Tales from the Mennonite Heritage Archives
Explore the history of Mennonites through materials found in the Mennonite Heritage Archives. Using interviews, object, and documents, this podcast will dive into stories inspiring, tragic, strange, and beautiful. As varied as the lives of the people and organizations whose materials are housed in the Mennonite Heritage Archives, this weekly podcast aims to educate and inspire greater interest in Mennonite history.
Episodes
Today, we bring you an interview with author and satirist Andrew Unger about his book Once Removed. The novel’s main character, Timothy Heppner, is determined to preserve the heritage in his small Manitoba town, but is at odds with the town’s pro-development mayor. Andrew talks about how fiction and historical fact can work together, the place of humour in his story telling, and his ancestor Abram, whose nickname wa...
Today, guest host Sara Dyck shares the tragic tale of a group of Mennonites who in 1918, moved from Manitoba to Vanderhoof, British Columbia. They had high hopes of owning land and establishing prosperous farms. For at least one family, their dreams were dashed. Listen to Tragedy at Vanderhoof to find out what happened to these unfortunate souls.
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Today, we bring your listeners an interview with nationally acclaimed writer David Bergen about his novel Away from the Dead, a fictional account of victims and their relationships during the historical events that led to the complex and multi-layered conflict of the Ukrainian revolution in the late 1910s. Bergen has written more than a dozen books, many of which feature Mennonite backdrops. He is the recipient of t...
Today, we bring you a story about the Beaverlodge Mennonite Church, a little known congregation that formed in the late 1920s and disappeared from the landscape of Peace River country in northern Alberta some 15-ish years later. Guest Doug Klassen, Executive Minister of the Mennonite Church Canada, shares about his little-known family connection to the church, and we capture his reaction when a surprise visitor show...
In part two of this two-part series, Elmer answers questions about his personal interest in Mennonite history, and how he came to move and restore an old house barn that now resides in the village of Neubergthal.
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
March 4 marks 69 years since Golden West Radio CEO Elmer Hildebrand first walked through the doors of the brand new CFAM radio station in Altona in 1957. We cover a lot of ground in this 2-part conversation. In Part 1, Elmer shares how Golden West Radio got its start. When he arrived at work for his first day, the building’s construction was still in progress, so he helped lay tiles to finish up the floor.
Today, we carry on with our 2-part series featuring historian Dr. Aileen Friesen. In this episode, Aileen shares concerns about the endangered state of historical Mennonite documents in Ukrainian archives as the Russian invasion and war drags on.
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives websi...
Today, we bring you part 1 of a 2-part series featuring an interview with Dr. Aileen Friesen. Aileen wears more hats than a Caps R Us store can hold. She is a professor, a published author, a researcher, editor of Preservings magazine, executive director of the D.F. Plett Foundation, and co-chair of the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies, to name just a few activities in which she is involved.
Still, she foun...
During Stalin’s Reign of Terror the 1930s, Jacob Petrovich Janzen was one of many Mennonites swept up into forced labour camps called Special Settlements, and then the more severe form of the camps called the Gulag. More than 80 years later, his great-grandaughter, Maria Lotsmanova, discovered parts of his story with help from the Gulag History Museum of Repressions in Moscow. Maria shares with listeners what she ha...
Today, we bring you ‘From Russia with Woe’, part one of a two part series. During Stalin’s Reign of Terror the 1930s, Jacob Petrovich Janzen was one of many Mennonites swept up into forced labour camps called Special Settlements, and then the more severe form of the camps called the Gulag. More than 80 years later, his great-grandaughter, Maria Lotsmanova, discovered parts of his story with help from the Gulag Histo...
Today, guest host Sara Dyck brings you the chilly tale about a group of Mennonites whose ship became trapped in icy Lake Superior in the spring of 1876. A journey that was meant to take five days turned into a 15 day ordeal. They ran out of food, and almost out of coal to power the steam ship. Their story is pieced together from letters and journals of the travellers who did – eventually – arrive at their southern M...
Today, we bring you Part 2 of the Life and Adventures of Jacob Hoemsen.
In Part 2, we return to the story of Jacob Hoemsen, as he rejects his pacifist upbringing to serve in the controversial Mennonite Self Defence League to protect Mennonite colonists from various paramilitary groups during the War of Ukrainian Independence. Later, a close call with Soviet authorities for whom he worked, clinched his decision to mi...
Today, we bring you Part 1 of The Life and Adventures of Jacob Hoemsen.
In Part 1, Jacob Hoemsen was raised as a pacifist, pursued education in Germany, and completed his mandatory non-combatant role in the Russian government’s Forestry Service. During WWI, Jacob served as a medic, eventually joining the elite Flying Column at the battlefront.
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Today, we bring listeners the story of Manitoba born and raised nurse and midwife, Anna Thiessen. For years, she was the only trained medical practitioner in Colonia Sommerfeld, Paraguay. Anna helped an estimated 1,000 mothers deliver their babies.
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives web...
In this REWIND episode, host Dan Dyck explores the Mennonite holiday tradition called brommtopp, named for the strange musical instrument used, which can be translated as "rumbling top". This tradition was brought to Imperial Russia from Prussia, and continued in Manitoba into the 1950's.
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Fin...
Today, we have a nostalgic retelling in English of the story Christmas 1926 by beloved Low German story teller Gerhard Ens. Told through the eyes of 10-year-old Hauns, Gerhard imagines a fictional account of what it might have been like for Mennonite refugees from the Soviet Union to celebrate their first Christmas in Canada. We are grateful for the extra time Golden West has granted this episode, which clocks in at...
In this episode, we bring you an episode with the excessively alliterative of Festive Foods and Folkways from the Mennonite Tradition. This instalment is based on a two-volume book series by Norma Jost Voth. She interviewed about 60 elder women who brought their Christmas traditions and celebrations from Russia to North America. Tune in to hear about Norma’s work, and listen to show host Dan Dyck mangle the pronunci...
In this episode, we’re delighted to bring you an interview with Patrick Friesen, a third generation Mennonite from Paraguay. His great-grandfather, C.F. Friesen, was one of the early leaders and teachers in Paraguay. Patrick shares about the historical migration from Manitoba, paints a picture of the Menno Colony today — and issues an invitation in English and Low German to visit his community for its 100th annivers...
Today, we bring you a story that’s about as close to a Whodunnit Mystery as Mennonite history gets. It’s a story about a baby, a pig pen, and ongoing attempts to get rid of the child — even as he grows up. To learn more, tune in to Episode 53 of Tales from the Mennonite Heritage Archives.
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by vis...
After a few consecutive episodes that leaned into some darker stories in Mennonite history, we’re pleased to bring you something on the lighter side.
To air on Sunday, Nov. 30 we bring you… (drumroll )… A Short History of House Barns! Join me and Roland Sawatsky, curator at the Manitoba Museum and past curator at the Mennonite Village Museum in Steinbach, as we reveal that a house barn is (!SPOILER ALERT!) “a barn c...
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