and misadventures. We sometimes painted together on these trips.
There are countless good memories of our journey to flow into my mind and flutter through my heart until we meet again.
Thank you, mom, for everything!
I love you.
Au revoir.
Kathleen.
On the evening of October 27th, 2018 our mother started her birth into the spirit. She was 83 years old. She suffered and died from
pancreatic cancer two months after diagnosis.
She is survived by her brother, Kurt and sister, Irmgard and her daughter, Kathleen Mary Willer and her son Douglas Godfrey and ex-husband J Michael Cavers. She is predeceased by her first husband, Jim Willer, and her first grandchild, Raven Ace Willerman
She was born 22nd February 1935 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada to a first-generation Canadian born mother, nee Mary Lavinia Harbord,
and a German-Canadian father, named Gunther. The war brought many difficulties, but at the beginning of it a Gunther sent the children
to a Waldorf school. Kathleen and I have benefited immensely from also going to such a school. And now Douglas’ daughter Rosemary
attends kindergarten at Asheville Waldorf School.
We are grateful to her for being our loving mother. We are children from two separate marriages. So we both experienced the attention
and closeness that only children do. She and Jim met on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic and, after staying together in Amsterdam having first visited her uncle in Germany, they cycled to Gretna Green in
Scotland to get married.
They then cycled all through Europe and lived for a year near Lake Constance.
The couple eventually settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba and had a daughter, Kathleen.
In her second marriage, this time with Michael, they decided to immigrate to England. Michael worked at a bookshop. They separated in
1972 and he married Jenefer Stuart two years later. When I was 4 we travelled around Europe including Kladno, Czechoslavkia, Germany and France, where Kathleen went to La Boissiere Waldorf school. In 1975 we traveled on the Stefan Batori, Polish boat to Montreal. It still sails today. After Kathleen was settled in Winnipeg, Chris decided
to send me to a Steiner-Waldorf school in Kings Langley, Herts. back in England.
Chris left England in 1988 to live in Altmont, Manitoba. She loved the big sky. And later followed Kathleen to live in Lethbridge her last
home that she lived in, for the last 18 years.
I knew her as an avid reader and could speak in German and read in French. She published one short story. She also liked to
watercolor paint — she loved to paint cows -and practice yoga. She was very interested health and medical matters including reflexology. She
brought me up as a vegetarian. She had a
healthy skepticism towards convention medicine.
Instead of getting her hip replaced with metal, she endured a course of prolo therapy to rebuild her cartilage.
Other interests were spirituality, art and music. She played the piano from before Kathleen was born and continued playing until her final
illness. She was interested in the wellbeing of the world and introduced me to the Society of Friends, Quakers. She sincerely believed that her
meditative thoughts could be felt across the world. She taught me to meditate.
I am very grateful towards Kathleen for caring for her during the eight weeks of her cancer.
Strange to say, I am so grateful for the grief I experienced when, I returned from packing up her house in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
It opened me up to know how others who grieve feel.
-Douglas G. Cavers.
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Nos plus sincères sympathies à la famille et aux amis de CAVERS CHRIS 2019..
Décès pour la Ville: South Lethbridge, Province: Alberta