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
85 episodes
Mennonites and Nationalism (Part 1)
In Part 1, guest Dr. Mark Jantzen of Bethel College in Kansas shares what he’s learned about the history of Mennonite’s and their various understandings of national identity. Is it language, homeland, culture, ethnic background, or something el...
Looking for Peter Hampton
Today, join host Sara Dyck as she shares the story of researcher and writer Helene Warkentin’s quest to learn about Peter Hampton. Born Peter Paetkau in Russia, Hampton spent his younger years in Grunthal, Manitoba, eventually ending up in Ohio...
Laureen Harder-Gissing on Family Secrets
Today, we have an interview with Laureen Harder-Gissing from the Mennonite Archives of Ontario. Laureen has studied family secrets, their connection to church life and family genealogies, and how secrets are handled at a public archive.
Adina Janzen
Today, guest host Sara Dyck brings you the compelling life story of Adina Janzen, who survived the dark Soviet era in Russia. In 1934, her father was taken by Soviet authorities. They instantly lost the family breadwinner. At one point, a starv...
Interview with Dr. Mark Janzen (Part 2)
Today, In Part 2, Dr. Jantzen reveals how Prussian rulers targeted Mennonite women, which eventually provoked a mass migration of Mennonites out of Prussia.
Interview with Dr. Mark Janzen (Part 1)
Today, we bring you an interview with Bethel College professor Dr. Mark Janzen, who studies the little known history of Mennonites who lived in Prussia from the 1530s to the late 1700s. In this episode, we learn that Mennonites live...
Samuel McRoberts and his Paraguay photo collection
Today, we bring you the story of Samuel McRoberts, the American lawyer and banker whose deeply religious wife Harriet persuaded McRoberts to negotiate and facilitate a mass re-settlement of Canadian Mennonites to Paraguay in the 1920s. Did the ...
Laureen Harder Gissing and the Mennonite Archives of Ontario
Today, we bring you a conversation with archivist Laureen Harder Gissing. When Laureen was 13 years old, her grandmother gifted her with a cheque for $13.00. That gift inspired a life long interest in her family’s history, and the bigger pictur...
Journey to Burns Lake
Today, guest host Sara Dyck brings you the story of a provincial government experiment to resettle a group of Manitoba Mennonites near Burns Lake, B.C. during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Hear about their journey to B.C., and the challeng...
Episode 70 with Andrew Unger
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...
Tragedy at Vanderhoof
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 d...
David Bergen, novelist
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 a...
The Disappeared Beaver Lodge Mennonite Church
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 Klas...
Elmer Hildebrand (Part 2)
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.
Elmer Hildebrand (Part 1)
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 W...
Meet historian Dr. Aileen Friesen (Part 2)
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 o...
Meet historian Dr. Aileen Friesen (Part 1)
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,...
From Russia with Woe (Part 2)
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, hi...
From Russia with Woe (Part 1)
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 m...
Trapped in Icy Waters
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 foo...
The Life and Adventures of Jacob Hoemsen (Part 2)
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 t...
The Life and Adventures of Jacob Hoemsen (Part 1)
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 R...
Anna Thiessen, Nurse and Midwife in Paraguay
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 bab...
REWIND: The Brommtopp
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 Prussi...
First Christmas in Canada, 1926
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 Men...