News

In late October the children of Peter Goetz, a well known artist from Waterloo who died in 2007, donated to Conrad Grebel University College sixteen watercolours depicting Mennonite life in the Waterloo area.

The paintings, which range in content from landscapes, to buildings, to Old Order Mennonites, capture a glimpse of what the artist saw as the serenity and sense of community in the region. 

Being a church musician today requires breadth, flexibility, and the ability to participate in discussion – it’s not just about music but also about liturgy and theology,

said Dr. Ken Hull, Associate Professor of Music at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario.

A greater wealth of musical options means a greater need to understand how to make choices and to articulate reasons for them in worship.

As an associate professor of Music at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Dr. Laura Gray teaches Music History, Opera, Aesthetics, and World Music. Her passion however, as well as her main areas of research and publication, lies in the music of Jean Sibelius, the 20th-Century British Symphony, and early 20th-century music criticism and aesthetics.

Music graduate Nan Forler (’87) has many fond memories of master classes and piano and vocal lessons at Grebel. In fact, she ended up marrying Kevin Coates who sat next to her in Peter Hatch’s music theory class in 1985. Those memories prompted Nan to choose the Great Hall at Grebel as the ideal place to launch her new book, Bird Child.

When two people study history in school, work at museums for many years, and ultimately meet and fall in love at a museum, it’s really not that surprising that they jump at the chance to live in a museum.

Andrew Suderman has found himself sailing through life, ultimately landing in South Africa as a volunteer. He graduated with a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) degree from Grebel this spring and, with his wife Karen, quickly signed on with Mennonite Church Canada to explore the possibility of establishing an Anabaptist Network and Resource Centre.

As the classrooms of Conrad Grebel University College are once again filled with song snippets, beating drums, and tricky theory, first year Music students are not the only new faces to be welcomed at Grebel. The University of Waterloo Department of Music is pleased to announce that Nancy Kidd is the new Conductor of the University of Waterloo Choir.

A one-day bus tour of literary Manitoba, with writers reading in the very landscapes their work inscribes, is one of the special features of the fifth international conference on Mennonite/s Writing, to take place at the University of Winnipeg on October 1-4, 2009. Rudy Wiebe, Di Brandt, David Bergen, and Patrick Friesen, along with Armin Wiebe, David Elias, Sarah Klassen, David Waltner-Toews, Maurice Mierau, John Weier, Al Reimer and others – all have lived and worked in this prairie landscape. Almost all have roots in the Mennonite communities of Winnipeg and/or southern Manitoba.

Seventeen Mennonite-Christian and Shiite-Muslim scholars of religion met together for four days in Qom, Iran, to discuss the theme of peace and justice. The dialogue conference was planned and hosted May 24-27, 2009 by the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute (IKERI), under the direction of its president, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) organized and sponsored the conference from the Mennonite side.

Nestled into the side of a small hill on the campus of University of Waterloo is a handsomely-preserved farmhouse – a quiet testimony to the Pennsylvania German cultural heritage it celebrates. Today the home has become a landmark overlooking Columbia Lake and the University of Waterloo playing fields. The strong simple architectural lines of a past era contrast the modern lines of buildings on the north campus. While the Brubacher House Museum used to be on the edge of campus, the research and technology park has been creeping closer to its historic walls.