Tales from the Mennonite Heritage Archives

Send us Fan Mail In today’s episode, we learn about Peter P. Dyck. He was a familiar sight around Carman from the 1940’s to his death in 1970 – a man that refused to stay still despite the loss of his mobility after a tragic accident. While he spent much of his life in the hospital in Carman, Manitoba, his resilience and ingenuity were an inspiration to many. Original Air Date: January 19, 2025 Su...

Send us Fan Mail If The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes were a person, it would be eligible for Old Age Security this year. Not bad for a book whose roots date back to a group of women who volunteered to feed 3,000 people attending a church conference in Steinbach over 65 years ago. Guest host Sara Dyck brings you the history of the book, and archivist Conrad Stoesz learns that if he wants to bring...

Send us Fan Mail In Part 2, Mark Jantzen unpacks major historical events that influenced the Mennonite view of patriotism and nationalism, and the role that faith played in their understanding of how to relate to the state and the state church. 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 Archi...

Send us Fan Mail 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 else that they claim? Listen in and find out! Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560....

Send us Fan Mail 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. Though he changed his surname, interest in his Mennonite story stayed with him for a lifetime. Your donations help preserve and share sto...

Send us Fan Mail 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.  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 Heri...

Send us Fan Mail 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 starving Adina turned to eating chalk! Her story is a heartrending yet hope-laden tale of living on three different continents and finding light...

Send us Fan Mail Today, In Part 2, Dr. Jantzen reveals how Prussian rulers targeted Mennonite women, which eventually provoked a mass migration of Mennonites out of Prussia. 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/ Follow the Mennonite Heritage...

Send us Fan Mail Today, we bring you an interview with Bethel College professor Dr. Mark Jantzen, 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 lived in mixed villages instead of colonies, like they later did, how they acquired land in the vast region of Prussia, and the political complexities of...

Send us Fan Mail 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 hymns the Mennonite delegation sang for the McRoberts play a role in Samuel’s decision to help the Mennonites? You’ll have to tune in to fi...

Send us Fan Mail 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 picture of Mennonite history. Today Laureen is the archivist at the Mennonite Archives of Ontario, which holds collections from all over the worl...

Send us Fan Mail 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 challenges they faced when they got there. Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998. Fin...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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. Your donations help preserve and s...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Mennonit...

Send us Fan Mail 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 r...

Send us Fan Mail 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 - h...

Send us Fan Mail 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 til...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Menno...

Send us Fan Mail 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 w...

Send us Fan Mail 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. Mar...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 – eve...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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. Your donations help preserve and s...