Powerplay paces Kings to win over Listowel

The Sugar Kings scored five powerplay goals last Sunday night en route to a 6-3 win over the visiting Listowel Cyclones. The win was a welcome bounce back for the team following a disappointing 4-3 letdown in Brantford the previous night.
“I was very pleased with our effort right from the opening faceoff compared to the night before,” said head coach Dean DeSilva following the win over Listowel.

“I thought we had a lot more jump and we had a lot more puck presence all over the ice, so I was very, very pleased with the way the guys responded.”

Michael Hasson led the way Jan. 15 against the Cyclones with two goals and three assists. Scott Nagy also chipped in a goal and three assists, while Riley Sonnenburg collected a pair of goals and an assist.
Nick Horrigan made 24 saves for the win.

Hasson got the scoring started early with his 13th goal of the campaign just 1:56 into the first period on the powerplay on a shot from a bad angle near the side boards. New Sugar King forward Brett Catto – acquired in a trade from Listowel on Jan. 11 in return for defenceman Craig Johnson – collected the only assist.

Sonnenburg extended that lead to 2-0 with a powerplay goal of his own at 7:41. Hasson got the puck up to Nagy near the red line, who then made a nifty cross-ice pass to Sonnenburg coming down the wing and he snapped it past goaltender Michael Pesendorfer.

Listowel cut into that two-goal lead at 15:53 on a shot that squeezed between Horrigan’s pads and the post, but Andrew Smith got that one back just under three minutes later from Sonnenburg and Brett Priestap at 18:39 to make it 3-1.

Sonnenburg banked a pass off the boards near centre ice to Smith, who was streaking down the left wing. He used his big body to shield the puck from the Cyclones defenceman and managed to cut inside and put a backhander past Pesendorfer.

In the second period the teams traded goals as Listowel’s Kyle Ellis scored a powerplay goal at 4:28, and Nagy responded at 12:54 with another Elmira powerplay goal, assisted by Hasson and Lukas Baleshta to make it 4-2.
The Kings put any hopes of a comeback to bed with a dominating third in which they outshot Listowel 20-7 and scored twice more with the extra man.

Sonnenburg scored his second of the game just 32 seconds into the period from Hasson and Nagy when he one-timed a rebound off Pesendorfer’s left pad into the top of the net for a 5-2 lead, and after a powerplay goal for the Cyclones made it 5-3, Hasson scored the Kings fifth powerplay goal of the evening at 13:39 from Nagy and Smith for the 6-3 final.

The Kings have a new strategy while on the powerplay, opting to overload their first unit with five forwards – Nagy and Hasson on the points, and Sonnenburg, Baleshta and Smith down low. The change was made after DeSilva felt his younger defenceman were too reluctant to shoot the puck on the powerplay, and he feels the extra experience from those five forwards should help. “We did that earlier in the year and we thought that we would go back to that. It’s the experience factor and it’s giving some of our younger defenceman an opportunity to watch,” said DeSilva.

“We have a lot of experience up front and a lot of talented forwards so we have to take advantage of that and get them out there when we can.”

The game also featured the return of all star defenceman Craig Johnson to Elmira for the first time since he was traded to the Cyclones last week in return for Brett Catto.

“It was a tough decision to make because Craig had come a long way as a defenceman, and he’s going to be a very good defenceman in the league,” said DeSilva.

“We have an older team and a team that we feel can make a long run in the playoffs, and Brett brings that experience and that depth.”

Catto was selected by the Belleville Bulls in the 2008 OHL priority draft and at 19 years of age he still has one year of eligibility left in the league. The forward has collected an assist in both games he has suited up in for Elmira, and tallied 12 goals and 18 assists in 30 games with Listowel prior to the trade.

The Sugar Kings head to Guelph tonight (Saturday) for a matchup against the Hurricanes, before returning home for their second annual support the troops game on Sunday afternoon against Cambridge. The puck drops at 2 p.m.

Tags: James Jackson

Breslau now home to farmers’ market

Residents of Breslau looking for fresh, local produce won’t have to look much further than their own backyard to get it. On Monday night, the first local food market was held at the Breslau Community Centre and although the turnout was sparse, organizers hope to see it grow in the coming months. “We thought we might have been going last summer,” laughed Carolyn Snider, who along with Grace Sudden has organized the market, which ran from 5-7 p.m. in the community centre’s kitchen. “It gives us a chance to get going now in the winter on a small basis, because you don’t want to suddenly start up so large that you’re totally overwhelmed.”

For the winter months the market will only run every two to three weeks, but they hope that by the time spring and summer rolls around they’ll have enough interest and enough vendors to run every Friday evening.
“It’s not going to be a morning market or even a noon market; the idea is to catch people after work and before the weekend so you can come and pick up your supply.”

Thus far the pair has only secured one vendor, Bailey’s Local Foods out of Waterloo, but they are optimistic that once word spreads the market will become very popular in their community. Snider noted the enormous expansion in Breslau in the past few years and the growth in the number of young families as well for one of the reasons why she thought the time was right for the market.

“It’s all subdivisions around here, huge subdivisions,” said Snider. “All these people here and there isn’t even a grocery store in Breslau.”

Snider and Sudden have been working with Woolwich Township to try and get the market off the ground, and are certainly open to having more vendors come and sell their goods, including local artists or crafters. Snider said the township has agreed to make this first year free for any interested vendors to register and come sell their produce.

The one vendor they have secured epitomizes the local food movement Snider and Sudden are trying to promote. Bailey’s Local Foods has committed their business to within 100 miles of Waterloo Region, sourcing and only making available food that is in season.

Right now the list of available produce is limited to mostly stored root crops such as potatoes, leeks, carrots and onions, but some of their farmers do grow produce in greenhouses around the region.

That may leave customers at the whim of Mother Nature in terms of the produce that is available, but it also means the food is fresher and tastes better, and helps people realize just where our food comes from, said Bailey’s co-owner Maryrose Ivanco.

“This year when the cherries were to be pollinated and the bees were to be out it was raining, so we only had one week of cherries,” she noted.

“In a grocery store you don’t know where your produce came from, and you sure as heck don’t know when it was picked. In the spring, most of our produce has been picked that morning or the day before.”

Prices are a little bit higher than customers can expect to pay in the grocery store, and if local farmers tried to compete with the prices of food trucked and flown from California to our grocery stores, they would go bankrupt, Ivanco noted.

Customers wishing to participate in the market can go online to baileyslocalfoods.ca to place their order, and then pick up their order at the Breslau Community Centre during the designated pickup days, which will be Feb. 13, Mar. 5, Apr. 2 and 23, and May 14.

For more information on the market or to become a vendor, contact Snider at glennandcarolyn@hotmail.com.

Tags: James Jackson

Harris lets kids be MPP for a Day

Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Michael Harris has introduced a new youth initiative that he hopes will help reinvigorate interest in politics and civic engagement. Unveiled last Saturday at his New Year’s levee in St. Jacobs, MPP For a Day intends to bring some 16 students per year to Queen’s Park in Toronto to see just how the provincial government works and what some of the MPP’s responsibilities are as an elected representative.
“It’s going to promote youth leadership, give them the opportunity to participate in discussions made by our community members, and really get them engaged,” said Harris.

“I think there is really no better way than to reach out and give them the opportunity of experiencing what an elected official’s role is, and give them a real hands-on life experience.”

MPP for a Day will run from February to June and September to November. Each month, one successful Grade 6 or 7 student and one Grade 8, 9 or 10 student will go to Queen’s Park and be introduced in the legislature, attend Question Period, meet legislators, tour the legislative buildings and spend time with Harris. At the end of the day, participants will receive a certificate designating them honourary MPP for Kitchener-Conestoga.

To apply for the program, interested students must complete an application form available online, which includes several questions about Ontario’s political system and a 100-word short-answer response detailing why they would make a good MPP for a day. Students in Grades 8 to 10 are asked to provide an additional response explaining one thing they would like to change in the province.

Details such as permission slips from parents or organizing a parental chaperone still need to be arranged, but those should be ironed out in the coming weeks.

Harris said he made a commitment to engaging local youth in their community during the election last fall; this program will help achieve that. He cited growing concerns of a population that has become disinterested in the political process and hopes that this program can help reverse that trend. A record-low 49.2 per cent of all eligible voters cast a ballot in last fall’s election, and only 37.4 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 24 cast a ballot in the 2008 federal election.

“There seems to be a real gap in youth involvement, and I think this is a way to engage the leaders of tomorrow.”

For more information, go online to www.michaelharrismpp.ca to download a copy of the questionnaire, or visit the constituency office at 1187 Fischer-Hallman Road, suite 264 in Kitchener.

Tags: James Jackson

Wellesley clears way for cell tower in St. Clements

A proposed Rogers telecommunications tower near the village of St. Clements received clearance this week from Wellesley council, giving the company the green light to proceed with construction.
Councillors passed a  statement of concurrence acknowledging that Rogers undertook all necessary steps to mitigate the public concerns and resolve the relevant and non-relevant issues surrounding this particular tower.
The 45-metre tower, which is to be built at 4074 Hessen Strasse, drew the ire of nearby citizens last fall, prompting them to appear in front of councillors in October to request support in opposing to the project. They also presented a petition bearing the signature of 39 residents allied against the proposal.

They challenged the necessity of the tower and questioned why it was being built so close to a residential area. They also cited health concerns and property devaluation among their worries, but councillors elected to defer their decision until the public consultation period closed on Nov. 15.

Since the tower is not slated to be built on a residentially-zoned piece of property, there was no consultation required under Industry Canada guidelines, but Rogers chose to proceed with the consultation process anyway.
“I deliberately held Rogers to the higher standard of Industry Canada’s public consultation procedures which require full consultation, and I have taken this site through probably the most extensive public consultation that we have ever done on any site,” said Rogers’ site acquisition and municipal relations consultant Jeff McKay.

In documents provided to councillors, McKay demonstrated that Rogers had fully complied with its industry requirements, including informing all residents living within three-times the tower height of the site (135 metres) of the tower’s construction, publishing a notice in the newspaper, and responding to all concerns as they arose.

Rogers also showed that the current site was the most suitable for the area based on the number of residents impacted and the level of transmission coverage required. There were other proposed sites for the tower, but none met all the necessary criteria as well as the current site.

“This is simply a case of NIMBY [not in my backyard]; of course they are not opposed to moving it elsewhere,” said McKay of the citizens opposed to the tower in an email to chief administrative officer Susan Duke dated Nov. 15.

The township has no authority to dictate the location of the tower because all aspects relating to communication towers, from their engineering to their location, fall under the federal jurisdiction of Industry Canada.
Councillors debated at length about their decision, ultimately opting to concur rather than enter into a potentially lengthy – and expensive – impasse with Rogers. Should an impasse have occurred the issue would have been sent to Industry Canada, who would have examined all the documentation and likely ruled in favour of the telecommunications company anyway.

Robert Doerner, who lives just down the road from the proposed site, was at the meeting Tuesday night to voice his opposition to the tower based on his ongoing health concerns about long-term exposure to radiation from the tower.

“As we’ve seen in the past, issues with drugs and materials such as urea formaldehyde and asbestos, they have all gone from good and acceptable things to bad and unacceptable after a period of discovery has passed,” Doerner said.

“I do not want the radiation from this tower to impact our lives in a negative fashion.”

McKay countered those concerns by saying that under Safety Code 6, which covers the health effects of electromagnetic fields, Health Canada has determined these types of towers pose no threat to human health.
The telecommunications act also says that appealing the location of a radio tower based on health concerns are not reasonable grounds given the federal ruling within Safety Code 6.
“We have no responsibility for the legislation of Health Canada; our obligation is one of compliance,” he said.

“We have proven and certified that at the Doerner property the emissions from this facility will be in excess of 500 times below that which is considered a risk. Health is not an issue. These wouldn’t be built if health was an issue.”

While councillors seemed sympathetic to the concerns of the residents, they also acknowledged the futility of stalling the process any further.
“If we want to hold this up we’ll just end up spinning our wheels and it’ll cost us money down the road in legal fees,” said Coun. Herb Neher.
“We’re just turning good money into bad money for the sake of delaying something that’s going to happen anyway.”

Tags: James Jackson

Wideman, call to NHL All-Star game

You can add Dennis Wideman’s name to the list of people surprised by his inclusion in the NHL All-Star game next weekend in Ottawa. The Washington Capitals defenceman and former Elmira Sugar King got the call Jan. 12 from Capitals general manager George McPhee, and his first thought was that he had been traded. “I didn’t know that the selections were being made that day, and whenever you get a call from the GM it usually has something to do with [a trade],” laughed Wideman during a phone interview from Washington earlier this week.

“That was the first thought that came to my mind.”

The call was to inform the 28-year-old Elmira native that he had been chosen to play in his first all-star game alongside his Capitals teammate Alexander Ovechkin and 34 others players from across the league.
As of Thursday, Wideman is ranked fifth in the NHL scoring by defenceman with 8 goals and 32 points in 45 games for the Capitals. His career high is 13 goals and 50 points, established during the 2007/2008 season when he was a member of the Boston Bruins.

“Obviously I’m pretty excited,” said Wideman about being named to the team. “It’s a big honour and it’s a lot more exciting going for the first time.” Wideman credits his success this year to the ability of his teammates – including Ovechkin and high-scoring centre Niklas Backstrom – to put the puck in the net. Washington is averaging almost 3 goals per game this season, ninth in the league, and Wideman has earned a spot on the team’s top powerplay unit.

“We score a lot of goals, so I think since we’re scoring goals I’m going to get points.”

Wideman has managed to maintain some consistency this season despite the fact that it’s been an up-and-down year for the team as a whole. The Capitals started 7-0 – a franchise record for consecutive wins to begin a season – but slumped badly in November, and after losing six of eight towards the end of the month, management fired head coach Bruce Boudreau.

Boudreau’s replacement, Dale Hunter, appears to have righted the ship and the Capitals were seeded third in the Eastern Conference, 10 points behind the New York Rangers, after a win Wednesday.
Wideman is confident the team will continue to improve, and challenge for the top spot in the east once again.

“There was a bit of a learning curve there [with Dale Hunter], and we started putting a little pressure on ourselves which I think we struggled with,” he said.
“I think we’re getting better but there is still a lot of work to be done and a long season left.”

Under the new all-star format the teams will be chosen by a pair of team captains, Zdeno Chara of the Bruins and Daniel Alfredsson of the Ottawa Senators.
As a result Wideman doesn’t know who he will be paired with yet on defence, and said it doesn’t matter too much to him – but there is one player he would have liked to have the opportunity to play with.
“I think if Nick Lidstrom was going I’d like to play with him once. That would have been pretty good,” he said.

Lidstrom was voted into the game for the 13th time in his career this season, but has elected to skip it. Wideman also said he didn’t know which skills competition events he will participate in, saying “hopefully nothing too big.”
The NHL super skills competition is set for Jan. 28 at 7 p.m.  and the game is scheduled for Jan. 29 at 4 p.m. at Scotiabank Place, the home of the Senators.

Tags: James Jackson

Coach points to refs as Jacks fall to Hagersville

The Wellesley Applejacks had more than just their opponents to contend with when they made the trip down to Hagersville last Saturday night to take on the Hawks. The Jacks fell 7-4 in that game, but head coach Kevin Fitzpatrick said much of the blame for the loss fell on the referees. “I don’t ever complain about refereeing, but they were completely intimidated down there,” said Fitzpatrick

“The score wasn’t indicative of the game; we out-chanced them and they’re just a dirty hockey team.”

Hagersville took a 1-0 lead to the dressing room after the first period on a goal by Aleck Boyd at 9:48, but the Hawks exploded in the second for four unanswered goals in the first 12:32 to take a stranglehold on the match.
Fitzpatrick took particular exception with the Hawks second goal, scored at 1:25 of the second, and he said that a Hagersville player collided with Jacks goaltender Josh Heer, forcing him out of the net and leading to the goal.
Another issue for Fitzpatrick was when at the start of the third the Hawks’ Kyle Parsons and the Jacks’ Josh Herd got into a fight. Fitzpatrick alleges that the Hagersville player ripped off Herd’s helmet and started hitting him over the head with it.

“We’re lucky he didn’t have a concussion,” Fitzpatrick said.

“Their coach was screaming all sorts of obscenities at [the referee] and at our players, and nothing was done.” Following that fight the Jacks finally pushed back and tallied four unanswered goals to make the score 5-4.
Tyler Eckert scored at 1:56 from Reid Denstedt and Rob Hinschberger, Mitch Metzer got a shorthanded goal just seconds later from Brett Vickers, Matt Soveregn made it 5-3 at 4:17 from Denstedt, and Metzger scored his second of the period on the powerplay at 6:55 to make it a 5-4 hockey game.

Yet Fitzpatrick said the referees again were intimidated by the Hagersville bench, and called four straight penalties against Wellesley, allowing the Hawks to score on the powerplay at 11:29 to take a 6-4 lead.
“Once they got the sixth goal on the powerplay, we stopped getting sent to the penalty box,” said Fitzpatrick.

The Hawks tallied an unassisted goal at 19:20 to round out the scoring.

The game was an important one for both teams, as Wellesley was only one point behind the Hawks for second in the division heading into the match, and they now sit three back with 36 points following the loss.
The coach said he intends to take his transgressions up with the OHA when he returns to the area after being away on business. He said he even has photos of Herd getting hit over the head with the helmet.
“When I get back I’m going to take the pictures into the OHA office. It was so blatant.”

This past week the Jacks have been trying to push that game from their mind in preparation for their matchup against the St. George Dukes at home last night (Friday). The Dukes were only one point behind Wellesley in the standings heading into the match, but results were not available before press.

On Sunday, the Jacks will look for some retribution against the Hawks when Hagersville arrives in Wellesley for a match on Sunday afternoon. The puck drops at 3 p.m.

Tags: James Jackson

Elmira’s Derek Hahn leads scoring race in German hockey league

Fans of the Elmira Sugar Kings will find a familiar name atop the leading scorers of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, also known as the DEL. Elmira native Derek Hahn, who suited up for the Kings from 1995 to 1998, is currently leading the  top-tier German hockey league scoring race with 16 goals and 40 points in 36 games, a three point cushion over Kai Hospelt.

“I think the reason for my success this season is that I am playing on a very strong team this year,” said Hahn, who currently plays for the Eishockey-und-Rollschuh club (ERC) club which is located in Ingolstadt, Germany.
The team is currently third in the 14-team league with 66 points, just four behind the co-leaders from Berlin and Mannheim.

Hahn, 34, is a centre on the team and he credits some of his success to winger Thomas Greilinger, who is currently tied for 12th in league scoring with 12 goals and 32 points.
“He is a very good offensive player, and my line has had good chemistry,” said Hahn.

The Canadian is in his first season on the team but is no stranger to the DEL as this is his fifth season playing in the league. He suited up for the Straubing Tigers last season, but suffered an injury to his hand that saw him tear several ligaments and required pins to be put into his thumb to help it heal.

That injury held him out of the lineup for 13 games but he still managed 39 points in 39 games. Prior to last season he played for the now-defunct Frankfort Lions for three years, recording 131 points in 149 games. This season he has managed to shake off that injury and return to the high level of hockey he and his fans in Elmira are accustomed to.

Hahn joined the Kings in the 1995-96 season and played for the team for three seasons. The team was a finalist for the Sutherland Cup in his first year, and captured the Ontario title in 1997. He was named co-playoff MVP with Mike McKinnon, and also eclipsed the 100-point plateau during the regular season.

In 147 career games with the Kings, Hahn scored 64 goals and collected 110 assists, good for 15th on the team’s all-time list. He also holds the team record for most career playoff goals (35), assists (60), and points (95), and he said that winning the Cup that season was his fondest memory of his time spent with the Kings.

From Elmira, Hahn travelled to the Rochester Institute of Technology where he played for three seasons while collecting a degree in business management. From there, he played a pair of games for the Elmira Jackals of the United Hockey League, one game for the Atlantic City Boardwalk Bullies of the East Coast Hockey League, then four full seasons with the Amarillo Gorillas of the Central Hockey League, where he took rookie of the year honours in 2003 and the MVP title in 2007 when he scored 114 points in 67 games.

Hahn then moved overseas and began his European career playing for Rodovre in Denmark, before moving on to Germany. He also helped team Canada capture the Deutschland Cup in November of 2008 with the help of another former Sugar King, Jamie Wright.

He and wife Lacey have a 21-month-old daughter named Addison, with another due in June. Hahn said he also tries to return to Canada in the summer, and was most recently in the country this past June to visit his parents.
With 16 games left on the schedule, Hahn knows anything can happen especially after an injury derailed his season last year, and he says he doesn’t know what the future holds for him or his family once his career is done.
“I would like to play hockey for a little longer,” he said, noting he hopes to fall back on his business degree when his retirement finally comes.
“But as of right now, I have no idea what I will be doing when I am done playing.”

Tags: James Jackson

Years of imagining pay off

It may have been 10 years in the making, but three Wellesley-area authors have finally published their first novel, and they have big plans to expand it into a trilogy in the coming years.

A unique combination of fantasy and science fiction, Galaxy 2,000,000,000 Darkness Falls was written by Andrew Kipp, Jack Crowston and Kyle Golubovic.
“The idea of this book isn’t just one genre, it’s a hybrid of classic fantasy with knights slaying dragons blended in with modern science fiction,” said Kipp.
The book documents the rising rebellion against the evil Blood Emperor Nars-Klan, who rules with an iron fist the reptilian planet of Rilles and the Gensheen people who inhabit it.

Gex, a veteran of a tactical military force called the Gensheen Agency Academy, rebels against the Emperor with his twin brother, Garntelth, a convicted criminal and mercenary for hire who has just escaped from the inescapable Harfell Prison.

“The book starts with Garntelth’s escape from prison, meanwhile Gex and the army is getting ready for a rebellion against their tyrannical overlord, who has been ruling for 300 years,” said Kipp.

Darkness Falls has certainly been a labour of love for the trio. It started out as just a fun activity for Kipp and Crowston, now 21 and 19 years old respectively, to do together while on the playground of Wellesley Public School in the second grade.

Eventually, Crowston suggested they start writing some of their ideas down, and by Grade 7 Kipp had grand plans to turn their idea into a movie – a thought that was quickly quashed.

“I realized that was unachievable because YouTube didn’t exist yet, and I had no idea how to start,” recalled Kipp.

“So this was the next best step, and I started off by writing short stories of 40 or 50 pages which slowly progressed into a full chapter book.”
When Crowston and Kipp started attending high school at Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School they met Golubovic and he joined the writing team before the year was out.

The story is a blend of historical and cultural elements with clear science fiction influences. Kipp said he spent a lot of time studying the tactics of World War II, as well as Roman history and aspects of Japanese and Canadian culture, all of which are evident in the text.

The events of the book are revealed to the reader through a combination of letters, journal entries, flashbacks and real-time events.
The authors also relied on their exposure to science fiction and mass media like Star Wars, video games and comic books to inspire them.
Three years and three re-writes later, Kipp was sitting in the library with Crowston looking over a draft of the story when fate struck – along with one well-aimed book.
“I looked up at Jack and said ‘I’m going to rewrite it again’ and then he hit me in the head with an atlas and said ‘Stop it. Just work on that one.’”

Last February Kipp finally took the finished manuscript to a professional editor in Paris, and four months later they had their final draft which they sent to Volumes in Waterloo for printing.

The trio also had a book signing at the Coles bookstore in Conestoga Mall in August and again on Nov. 20, and they were among the best book signings the store has ever had.
Two more novels are in the works to complete the trilogy – they are already hard at work on book two and hope to have it done within two years.
They meet every Tuesday night over coffee to hash out ideas and concepts – and even get a little writing done.

“Sometimes we get a lot of work done, other times we get really far off topic and don’t get any work done,” said Golubovic.
As for the main characters in the book, the authors caution readers from getting too attached to them.

“In most shows or books most people know that the main characters can’t die, but in this book that isn’t so,” hinted Crowston.
Galaxy 2,000,000,000 Darkness Falls is available online at www.amazon.com or local book stores.

 

Tags: James Jackson

Mennonite writers the subject of Conrad Grebel series

Conrad Grebel University College is marking the first 50 years of Mennonite writing in Canada by hosting a nine-week reading and lecture series and playing host to some of the worlds top Mennonite authors and poets. The series kicked off Wednesday when world-renowned Canadian novelist Rudy Wiebe read some of his work and provided a retrospective view on his 57-year career.

Wiebe is largely credited with starting the Mennonite writing movement back in 1962 with the release of his novel “Peace Shall Destroy Man,” credited as the first Canadian Mennonite authored book published by a national publisher and widely available in English.

He has twice been awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction, and in 2007 he won the Charles Taylor Prize for his memoir, “Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest.”

Wiebe was born in Saskatchewan in 1934 as part of the last generation of Mennonite homesteaders to settle the Canadian west. He did not even speak English until the age of six.
Other speakers in the series include Canadian novelist David Bergen on Feb. 29, who won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2005 for “The Time in Between”, David Waltner-Toews on Jan. 18, an internationally known epidemiologist and a poet and novelist will talk about how science and a Mennonite upbringing inform his work, as well as Magdalene Redekop on Feb. 1, Rob Zacharias on Feb. 8, and Paul Tiessen on Mar. 14.

“This particular series is the first we’ve ever done of this magnitude,” said Hildi Froese Tiessen, a professor of literature at Conrad Grebel for the past 25 years and a scholar of Mennonite writing.

She acknowledged that Mennonite literature continues to be a minority form of writing to this day, and that there are only about 25 or 30 prominent writers in the world today, but also noted that it is gaining momentum which is demonstrated by the quality of writers taking part in the lecture series.

“The Mennonites effectively shunned creative writing for hundreds of years because it was seen as not truth-telling,” she said. “So it’s certainly significant for the Mennonite community to have this blossoming of literary figures.”

According to Tiessen, it was a confluence of several factors that led to the genre’s growth. Certainly the release of Wiebe’s book in 1962 started it all, but other events during that time period also contributed.

During the 1920s migration of Mennonites to Canada, and earlier migrations dating back to the 1870s, Mennonites began moving into the cities and eventually they become more comfortable with English and gaining an education.

By the 1960s those experiences, combined with the growing sense of multiculturalism in Canada and the post-Trudeau years which gave birth to a renewed sense of nationalism helped give rise to Mennonite writers and poets in the 1980s and 1990s.

“The writing of the earlier era was very much what I would call writing of diaspora, where we had people who in effect were bridging two cultures,” said Tiessen.
“Now they’re very much in the mainstream, writing about experiences that are most familiar to them but would have parallels throughout the country.”
The remaining eight weeks of the literature series run on Wednesday evenings in the college chapel of Conrad Grebel.
For more information and a complete list of the participating authors, visit www.grebel.uwaterloo.ca.

Tags: James Jackson

Carsharing, waiting for Woolwich to catch on

Grand River CarShare’s efforts to expand into Woolwich may have stalled a little bit, but members of Elmira Mennonite Church want to help jumpstart renewed interest in the program. The church has already agreed to provide one of their parking spots at 58 Church St. W. to be used by the group once it gets up and running in the township, but that’s where the inherent problem lies. In Woolwich, 17 people have joined, but that number has not increased in almost a year and is only about a third of the 50 that the GRCS is looking for in order to support three vehicles in Elmira.

For organizers and carshare hopefuls, the situation has become somewhat of a chicken or the egg scenario: people are hesitant to sign up until they can be sure that the program will proceed, yet the program cannot proceed until enough people have signed up.

“We hope to start with three cars; we certainly won’t start with one. It’ll be at least two cars,” said GRCS president Jason Hammond.
“We need a network,” he added, meaning the group wants at least two vehicles available from the beginning  to ensure enough people get a vehicle when they need one.
The last thing they want is to have people backing out of their commitment because there weren’t enough cars to meet demand.
The township has backed the carshare program by giving them a $30,000 line of credit last fall following the announcement that the Grand River Transit route 21 would become permanent.

That money, paid back with interest of two per cent, will provide the necessary working capital and help keep costs down. Parking locations have also been arranged at the UPI service centre on Church Street East and the Foodland store in the south end.

Typically, GRCS buys off-lease cars that are about two years old, and vehicles are chosen base on what’s most suitable for the location. GRCS currently has more than 500 members who have access to a fleet of 17 vehicles in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Hamilton.

Grand River CarShare and Hamilton CarShare is a single non-profit co-operative that provides its members access to vehicles on a self-serve, pay-per-use basis. The co-operative was founded in 1998 and operated first in Kitchener-Waterloo, adding service to Cambridge in 2007, and Hamilton in 2009.
The mission of the GRCS is to deliver a carsharing service and to promote carsharing as an important component of a sustainable transportation system within the Region of Waterloo and the City of Hamilton.

The co-op seeks to reduce overall transportation costs, traffic congestion and air pollution, thus improving our communities.
For as little as $10 drivers can place a deposit on their membership to join, which would help the GRCS gain a clearer understanding of just how many people are interested in the service.

Once the program is up and running the application fee ranges from $30 to $99, and are fully refundable. A complete breakdown of prices is available online.
Despite being a nearly 30 people short of their goal, Hammond said once they do reach 50 they can be operating in Elmira with very short notice.
“As soon as we have enough people, that’s when we launch. If 35 more people sign up tomorrow, we would launch next week.”

For the parishioners of Elmira Mennonite Church, assisting the GRCS become viable in Elmira and the township is an important part of their new “green” mandate.
The church formed a green team in the summer of 2009 to help create awareness about the impact that their parish and their congregation has on the environment.
Since then the group has grown to include six members, and they have undertaken some pretty big tasks.

“There is a wonderful sense of frugality at the church, through the thrift shop that is across the street from us, and through our recycling,” said pastor Steven Janzen.
To that end, the team has installed low-flow toilets and energy-saving CFL light bulbs at the church, they had an assessment done by REEP Green Solutions to locate any drafts in the building, new double-paned windows have been installed, they’re in the process of mounting solar panels on the roof, and they’re even working on establishing a community garden on one of their vacant lots this summer.

“It’s an investment,” Janzen noted of the improvements. “We’ve talked about the produce that we could gather from the garden and we could have a wonderful potluck that we can call the 50-foot meal, instead of the 100-mile diet.

“These aren’t saving us huge money, but they’re promoting ways of being green and meeting the challenge of helping our environment.”
He likened that mentality to the expansion of the carshare program in Woolwich. Instead of everyone relying on their own car sitting in the driveway, if residents instead took into consideration the environmental benefits of sharing a car, we’d likely end up further ahead.

Janzen also recognizes the inherent challenge in trying to get people to share their transportation.
“That takes coordination and communication, and there is also a sense of respect for taking care of a commonly shared vehicle that other people will drive,” he said.
For more information on the GRCS, visit their website www.grandrivercarshare.ca or call (519) 578-1895.

Tags: James Jackson