The daughter of a Polish mother and a minor German aristocrat, Ingeborg Hedwig Elisabeth Linzer was born in 1917 in Weimar, Germany, not Austria as was sometimes claimed. Adept at English, she left Germany in 1938, hoping to gain experiences that might enable her to work as a foreign correspondent, but her experiences as an au pair girl for two elderly women in Ipswich, as arranged by a relative, proved very unsatisfactory. Against her parents' wishes, she married a British journalist, Frederick Roskelly, just prior to the outbreak of World War II, and they moved to Cornwall to live among artists at St. Ives. This marriage was short-lived but nonetheless it made her a British subject, enabling her to remain freely in England, despite her origins, without being interned. In 1943, as Ingeborg Linzer Roskelly, she met George Woodcock, a member of the Berneri anarchist circle, at a party in London. Because George Woodcock was active as a pacifist anarchist who was complicit in producing anti-war literature, the couple lived underground, frequently moving from one address to another in order to avoid the police. Louise Berneri was brought before the court for the dissemination of literature that was produced on George Woodcock's typewriter. After World War II, when opportunities proved scarce, they left the London literary scene in 1940 to homestead in Sooke on Vancouver Island, partially attracted by the notion of emulating Doukhobor pacifists. George Woodcock had been born in Winnipeg so Canada was also suitable for immigration purposes. The nearest Doukhobour settlement was at Hilliers, near Parksville. Not suited for subsistence farming, George and Ingeborg Woodcock lived temporarily with Doris and Jack Shadbolt in a rough cabin nearby the Shadbolt's home in Burnaby. Both childless, the two couples became lifelong friends, often sharing their Christmases together.

With the crucial assistance of Earle Birney, George Woodcock lectured at UBC and later taught both English and French literature. One night in 1951 they were at a party when someone passed along the news that their friend George Orwell (Eric Blair) had died. It was as if a bridge had been removed behind them. In 1952, George Woodcock published the first of his many books pertaining to British Columbia, a travelogue called Ravens and Prophets: An Account of Journeys in British Columbia, Alberta and Southern Alaska, based on his explorations of the province with Ingeborg. George Woodcock never drove, so they were partners for the research of all his travel books. As a photographer, Ingeborg Woodcock was co-author of their book on Victoria. She was chiefly interested in Buddhism and fund-raising for various humanitarian causes, chiefly Tibetan Refugee Aid Society (TRAS) and Canada India Village Aid (CIVA). She was a friend of the Dalai Lama, having visited him at his refuge at Dharamsala, India soon after he had fled Tibet. The Woodcocks met privately with the Dalai Lama during one of his visits to Vancouver and the Dalai Lama was making arrangements for a another visit with Ingeborg Woodcock when she died on December 13, 2003 of cancer, prior to his arrival in Vancouver in April of 2004. She was described in an obituary by David Gordon Duke as a lifelong defiant smoker who resisted luxuries and "was notoriously sharp at the slightest manifestation of swollen ego." Friends spread her ashes at Anarchist Mountain in British Columbia, with those of her husband. The proceeds from the sale of her home on McCleery Street in Vancouver went to the Woodcock Fund of the Writers Trust of Canada to provide emergency assistance to established Canadian writers. Their extraordinary bequest of $1.87 million from the Woodcock estate, finalized in 2006, was one of the largest donations of its kind to the literary arts in Canada, if not the largest.

BOOKS:

Faces of India: A Travel Narrative by George Woodcock, illustrated with photographs by Ingeborg Woodcock (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1964)]

Victoria. By George Woodcock, illustrated with photographs by Ingeborg Woodcock.(1971)

[Alan Twigg / BCBW 2009] "Photography"