Finding Home

This book comes with coloured illustrations.

Born in Norway during the final years of the Second World War, Trond Frantzen entered a world already shaped by forces he was far too young to understand. The German occupation, the shadow of Vidkun Quisling, and the difficult reckoning that followed liberation formed the background to his earliest years. Around him were adults whose decisions during and after the war would remain mysterious to him for decades.

But this is not primarily a story of war. It is the story of a boy discovering an unexpectedly large world.

At six years old, Trond left Norway with his father and older brother aboard a Norwegian cargo ship bound for Argentina. The voyage became an adventure: meals with the ship's officers, a makeshift swimming pool, dolphins alongside the ship, and his seventh birthday somewhere near the Equator.

Argentina was stranger still. There were maté, tropical storms, parrots, an enormous estancia, banana plantations, and a mysterious man called Federico who trained dogs for the Perón government. There were also events a seven-year-old could witness but not comprehend-a plantation fire, violence, political uncertainty, Federico's arrest, and finally a sudden departure from the country.

After returning to Norway through Paris, Trond briefly rediscovered the reassuring world of family, forests, mountains and Håndverkeren, the famous Oslo restaurant managed by his uncle. But home would soon change again.

In 1952, his family emigrated to Canada.

Eight-year-old Trond arrived in Winnipeg knowing almost no English beyond two treasured words: "chewing gum." He entered Grade Three and began constructing his new language literally one letter at a time. Winnipeg brought new foods, radio cowboys, friendship and prejudice, while summers on his Uncle Pete's Manitoba farm gave him some of the happiest memories of his childhood.

The family's journey eventually continued east to Toronto. There, Trond watched his beloved brother Kjell confront spinal tuberculosis and paraplegia with extraordinary determination. He encountered the generosity of a country that provided Kjell's expensive treatment, experienced the welcome of a Jewish family who invited the Norwegian immigrant boy to their Shabbat table, discovered teachers who would influence him for life, and gradually found his own place in Canada.

Travel, university and the emerging world of computing followed. The immigrant boy became a programmer, systems analyst, consultant, educator, entrepreneur and writer. His career eventually took him across Canada and internationally, while his interests expanded into environmental sustainability and Canadian public life.

Yet professional achievement is not the destination of this memoir.

At its heart, this is a story about people: parents who repeatedly began again, a brother who refused to surrender, relatives and friends who offered kindness, teachers who opened doors, colleagues who shared knowledge, and a country that gave an immigrant child the opportunity to build a life.

It is also a meditation on memory. More than seventy years later, some childhood moments remain astonishingly clear while others survive only as fragments. Rather than manufacture certainty, Frantzen allows the unanswered questions to remain.

And gradually, the journeys across oceans and continents reveal themselves as part of a larger journey.

Norway gave him his roots.

Canada gave him opportunities.

Between them, he found something neither geography nor citizenship alone can define.

He found home.