The Dutch know muck. And they know how to grow vegetables and flowers in it. At least that was my experience growing up. “Muck farms” refers to agriculture in areas where wetlands were drained and the “muck” turned into productive “garden farms,” typically producing vegetables […]
My title — “Play ball?” — really should have two question marks. I picked this topic because I’ve been watching to see whether North Americans will get major league baseball this Covid-19 summer. That’s one question. The other is whether Christian athletes should play on […]
This post concludes a series of three blog posts on belonging and identity in the Dutch immigrant communities in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. The first two posts– “Smells and Tastes” and “Dutch Bingo.” –explored how religious identities and ethnic identities easily get entangled. […]
What shapes an identity and makes a community? What did I experience in the Dutch Reformed immigrant communities that I grew up in during the 1970s and 1980s in southern Ontario, Canada? In last week’s blog post, I focused on the sounds, sights, tastes, and […]
What shapes an identity? What makes a community? I grew up in Dutch Reformed immigrant communities in towns and rural areas in Ontario, Canada, in the 1970s and early 1980s. My father was the “dominee” in a series of congregations from the Ottawa region to […]
“Immigration is taking place under greatly changed situations, and in a different land. So in that very real sense, history is not repeating itself.” If you read this quotation with current headlines in mind, you might have wondered whether it is about debates over immigration […]
This blog post will resonate with anyone familiar with the Little House on the Prairie novels and TV series. The “little House” stories were based on the real history of the Ingalls and Wilder families but altered by Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose […]
Pierre Van Paassen lived a life of contradictions. He was a pacifist who set aside his principles to serve in the Canadian military and later returned to pacifism of a sort. He was a journalist who made up stories and bounced around jobs from Canada […]