To say this was a culture shock for Inge would be a sizeable understatement. A sand hill with tanks on it did not match her dreams of glamorous locations away from Germany where she could take the theater by storm. And then she had her second baby, Elizabeth.

So, the base ladies and others came to help. She gained strength and education from Betty Law, Myrtle Pohlman and others. They taught her to navigate the base, bake bread, cook Canadian and look after children in North America. Des’s great friends the Lacroixs were stationed elsewhere but always ready to help – and they were invaluable…

It was in these days that Inge invented so many of the Brown family traditions and made Christmas officially the best day of the year. This was also the time that Inge's mother passed and Inge took her new baby to Germany for several months to be with her relatives.

Inge had learned straight up Queen's English, complete with the British accent, but on the base Inge learned colloquial English from Des, Sergeant Brown, who was a soldier and had been sailor– complete with a broad and practiced repertoire of colourful military expression. She did not curse like him, of course! But still, it must have been interesting juxtaposition when his aphorisms, constructions and sentiments came out the mouth of this proper lady who was likely unaware she was peppering her polite, pointed, conversation with military slang, made all the more interesting by the fact that she said it with such gusto in an English accent.

In Ontario Inge also learned to sew, doing her mother Josephine proud, sewing, crocheting and knitting clothes for herself and the children as well as wardrobe full of barbie doll clothes. (In later life she became famous for knitting Christmas sweaters that were several times larger than their inhabitants, lest there not be enough room. )

In Borden Des earned about $420/month from the Canadian airforce to support a family of six. But he was a tireless worker and Inge wanted to be one, a paid one. With the house and young children Inge was busy with unpaid work but she was occasionally able to make room for her greatest passion: to work, to make a career, to be become autonomous.  She took in typing and spent a few months as a waitress at the Continental Inn, ‘dealing them off the arm,’ Des liked to say. Des himself worked many jobs in addition to his military service. Something he did for free was snow shoveling, fixing things and leaf raking for Mrs Mowat who's husband had passed. In gratitude Mrs Rowat sold her husband's hunting cottage to Des for a song and they made the downpayment with $1 bills from Inge's tips at the restaurant.

Des' sister Rosalie and her husband Charles were constant visitors from their home close by in London, Ontario in the early years. And his other sister Charmaine came from wherever she was working in the world. Des and Inge visited her in several of those exotic locations over the years, like Jamaica and Cuba and several times she met them on their travels in the world. Most beloved was her stone cottage in the lake district of northern England or possibly the idyllic home she built with Rosalie on Cypress in the 90s.