Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Tales from the Mennonite Heritage Archives
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Tales from the Mennonite Heritage Archives
By Mennonite Heritage ArchivesHistory
Tales from the Mennonite Heritage Archives episodes
- Katherine Esau
Send us Fan Mail
In this episode, we bring you snapshot of the life of scientist Katherine Esau, who emigrated to California from Russia via Germany during the tumultuous era around World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. Her seminal book titled Plant Anatomy was published in 1953, and became a standard text for students. Its most recent edition was printed in 2006 and is still available online today.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.15 min - Fred Engen, Mennonites, and Paraguay
Send us Fan Mail
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our listeners! In the Mennonite village of Loma Plata in Menno Colony, Paraguay, there is a street named after Fred Engen. In this episode, we share the story of the man whose name is on that street sign. It’s a story that is much bigger than the street or the village it’s in.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.15 min - Inventors and Innovators with Dick Braun (Part 2)
Send us Fan Mail
It's time for Part 2 of our conversation with Dick Braun of Osler, Sask., which focuses on the prolific innovator, Julius Klassen. Klassen became known in the metal manufacturing industry, most notably for his machine that could manufacture engine radiators of any size, right up to units for sea-faring ships.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.15 min - Inventors and Innovators with Dick Braun (Part 1)
Send us Fan Mail
Today we bring you Part 1 of a conversation with Dick Braun of Osler, Sask. Dick has written on the topic of Mennonite inventors and innovators from the past. What he’s learned is so interesting, we just had to share it with our listeners.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.15 min - Forced to Fight: The Jakob Guenther Story
Send us Fan Mail
Today we share the the story of Jakob Guenther, who was born and raised in Russia, only to be conscripted by the German army during WWII just because he spoke German. He was forced to fight against the country from which his ancestors came. Separated from his family, he spent the rest of his life on a quest to find them.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.15 min - C. C. Penner
Send us Fan Mail
By the time C. C. Penner managed to get out of Soviet Russia in 1949, he’d lost track of his wife and family, and had to leave them behind. Eleven years later, he schemed a plan to meet Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, in New York City in 1960 to appeal for the reunification of his family. This is his story.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.15 min - David Toews
Send us Fan Mail
We’re delighted to launch our fall season with the story of David Toews, one of the most influential Mennonite leaders in 20th century Canada. He became so well-known across the Prairies and in Ottawa, that Prime Minister William Lyon Mckenzie King invited Toews and his wife to dinner. Some called Toews the Mennonite Moses after the Hebrew prophet who led his people out of slavery in Egypt. Without David Toews, many Mennonites would not be in Canada today.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.15 min - SUMMER REWIND: First Harvest in Canada 1876
Send us Fan Mail
For our last rewind of Summer 2026, we bring you a special feature from Thanksgiving 2025!
Mennonite history enthusiast Gerhard Ens first recorded this fictional account of the first harvest by Mennonites in Canada (1876) on audio tape in the Low German language. The story, told through the eyes of an impatient 10-year-old Henry, has now been translated into English and adapted for radio by the Tales team. We hope you enjoy this nostalgic and entertaining re-telling.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.16 min - SUMMER REWIND: The Disappeared Beaver Mennonite Church
Send us Fan Mail
Today, we bring you a story about the Beaverlodge Mennonite Church, a little known congregation that formed in the late 1920s and disappeared from the landscape of Peace River country in northern Alberta some 15-ish years later. Guest Doug Klassen, Executive Minister of the Mennonite Church Canada, shares about his little-known family connection to the church, and we capture his reaction when a surprise visitor shows Doug church records containing names of his ancestors.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.16 min - SUMMER REWIND: From Russia with Woe (Part 2)
Send us Fan Mail
During Stalin’s Reign of Terror the 1930s, Jacob Petrovich Janzen was one of many Mennonites swept up into forced labour camps called Special Settlements, and then the more severe form of the camps called the Gulag. More than 80 years later, his great-grandaughter, Maria Lotsmanova, discovered parts of his story with help from the Gulag History Museum of Repressions in Moscow. Maria shares with listeners what she has learned about her great-grandfather's struggle and faith during this time.
Support the show
Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998.
Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archives website - https://www.mharchives.ca/
Follow the Mennonite Heritage Archives on Instagram and Facebook.16 min
About Tales from the Mennonite Heritage Archives
From the publisher's feed
Explore the history of Mennonites through materials found in the Mennonite Heritage Archives. Using interviews, object, and documents, this podcast will dive into stories inspiring, tragic,…
strange, and beautiful. As varied as the lives of the people and organizations whose materials are housed in the Mennonite Heritage Archives, this weekly podcast aims to educate and inspire greater interest in Mennonite history.