Carling Heights
This is the view that greeted Amish Mennonite farm boys Dan and Willie Brenneman when they were apprehended by military police and detained at the Carling Heights Military Camp in London, Ont. Despite their conscientious objector status, they were taken while working in a field in East Zorra Township in May 1918. For six weeks…
Shoplifting
Under the watchful eye of a Kitchener, Ont., store owner, a teenager browses the record collection. Shortly, she will slip one into her bag, and the owner will catch her in the act of shoplifting. This photo of a simulated crime is part of a slide show produced by the Access Project, a program of…
An eye-witness account of Nazi occupation
At the age of 85, I am probably one of the few survivors of the German occupation of Ukraine/Russia from 1941 to 1943 who still have clear personal memories of that time. When the German army occupied Chortitza, Ukraine, where I lived, we Mennonites were exuberant. I remember vividly the euphoria of being liberated from…
UWinnipeg Fellowship to crack open KGB archives
In the 1930s, thousands of Mennonites disappeared in the Soviet Union without a trace. The KGB archives in Ukraine has thousands of files on these missing Mennonites, and a newly announced University of Winnipeg Fellowship wants to crack into these archives to uncover the stories of lost relatives, ancestors and much more. Through the Centre…
OK Economy Store
“In the spring of 1928, not quite 15 years after the settlement had begun, Jake Funk opened the new red-brick store on a prominent corner of Main Street in Blaine Lake, Sask. It had high steps leading to the front door and a bright red-and-white sign above it that read ‘OK Economy Store.’ In front,…
Filmmaker dedicated to telling the Mennonite story
Using pre-digital equipment, Otto Klassen works on one of his more than 50 films that document the lives of Mennonites. (Photo courtesy of Ken Reddig) Otto Klassen dedicated many years of his life to making documentaries that tell Mennonite stories. A self-taught filmmaker, he produced a total of 84 films in his lifetime, most of…
Singing off the wall
The phrase “singing off the wall,” referring to singing from projected words rather than a hymn book, first appeared in Canadian Mennonite in 2010. This image shows that the practice went back much further. Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont., recently donated a collection of glass “lantern slides” probably in use circa 1924-45. This…
‘Along the Road to Freedom’ exhibit tours Alberta
On Dec. 2, 2017, more than a hundred people gathered at Edmonton’s King’s University for the opening of the Along the Road to Freedom art exhibit. This was the first of three stops in Alberta that will end in the spring. Featuring paintings by Winnipeg artist Ray Dirks, the exhibit celebrates the stories of Mennonite…
Abraham Dick
When Abraham Dick broke his back in 1938, the family struggled to keep up with the work on their farm near St. Agatha, Ont. Then one day in early November, they were surprised to hear the roar of tractors. Many neighbours had shown up unannounced to do the fall plowing. This picture of the event…
Cooperative
Cooperatives allow community members to pool their economic resources and were quickly adopted in many Mennonite communities as a continuation of the Mennonite mutual-aid tradition. During the economic and agricultural Depression of the 1930s, Mennonite farmers sought new sources of income. In the Altona and Winkler areas of Manitoba, the average number of milk cows…
