Giving thanks for 25 years
Canadian Mennonite publisher Tobi Thiessen and executive editor Virginia A. Hostetler reflect on the magazine’s 25th anniversary: Tobi Thiessen, Publisher Your church may have a tradition of creating a Thanksgiving display of bounty from the summer’s harvest. Perhaps it includes pumpkins, sheafs of wheat or baskets of apples. In my congregation, people add health cards…
A defining moment revisited
In the summer of 2003, as I pondered how to say farewell to a 24-year career as editor of Canadian Mennonite and its predecessor, Mennonite Reporter, a friend suggested I reflect back on some defining moments. I could think of many such moments, but the one that loomed the largest was what happened in 1997.…
‘We declare to you . . .’
A particular joy this year has been the restarting of events cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At my local Mennonite Central Committee relief sale in New Hamburg, Ont., a few months ago, the excitement was thrumming in the air as we all thronged together along the dirt paths and in…
Still happening
I travelled to Israel/Palestine in the spring of 2008 and wrote about it for Canadian Mennonite. It was, however, the follow-up article where I related the issues to my own backyard that sticks with me. A social worker in my church told me home demolitions and illegal land seizures were happening to Indigenous people in…
Two stories about my son
Having been the B.C. correspondent for two publications over 10 years, it’s hard to choose only one story to highlight. So, I chose two, both involving my son Aaron: “Going to Afghanistan? Better stop at Zellers first” (January 28, 2002): When seven-year-old Aaron and his friend Logan discovered that there was a reward offered for…
Visiting congregations
As I wrapped up my time in 2018, I realized that I had always seen the correspondent’s job as an extension of my calling as a pastor, a calling I’ve now been following for more than 40 years. I can’t reduce it to one article, but there are groups of articles that I enjoyed very…
Tragic story ends in reconciliation
In 2013, I wrote about the Old Oder Mennonite community near Gladstone, Man., after 13 of its adults were charged with child abuse and 40 children were removed from their homes by Child and Family Services (CFS). The community of 12 families had moved to Manitoba from Ontario only six years earlier, in order to…
Inspired by The Land and its caretakers
I met Wayne and Carry Dueck in my hometown of Rosthern one morning in August 2019 and followed them out to a property they owned west of Duck Lake, Sask. They had invited me to write a story about this 32-hectare property and their relationship with it in the 38 years since they purchased it…
Fanning Anabaptist fame
A photograph I took dominated the cover of the first issue of Canadian Mennonite 25 years ago. I took it on a Sunday morning, with the camera propped on the ledge of an empty balcony, overlooking the backs of people standing in prayer in a small church in a farming community half an hour outside…
