“How did I get here?” It’s a question we ask on birthdays, anniversaries, and other occasions when we take stock of our lives. We build our life stories from memories of big choices we’ve made: to go to one school and not another, to join a cause, to help a friend, to get married—or not. It’s called “autobiographical memory,” and it’s how we make sense of everything that’s happened to us. Autobiographical memory tells us who we are, where we’ve come from—and where to go next. It’s not a complete record of each moment in our lives. Rather, autobiographical memory is a selection of key moments or touchstones that are important because of what they mean to us.
Colleges, like individuals, tend to be selective in remembering, especially when celebrating anniversaries! This birthday edition of Grebel Now is filled with memories from the past 60 years. Collectively, they tell a larger story about Grebel. They don’t tell the entire story (or an entirely objective one), but they do speak to this place at its best, and they express the values and aspirations embedded in the history and future of this place.
I’ve learned a few things about Grebel’s history and personality in the seven years I’ve served here. And if I had to pick just a few key moments that made Grebel what it is today, they would be as follows.
Saying ‘yes’ to the University of Waterloo
Grebel was first imagined in the late 1950s, when local Christian denominations were invited to found colleges on the campus of the new University of Waterloo. For Ontario Mennonite leaders, the invitation arrived at a moment when Mennonite youth were enrolling en masse in universities and colleges for the first time. With a 400-year history of separation from society at large, Mennonite leaders were concerned that their youth would lose their faith at university. A residential college was an opportunity to create an environment where this new generation of Ontario Mennonite youth could maintain connection to their faith tradition during what one founder called “the seeking, doubting, formative years of their lives.”
It soon became clear that Grebel would have to be more than a safe harbour for Mennonite students. The invitation to start a college at a public university implied partnership, engagement, and interaction with a larger world. While this was unfamiliar territory for world-wary Mennonites, it was also the bigger opportunity. Affiliation with a larger university meant that Grebel could potentially have a wider reach and a broader impact than it might otherwise have.
In its second year of operation, Grebel’s resident student body was less than 50 percent Mennonite, and included Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, and the full spectrum of Christian traditions. By its second decade, Grebel faculty were teaching courses to thousands of undergraduate students from all faculties at the university. And today, students from many different backgrounds and perspectives come to Grebel to study Theology and Peace and Conflict studies at the graduate level.
Choosing Winfield Fretz as the first President
The importance of presidents in the success of an institution can (I’ll admit) sometimes be overstated. However, the very first leader has a unique opportunity to set the trajectory for a new organization. Hiring Winfield Fretz to be Grebel’s founding president shaped the College’s particular focus on community engagement.
A professor in the relatively new discipline of Sociology, Fretz was also an entrepreneur. Before coming to Grebel, he opened the first racially integrated restaurant in the Kansas town where he lived—combining business with concern for social justice. At Grebel, Fretz thought carefully about how buildings and services could help create the conditions where all students could thrive and find belonging.
He was closely involved in design decisions. Fretz wanted interesting architecture, big residence windows, and he insisted on round tables in the dining room instead of long institutional rectangles. Sixty years later, our students still enjoy the ample natural light in their rooms, and they get to know each other around tables that promote face-to-face conversation. And Fretz’s thoughtfulness about creating a pro-social community environment is ingrained in our approach to Grebel’s Student Services program today.
Fretz stressed that he did not want Grebel to become an “isolated academic institution.” His academic interest in community drove him to become involved in (and often to instigate) various organizations, including the Mennonite Savings and Credit Union (now Kindred Credit Union), the Mennonite Historical Society, Mennonite Economic Development Associates, and Mennonite Mutual Aid—an alternative to for-profit insurance providers. Fretz, and Grebel, were promoting these enterprises well before ‘social entrepreneurship’ was part of everyday vocabulary.
Fretz’s enthusiasm and genial personality permanently entwined Grebel in the community outside the university, and established Grebel as a good partner for community projects and social enterprises. Today, Grebel is home to the Centre for Peace Advancement, which hosts over a dozen community organizations and social entrepreneurs. The Centre’s lead sponsor is the Kindred Credit Union—a business that Winfield Fretz helped to found.
Laying Cornerstone at Conrad Grebel College in 1964: L-R John Neufeld , Milton R.Good, J. Winifield Fretz, Elven Shantz
Becoming more than a residence
The founders assumed that Grebel would primarily be a residential college, and it was not clear that it would have many (if any) full-time faculty. At one stage, the thinking was that Grebel would invite Mennonite professors at the University of Waterloo to associate with Grebel—a kind of “fellows” model.
Winfield Fretz was cautious about faculty expansion, at one point commenting that Grebel “would probably always have a small faculty and staff.” Nevertheless, Grebel steadily expanded its academic program throughout its first three decades. One early impetus for hiring faculty was the creation of the Religious Studies program—a partnership among the four “Church Colleges” and the Faculty of Arts. Grebel went on to hire faculty to teach Sociology and History in main campus departments. Eventually, the College launched its own programs in Peace and Conflict Studies, Music, Theology, and Mennonite Studies.
Over the years, Grebel faculty have made significant contributions in their many fields: peace studies, philosophy and ethics, theology, history, biblical studies, sociology, musicology, musical composition, and music performance. In addition to formal classroom teaching, their presence is a rich resource for our residence students, who encounter faculty in the halls of the College, and at community suppers, chapel services, and in the library. In 1964, few would have predicted that Grebel would one day have fifteen full-time professors, along with many more part-time faculty. But without faculty, an entire dimension of Grebel’s ethos would be missing.
Leaning into a partnership with a public university. Becoming more than a student residence by hiring gifted scholars and teachers. Choosing a founding president with a heart for community. There are many important milestones in the College’s history. But if I had to pick just a few, I’d say that these three choices shaped Grebel into the unique community of learning that we are today.
Walter Klaassen teaching a class in church history,1960s.
