News

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.

A dynamic, free Mennofolk concert will kick off Sound in the Lands 2009, a festival and academic conference celebrating Mennonite music from around the world. The concert, using two stages, will start on Thursday June 4, 2009 at 4:00 pm in the Conrad Grebel University College Great Hall and the Chapel.

The halls of education have been where Vic Winter is at home. From the fall of 1972, through the completion of serving as Senior Residents in 1978, Conrad Grebel University College was a second home for Vic Winter. He and his wife Marilyn have kept in touch with Grebel through their children, as all three have also lived and studied at Grebel – Art (BSc '05), Jesse (BSC 07) and now Ben (BSc '09).

Ched Myers and Elaine Enns from Oak View, California are a couple who have spent decades working in the fields of restorative justice, conflict transformation, and faith-based witness for justice. Enns is a mediator, consultant, educator, and trainer who provides mediation and consultation services for individuals, churches, schools and businesses. Myers focuses on building capacity for biblical literacy, church renewal and faith-based witness for justice.

Music lovers and musicians from across North America and around the world will converge at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario, June 4-8, 2009 for the highly anticipated Sound in the Lands 2009, a sequel to the acclaimed music festival and academic conference held at Grebel in 2004.

While the closing of a church is never easy, Warden Woods Mennonite Church turned some of their sadness into joy with a unique gift to Conrad Grebel University College.

Seventeen Conrad Grebel University College students traveled to Durban, South Africa on a 19-day music culture trip in May 2008. They attended concerts, visited AIDS clinics, met anti-apartheid and refugee workers, visited local markets, beaches and slums. They also unexpectedly found themselves in the midst of the violence that plagued South Africa in May.