Willie Van Lankvelt on Immigration, Quiet Leadership, and Beating the Odds | STRONG LIKE a GIRL.
Willie Van Lankvelt was 21 when she packed up her life in the Netherlands and crossed an ocean to start over in rural Manitoba. She didn't speak much English. She'd never grain farmed. She was leaving seven siblings behind. None of that stopped her, and 46 years later she's still here, still building, still showing up.
In this conversation Tanya sits down with Willie to trace a life that doesn't look loud from the outside but has been quietly remarkable from the inside. They cover the move from Holland in 1980 with her sister and brother-in-law, learning English one dictionary entry at a time, and losing her father two years in before she could get back to say goodbye. They get into Willie's decades of work with adults with developmental disabilities, including coaching Special Olympics and one unforgettable race where an athlete handed her a set of false teeth at the starting line.
Willie also opens up about her 17 years leading the Shiloh Military Family Resource Centre through the Afghanistan deployment years, what it actually takes to lead an organization when your board changes every posting cycle, and what civilians don't see about the invisible weight military families carry. Her honesty about leadership friction, owning mistakes, and refusing to fake certainty is some of the most grounded advice you'll hear on this show.
The back half of the episode turns to her medical journey. Willie was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2006, then lung and brain cancer in the summer of 2022 with a 10 percent chance of surviving the year. She walks through gamma knife brain surgery, the radon gas connection most Canadians have never heard of, and how she stayed at her desk through chemo because she wasn't ready to let illness pick her retirement date.
She closes on what life looks like now: cuddling babies in the neonatal unit three hours a week, leaving every space better than she found it, and a refusal to entertain negativity that has earned its keep. Her definition of strong like a girl: anything's possible, and don't back down.
What we covered:
- Growing up the middle of nine kids on a mixed farm in the Netherlands
- The decision to immigrate to Canada in 1980 with her sister and brother-in-law
- Buying a grain farm north of Rivers, Manitoba without ever having grain farmed
- Learning English one dictionary lookup at a time while doing home care
- Losing her dad two years after the move and not making it back in time
- Driving a 12-passenger van 430 km a day for adults with developmental disabilities
- Coaching Special Olympics and the false-teeth moment that still makes her laugh
- 17 years at the Shiloh Military Family Resource Centre as Executive Director
- Leading during the Afghanistan years and supporting families through deployments
- The hardest leadership lesson: when to back down and when to fight for the call
- Thyroid cancer in 2006, recurrence in 2008, lung and brain cancer in 2022
- Radon gas as the second leading cause of lung cancer and how to test your home
- Gamma knife radiosurgery and what the helmet actually feels like
- Retiring at 65 on her own terms, not because cancer made the call
- Volunteer cuddling in the Brandon Regional Health Centre NICU
- Why she chooses positive people and walks away from negativity
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