The book of Leviticus describes three major festivals for which every adult male was to be present in Jerusalem. The first was the Passover, observed the fourteenth day of the first month, roughly equivalent to April in the Julian calendar. This was a celebration of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. Grain was seeded in … Continue reading History of Thanksgiving celebrations
Newfoundland
How many Mennonites does it take to change a light bulb?
There was a time not so many years ago when ethnic jokes were popular. The jokes generally depicted members of the targeted ethnic group as being not very smart. Members of an eastern European ethnic group who are quite numerous in Canada were often the brunt of such jokes. One such joke went this way: … Continue reading How many Mennonites does it take to change a light bulb?
Saskatchewan – the sensible time zone
The world is divided into 24 time zones and Canada sprawls across 5½of those zones (more on that later). When the Canadian Pacific Railroad was being built, Sanford Fleming realized that the vastness of the country was going to be a problem. People still set their clocks by the time the sun stood directly overhead … Continue reading Saskatchewan – the sensible time zone
Where is Ottawa?
Judith Adler teaches a course on families and the cultural traditions of families the world over at Memorial University of Newfoundland. A few years ago she began to suspect that her students had no idea where some of the places she was talking about actually were. So she gave them a quiz. The quiz consisted … Continue reading Where is Ottawa?
Maybe snow isn’t so bad, after all
Where I live we suffered through a long winter and a spring that progressed at a barely discernible pace. The weather always gives us something to talk about here in Saskatchewan, mostly in a worried or complaining tone, but summer did eventually show up, just as it always has. Now we are in those glorious … Continue reading Maybe snow isn’t so bad, after all
