Evelyn grew up on a farm in central Alberta, about half an hour east of Edmonton. As well as being a farmer, her father was also a minister. Between life on the farm and being involved in church activities, Evelyn still found time to be creative - whether that was drawing or painting, crocheting or sewing, learning to play an old pump organ, making meals for a family of ten, and just about anything else creative that came her way.
After high school, Evelyn attended and graduated from Bible School with a theology major.
Between school sessions, Evelyn discovered Banff as a place to work for the summers. There was just something about Banff that she enjoyed - like beautiful scenery to delight her artist's eye. She ended up staying there for twelve years.
The last year or two were not the happiest - you can read about that in the Story of Willowrose. Yet it was during that unhappy time that the dream for Willowrose Village came into being. She left Banff to go back to central Alberta for about a year, during which time her father passed away.
But central Alberta was no longer home and in time she decided to head back south. She had been interested in learning more about retreat centres, so she spent a summer working at King's Fold, an interdenominational retreat centre set in the gorgeous foothills of the Alberta Rockies.
She thought perhaps she would stay on for awhile, but God lead otherwise. In a series of events that she couldn't have planned if she had tried, within a week or so of leaving the retreat centre, she found herself in Cochrane with a place to live and a license to start a home business in arts and crafts.
Nothing like getting thrown in the deep end! With no business experience, and less than $1000 to her name, this was definitely a challenge. But she survived and eventually worked in some of the arts businesses in town as well.
An invitation to write an arts and crafts column in the local paper led to forming and leading an artisans guild. Later, she brought the arts businesses together to promote Cochrane as an arts community and the popular "See How We Do It" yearly event was developed.
She joined the local Cochrane Art Club and served one year as vice-president and one year as president.
Two years after moving to Cochrane she married her husband Roy and began to help him with his business. For the next fifteen years or so, she learned about business - from a waste management company to a mini-storage, to real estate projects, to a retail antiques and handcrafts store and more.
During this time, Evelyn got a computer and began learning about personal coaching and business on the internet. She also found time to start and lead a writers group and to be the arts instructor for a delightful seniors group in Leduc, Alberta.
After a ten-year stint away from Cochrane to run a business southwest of Edmonton, Roy and Evelyn returned to Cochrane in the summer of 2005. The first year and some saw them work on a real estate project, and then Evelyn took a part time job working as an administrative assistant to the Associate Executive Director at the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists. As it turned out, about half a year later her boss decided to resign and start his own ministry, and so Evelyn has worked with him to develop that organization - a project that seemed especially designed for her gifts and abilities.
A holiday to Europe in the fall of 2007 gave her and her husband time to reflect on a number of things. One was the realization that both of them have followed numerous paths in work and life over the years, but somehow have never really gone after the BIG DREAMS they both have had. For some reason, this time they agreed that it was time to stop playing around with all the little side-tracks and to go after the real dreams in their lives.
Evelyn's dream for almost twenty-five years now has been for an arts and business village. She had always pictured this as a physical village and somehow that has just not happened yet.
Then just over Christmas, a serendipitous meeting with a friend sparked the realization that Willowrose Village could just as well be an online village too, with parts of it - like the classes and meetings - that could be held in rented facilities for now.
That meant Willowrose Village could begin now! And somehow this time, things seem to be coming together in a way that they never have before. Plans are for Willowrose Village to officially open in mid-April, although a number of things will begin prior to that, including this website, which you are now visiting.
So you are invited to join Evelyn in this dream called Willowrose Village. Explore the venues in the village, and if this feels like something you want to be part of, then explore the ways that you can get involved, and watch this dream (and hopefully yours too!) take shape.
Meet... Evelyn Grace Marinoski
