Faces in the Crowd – At Home in the Forest

Posted on October 18, 2025 under Faces in the Crowd with one comment

Aneita Strauss and Kyrise

It has been awhile since I posted a “Faces in the Crowd” story. When I meet someone interesting in my travels, I like to tell their story. Meet this remarkable woman from Metchosin, British Columbia.

“I’m a glass half full kind of person.”

Meet Aneita Strauss.

Aneita was born in Belgium in 1953. Her parents met after the war. The family emigrated to Canada, and her father gained employment as a steam engineer at the mill in Port Alberni. This was Aneita’s first but not last encounter with forests. Her parents divorced and at the age of 13, Aneita was sent to a boarding school in Victoria. The facility was run by Roman Catholic nuns. The nuns were very strict, but Aneita learned how to become a functioning citizen under their tutelage and guidance.

For the longest time, Aneita was somewhat maligned in school until it was determined that she was dyslexic and had poor vision.

By her own admission, she was a tomboy. She played rough and fell out of trees. But her father’s DNA was deeply ingrained as she had mechanical aptitude. She could take an appliance apart and put it back together again.

She was a lifeguard at a summer camp run by the Anglican Church. She met a young man there and she got married at the age of 18. The marriage was short lived as her husband had issues. Aneita was also experiencing some mental health challenges.

She travelled across Canada in a VW “bug” with stops for brief stints of employment in Ontario and Nova Scotia. She enrolled at the University of Victoria (UVIC) and graduated with a degree in Environmental Psychology. Thanks to summer employment as a timber cruiser and scholarships, she graduated with virtually no debt.

For many years, she travelled abroad to far flung places like Germany, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, England, and the Middle East. She honed her skills as a computer programmer. While in Tel Aviv she learned Hebrew. She taught computer science in England and many years later, she became the Director of Enterprise Systems at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C. She also worked as an IT consultant working with municipalities, government agencies, and B.C. Crown Corporations among other businesses.

Aneita retired in 2020.

In 1999, Aneita purchased 10.5 acres of land in Metchosin, a small, rural community outside Victoria, B.C. She built a home in the wilderness, a place where she finds solace. She was never totally comfortable in crowds. She is self-sufficient and spends hours every day hiking around the old growth forests, with her ever present four-legged friend, Kyrise. In her travels, she has encountered bears, cougars and on one occasion, a pack of wolves. One of her more memorable experiences was being treed by a bull!

Over the years and the miles, Aneita has spent much of her time in the wilderness, in perfect harmony with nature. “I’ve never been bored and I have no regrets. I believe in lifelong learning.”

What better place to do this than in the arms of giant Douglas fir trees.