Rudolf A. Zimmer

Born in 1935 to pacifist parents in Germany as the Nazis rose to power, Rudolf A. Zimmer survived the war and post-war period. Still a young man, he left behind a career in Swiss banking in 1957 to come to Canada with nothing but a suitcase in hand, his brother and best friend at his side.

As many immigrants do, he scraped by financially and put himself through the Canadian school system to become a mathematician and educator in the newly formed Ontario college system of the late 1960s. He met and married the love of his life, Bridget, a nurse from Ireland, and they grew a wonderful family that extends to four generations now in Canada.

When Rudy retired, he was fortunate to have most of his parents’ correspondence from the war in which his father was shipped out to the Russian Front and his mother left to raise three children on her own. This incredible war-time love story tells of the universal strengths people all over the world still find to survive the disturbing politics that can turn their lives upside-down.

His writing was motivated because he had met many people whose forebears came from overseas, but they didn’t know where in the old country they came from or why they emigrated. They lamented that they were missing their ancestral roots that had been cut off at the shores of North America.