Rudi Hoenson had every reason to be an angry man. Taken prisoner as an 18-year-old Dutch soldier in what is now Indonesia, he spent the last 3 1/2 years of the Second World War in slave labour in Japan.
In 1945, beaten down and starved, he weighed less than 80 pounds when the Nagasaki nuclear bomb exploded over his head. What followed was an apocalyptic nightmare that could have — should have — left him broken and bitter for life.
Instead, he may have been the kindest, most contented man in Victoria. No point dwelling on things, he would say. Life was good. He got to come to Canada, got to meet his wife. “What else do you want?”
Hoenson, 96, died Wednesday, a day after moving into the Veterans Memorial Lodge at Broadmead.