The windows in Grebel’s Chapel are one of the College’s most iconic features. They were designed by local artist, professor, writer, scholar, teacher, novelist, and poet Nancy-Lou Patterson, who passed away on October 15, 2018. Her art has been a gift to the College, appreciated every single day, as countless students, staff, faculty, and guests pause to take in the glorious colours and reflections that spread brilliant light throughout the Chapel. The symbols in the windows are drawn from the natural world—fire, water, earth, and growing things. Nancy-Lou’s original chapel window drawings, as well as her research on local Mennonite folk art, live on in the Mennonite Archives of Ontario and in several published articles.
Photo: Grebel’s first president, Winfield Fretz, stands with Nancy-Lou at Grebel’s Dedication Day in 1964. Photo courtesy of Mennonite Archives of Ontario.
