Welcome to Canada . . . because of Jesus
Ahmad Al-Jamal, his wife Ghada, and their three young children were visibly excited as they waited at Edmonton International Airport on the evening of March 31, 2015. Ahmad hadn’t seen his brother Mohamed for seven years, and now they would finally be reunited and able to meet each other’s children. As they waited, they were…
Ethical businesses make good money
If you want Tamworth heritage bacon or Golden Guernsey milk, Jacqui Schmucker can provide them. If you want maple syrup from a horse-and-buggy farm or honey from a black-bumper Mennonite farm, she’s got that too. If you want to know who grew your food, where and how, she can do that too, with an energetic…
Seeking peace in Iraqi Kurdistan
Refugee camps around the city of Suleimani in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq have become pressure cookers of cultural and religious tension. Thousands of people displaced by Syria’s civil war and the violence of Islamic State (IS) are living shoulder to shoulder, unable to return to their homes. “Many of them, their homes are…
Cookbook reflects old-style Menno cooking
In the 1940s, Mary Emma Showalter began a cookbook project, collecting old Mennonite recipes that were handwritten in notebooks because she feared that soon the notebooks would be discarded. As Mennonites began moving beyond their home communities during the Second World War, they were learning to cook new foods and were less apt to use…
Listening to the characters’ voices
John Siebert had two things to say to Carrie Snyder as she finished her readings from her latest book, Girl Runner, at Conrad Grebel University College on March 4. The executive director of Project Ploughshares, who had read the book while travelling on business, said, “First, you made me cry,” referring to the ending of…
Further east of Edensville
Spurred by requests from his thoroughly modern children to tell them stories of his growing-up years in the Ontario Swiss Mennonite homeland of Waterloo County, Maurice Martin, a retired pastor and area church worker, wrote One Mile East of Edensville and self-published it in 2013. His home on the farm was “the centre of innocence,”…
‘Interaction/Isolation’
When Jordan Weber began making visual art four years ago, he wanted a new way to express himself. “I never expected my art to be on display for anybody to see,” the 24-year-old said. “It’s super exciting that people have been coming up to me and saying they like my work.” Weber was one of…
Living in limbo
Hundreds of families in Canada live in limbo, not sure if they’ll ever be granted permanent resident status. That’s the story for the Mata family. Jacobo Mata, who is now 17, moved from Colombia to Toronto with his mother and father when he was 4. Luis, his father, was an author and a human rights…
Countercultural mountain music
Dan Root and Laura Dyck quickly became friends after they met in the fall of 2009 and realized how much they had in common. Both were living in the Conrad Grebel University College residence in Waterloo, Ont.; both were studying international development at the University of Waterloo; and both had a deep love of folk…
What’s your ‘money personality’?
“Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?” That’s from the Bible (Amos 3:3, New Living Translation). It was my parents’ wedding text when they were married 65 years ago. It’s a verse in the middle of a punishment text and I’ve always wondered how they came up with that. It’s a great…
