‘What if there is no precedent?’
It wasn’t the premiere of The Elmira Case. That happened earlier at the Peace on Earth Film Festival in Chicago, which led to the film being shown in Mongolia. But on Nov. 19, 2015, the local premiere of a local story by a local institution and local film makers finally took place. Jon Steckley, Ken…
War is ‘development in reverse’
Disarming Conflict: Why Peace Cannot be Won on the Battlefield. By Ernie Regehr. Between the Lines Books, 2015, 217 pages. War does not resolve conflict, says Ernie Regehr in his recent book, Disarming Conflict. He examines the wars of the last 25 years and concludes that while military force can win battles and can cause…
‘An ample opportunity to try something new’
One could say that, in a musical sense, 1955 was the best of times and the worst of times when compared to today. From a Swiss-South German Mennonite perspective, we were heirs to a rich tradition of unaccompanied four-part congregational singing that had its origins in the Singing School movement of the 19th century, when…
Any price for victory
Directed by Francis Lawrence. Screenwriters: Peter Craig and Danny Strong. Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. A Color Force/Lionsgate release, 2015. Rated PG (violence, frightening scenes). Early in the fourth and final installment of the Hunger Games film cycle, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), the rebel heroine, is having an argument with her close friend, Gale (Liam Hemsworth),…
Contemplative journal an expression of creative process
April Yamasaki and Lois Siemens have collaborated across the miles on a second creative project. In 2014, the women, who are pastors of Mennonite Church Canada congregations in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, respectively, joined forces to produce the My Sacred Pauses Daybook, combining text from Yamasaki’s book Sacred Pauses with Siemens’s photographs. This year, they…
Miller had major impact on the church
The story of Orie O. Miller is also the story of how Mennonites in the 20th century moved from being isolationist and the “quiet in the land,” to being a church with strong institutions involved in North American society and around the world. In many ways, Miller was at the centre of these changes. He…
‘Freud might have had fun’
Leona (Unger) Rogalsky was born into an Evangelical Mennonite Conference (EMC) family in southern Manitoba in the 1930s. During her childhood, her family spent some time in the Gospel Hall, a Pentecostal church in Steinbach, but they were convinced to return to the Mennonite fold by her father’s brothers, a minister and a deacon in…
New book and film focus on conscientious objection
Conrad Stoesz, Mennonite Heritage Centre (MHC) archivist, is passionate about pursuing peace and the history of conscientious objection to war. His long-held convictions inspired him to contribute a chapter to a new book on the subject and to successfully pursue a grant for the production of a video documentary. “The experience of Canada’s conscientious objectors…
Indigenous artist unsettles Winnipeggers
There’s nothing comfortable in the artwork of Edgar Heap of Birds. Especially for people whose ancestors came to this continent as settlers. Heap of Birds has described his art as sharp rocks or weapons that puncture First World worldviews. Some felt the prick of that message on Sept. 16, 2015, at Neechi Commons, an upstairs…
Ontario Mennonite Music Camp explores ‘pride and prejudice’
When Linnea Thacker suggested to her co-director of Ontario Mennonite Music Camp, Elizabeth Rogalsky Lepock, that they perform a shortened version of My Fair Lady as the musical at the camp’s closing program, Lepock wondered at its non-religious content. In other years the camp performed Fiddler on the Roof, Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, exploring…
