Festival of Peace
Participants in a Festival of Peace at Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont., embrace during a small group session. On Peace Sunday 1993, the congregation abandoned its typical Sunday morning routine to follow the Mennonite Central Committee Ontario Peace Sunday Packet workshop, “A commitment to Christ’s way of peace.” When a photograph such as…
Brubacher House
Within this Mennonite hearth, we can read an environmental history. By 1850, when John E. and Magdalena Brubacher built this house, the forest stands of southwestern Ontario were well on their way to being transformed into farmland. The harvesting and sale of wood and its products was the engine of the economy. Settlers, used to…
LaVerna Klippenstein
LaVerna Klippenstein (1934-2014) fulfilled many roles, including mother, wife, teacher and author. After her marriage to Lawrence Klippenstein in 1956, the pair began working in the Métis community of Matheson Island, Man., for two years with Mennonite Pioneer Mission. She is pictured hanging laundry on Matheson Island. She completed a bachelor’s degree from Goshen (Ind.)…
CMBC student discussion
In Saskatoon, at the 1975 Conference of Mennonites in Canada annual conference, the Canadian Mennonite Bible College (CMBC) board, “long embarrassed about faculty salaries,” asked for funds to raise salaries to a maximum of $20,000 per year for PhD professors after 10 years of service. Many leaders and teachers in our churches and church institutions…
Volleyball game
The Conference of Mennonites in Canada annual session was held in July 1975, in Swift Current, Sask. Hot weather put participants’ “cool” to the test. The assembly was not only about business but also about relationships and, as such, there was time for work and play, including a game of volleyball, pictured. While our lives…
Public school teachers
Public school teachers Samuel B. Nafziger, Dick Neufeld, Sara (Lehn) Harder, Martin Goerzen, Grace Harder, John C. Harder and C. Boldt, are pictured in the most northerly Mennonite farm community in the world, at Fort Vermilion, Alta,. in 1958. Their presence was controversial, as some Old Colony Mennonite settlers resisted the development of public schools,…
Len Bechtel
Len Bechtel, front, is pictured with a portable saw he and other conscientious objectors (COs) designed near Vancouver during the Second World War. As oil supplies dwindled due to the war, this group of workers with mechanical aptitude in the Alternative Service program were pulled aside from forestry work to help supply Vancouverites with wood…
George Brunk
In 2001, evangelist George Brunk II, left, reflected on his 65-year-long ministry. Brunk’s style of revival meetings disrupted Mennonite communities. In a public talk at Conrad Grebel College he recalled, “At a time when Mennonite preachers stood still behind the pulpit, I would wander across the stage, carrying the microphone . . . from one…
J.J. Thiessen
J.J. Thiessen of Saskatoon served in many leadership roles at the congregational, provincial, national, and binational levels most of his adult life. He is quoted in A Leader for his Times: “What is the chief need of present day humanity? Depth! Truly, if anything increases from year to year, it is superficiality. . . . …
Canadian Foodgrains Bank meeting
The Canadian Foodgrains Bank had its beginnings in 1975 as the Mennonite Central Committee Food Bank. In November 1982, representatives of 10 Christian denominations met to discuss plans for an inter-church foodgrains bank. Among those at the meeting, pictured left to right facing the camera, were Frank H. Epp, J.M. Klassen and C. Wilbert Loewen.…
