It is with deep sorrow that the family of Andy Zandberg wishes to announce that he passed away on January 30, 2012. Andy was walking in the forest near his house in Hope when a heart attack wrested him from us far earlier than we expected.
Andy was born in 1944 in Bakkeveen in the Friesland region of the Netherlands. His was a rather immense family of farmers and day-labourers who, in 1952, set sail for greener pastures in Canada. Pioneers, they had no option but to toil and cultivate those greener pastures themselves: the family purchased a rough section of rather stony land in Telkwa, BC, where they cleared away the trees and picked the rocks to establish a dairy farm.

When it came time to marry, Andy sought the greener pastures of the Dutch-Canadian community in Abbotsford, where he met and wooed Jeanette de Jong. She became his lifelong partner and the mother of their five children. Jeanette supported Andy by working at Safeway so he could earn tickets in construction and then cabinetry, and they scrimped and saved together so he could become the proprietor of his own cabinet shop.

In 1978, they left the booming Fraser Valley and bought a quiet hobby farm beneath the mountains in Smithers, BC. Greener pastures calling again? Yes, and twenty-seven cold white winters and short northern summers spent building a home, a family, a life. How to evoke those middle years? Impossible. Traces of those times on the hobby farm will live on for a long time in his children’s and grandchildren’s memories: the pond plowed for hockey games, the cows butchered in the back yard, the sneak attacks with the garden hose, Dad's blue cover-all clad form walking to the potato garden, rake or hoe in hand.

Andy is survived by a vast family. He will be deeply missed by his wife Jeanette and sisters Jetske, Jean, Ida, and Susan and brothers Karl, Sid, Henry, Harold, and John. They hope to see and sing with him one day in heaven, along with their departed oldest brother Dick and parents Folkert and Jantje. His children Lisa, Sean, Bryan, Nicole and Jennifer feel the sharp sting of his absence. Hailey, Shaynah, Caleb, Christopher, Maddy and Liam will miss their grandpa.

Andy will be remembered for being a smart aleck and a tease, a man of devotion, a stubborn foreman, a loving husband, a straight-shooter, a cheapskate, a gardener, a pilgrim headed for an unseen Jerusalem, a shrewd and tender father, a reliable baby brother, a meat and especially potatoes man, and a man of integrity. We will miss his listening ears and the mischief in his eyes.