REBECCA GRUBER
By Leah Espineda
She is a mother, a wife, a physiotherapist and a jeweler
As the owner of High Strung Design, Rebecca Gruber is currently embarking on a new business venture and at the time of this interview, was preparing for her son’s bar mitzvah. The perfect epitome of the woman of today, she juggles between her family and career and has achieved success in her own right. GTA This Month is privileged to feature Ms. Gruber in this month’s feature profile where she shares her story from the time she immigrated to Israel from the United States and then to Canada which she now calls home.
Rebecca Gruber was born in the United States. At the age of 13, her family immigrated to Israel to establish a ‘kibbutz’, a cooperative settlement owned by its members where everyone lives in their own house but works together and shares its profits. She went to high school there and served in the Israeli army for two years as a mandatory requirement. She studied modern dance with a Kibbutz contemporary dance company that was then a small company, but has now become famous. She completed her degree in Physiotherapy at the University of Tel Aviv in 1986 where she met her husband, Ken, who was also from the United States. He was in Israel for a year to get experience in hotel work and study hotel administration. When he finished his degree, he got a job here in Canada where they both immigrated in 1988. Rebecca recalls that it was quite hard during that time. Even if they were both American citizens, spoke fluent English and had their university education, (her husband had a graduate degree), at that time, they were required to get a certain number of points in their profession to be able to stay in Canada. Their professions then were not the kinds that were in demand but because of Rebecca’s profession as a physiotherapist, they were accepted and were able to stay. However, Rebecca said that was not easy. Because she was foreign-trained, she had to study, take the exams and do the 16-week residency required. As she looks back, Rebecca feels fortunate that they were able to get through those difficulties successfully. She has been practicing her profession for 20 years now.
Having been in Canada for a long time, Rebecca loves its diversity. She said Israel was also diverse but it was a smaller country and even though people came from different countries, they were all Jewish and had similar cultures. Here in Canada, you are exposed to people from many different cultures. She likes the fact that this is a very civilized society. People are very open, caring, and kind, and you feel that people really care about each other. She thinks that not many developed countries are like this. She lived in the US until she was 13 and her husband lived there until he moved to Canada. They still have many relatives there they still visit. It’s hard for them to explain that Canada is very different from the US. She says the values and mindset are very different. Here people want everyone (although not always successful) to have the basic needs. She said compared to the US, people in Canada are more willing to give so that other people can have the basic needs. She sees that everyday because she works in the health system. She doesn’t want to live in a county where people didn’t understand that in order for people to be happy, their basic needs should be met.
“If you are going to be in business for yourself, you will work just as hard whether you’re successful or not successful, so you might as well set your goal to become very successful.”
Rebecca admits that she loves the work that she does as a physiotherapist but it is a pretty intense, draining and serious job. After 20 years of doing it, she realized there was a part of her that she was not paying attention to – her creative side. She was a dancer and became a physiotherapist because she wanted to work with dancers but after sometime she did not find the creative element there. She missed being creative. She then started ‘fooling around’ with beads and designed some jewelry pieces that people liked. Somehow, she said that it just clicked and that is how it all started. She incorporated her love for colors and shapes in her designs. She also took some courses in jewelry techniques but not so much in design as according to her, an idea just comes to her inherently. What actually inspire her designs are the materials themselves. For example, when she sees a beautiful vintage chain in brassy or muted colors, she may see it with pearls and colored stones. She loves working with different textures of the same color as well as with different colors. Her love for colors comes from growing up in a country that’s very sunny and very bright and that’s what she thinks she misses because most of the time there is darkness during the winter months. If there was anything that shocked Rebecca when she first came here, it was the very cold winters. The sunny and bright weather back in Israel that she used to love comes out in her designs that show the saturation of different colors and hues. She also gets ideas from pictures and magazines. When she sees a design that someone is wearing, she may like the shape but may want to see it done a bit differently. What she loves most about her being a jeweler is working with the materials and being given the freedom to create things on her own. As she puts it, if you’re a wife, a mother, and a professional, most of the things you do are dictated to you as you respond to other people’s needs. As a jeweler, she is in control and able to do what she wants with her own designs. I understand exactly what she meant and how this could be very liberating. Rebecca added that her designs are one-of-a-kind. She does not create more than five pieces of a particular design because she does not enjoy making the same pieces repeatedly. She always likes to create something new and different.  next page »
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