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Mennonite Heritage Centre news

Summer Assistance

Through the Summer Career Placement Program, a division of Human Resources Development Canada, several students found employment at the Heritage Centre this summer. Shauna Weiss was hired by the Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society as an archival clerk with the main task of entering early Manitoba Mennonite Church registers into the GRANDMA database. Shawna is a first year student at Canadian Mennonite Bible College. She is originally from Warman, Saskatchewan.

Myron Dyck, originally from Altona, Manitoba, most recently a student of Mennonite history at the University of Winnipeg, was hired by the Mennonite Heritage Centre as an archival assistant to process a variety of donated material. His tasks will also include uploading descriptions of archival holdings for inclusion in the Canadian Archival Information Network (CAIN). Part of this project is funded by Young Canada Works in Heritage Institutions, a program delivered by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

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Help us Connect!

The Heritage Centre has had a presence on the world wide web (WWW) since February 1996 and would like to develop this resource much more. The potential for connecting people with their heritage has never been greater.

Leaders in the heritage field in Canada have done significant strategic planning during the past five years through an initiative of the Canadian Council of Archives, the National Archives and Heritage Canada, which has come to be known as the “CAIN” (Canadian Archival Information Network).

CAIN is a distributed, searchable network of networks that will link Canadians, via the Internet, with every Canadian archive in towns and cities throughout the country. It will give all Canadians unlimited, easy access to a rich resource of Canadian historical records and documents. Just imagine the results of such a network.

A grade 8 girl is given an assignment to learn about Nunavut. From a computer terminal in her school she discovers CAIN and both the Inuit Cultural Institute in Arviat and The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. From their respective web sites she is suddenly transported to the vast lands of Nunavut and is able to download photographs and information about the new territory and the people who have struggled to retain their heritage. She leaves the computer terminal with enough material for her assignment and a desire to learn more about the land and indigenous people of Nunavut.

Imagine another scenario. A young man, recently arrived in Canada, wonders how he will ever become familiar with this huge, strange country. At his local library he discovers CAIN, which leads him to records and pictures of people who have come before; who traveled great distances to find a home in Canada. Sorting through the many stories and pictures of earlier immigrants to Canada he begins to read part of the diary of a young man who came to Canada 50 years earlier – suddenly he does not feel quite so alone.

The heritage of Canadians can be found in more than 800 large and small archives across the country. The holdings of these many institutions span any number of themes: arts and culture, education, environment, family and domestic life, religious life, industry, manufacturing and commerce, labour, law and justice, local government, medicine, health sciences and services, science and technology, social organizations and more. CAIN will enable us to discover where the particular documentary evidence is preserved in order to answer the questions we face. It is difficult to convey the emotion of people who they encounter the archival record for the first time. It might be the school child reading a diary from her home town, familiar surroundings and landscape but written 150 years ago, or the “eureka” from the behind the microfilm reader as a genealogist finds an unknown ancestor, or the relief of a woman who suffered from nightmares throughout her life discovers from the record that she did not witness a grim murder as a young child.

Several inter-provincial archival databases are already fully functional on the internet, and others are at various degrees of development. You may wish to check out these sites: Canadian North West Archival Database (Alberta, BC, Yukon); Manitoba and Saskatchewan Archival Information Network. When I recently searched under the keyword “Mennonite” in the Canadian North West Archival Database, I received a list of 25 descriptions of archival holdings. Fifteen of these collections were in BC, nine in Alberta and one in the Yukon!

The Mennonite Heritage Centre began reformatting and revising its 1988 Inventory Guide to Archival Holdings several years ago and now has a number of these descriptions uploaded to the Manitoba-Saskatchewan site. However, only a small portion of our rich collection, is described according to the current standards for archival description.

What we need most is time and money, so that we can adequately staff the Centre to meet the needs and respond to opportunity of sharing our heritage in these new ways. Donations are always accepted and tax deductible. If you appreciate your heritage and want to “help us connect”, please consider a donation.

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Last modified October 30, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Heritage Centre and the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies.
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