Mennonites in Mexico looking for new home, again
By David Agren - Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 0 Comments
A community that left Manitoba a century ago is eyeing Russia
Gael Gonzalez/Reuters
Peter Friesen talks as if he’s seen the promised land. A Mennonite farmer and father of 13 in Mexico’s northern Chihuahua state, his blue eyes brighten as he paints a picture of a place with pleasant people, raging rivers and vast tracts of virgin land ideal for agriculture. “We saw really good land with lots of water,” Friesen recalled, while seated in the booth of a Mennonite pizzeria that sells pies smothered with the prized local product, a tangy cheese known as queso menonita.
Friesen isn’t talking about paradise. He’s talking about Russia, where his Mennonite ancestors once worked the land before departing for the Canadian Prairies and then the high plains of northern Mexico. Friesen and 10 Mennonites recently travelled to Russia to explore a possible relocation from Chihuahua to the prairie of Tatarstan—900 km east of Moscow and similar to Manitoba with its cold winters, hot summers and flat prairie. The possible relocation is not a nostalgic return to his roots, but rather a resolution for the most pressing problems Mexican Mennonites face: shortages of land and water. “We could cultivate 10 times more than we have here,” says Enrique Voth Penner, who also went to Russia. Continue…
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What, you couldn't figure out a way to blame John Baird for this one?
By kadyomalley - Monday, May 5, 2008 at 5:53 PM - 0 Comments
NDP MP Paul Dewar is So Not Impressed… by — oh, I’m going to
NDP MP Paul Dewar is So Not Impressed by — oh, I’m going to journalistic Hell for this one — NoWatergate:
Question: What’s going on in your riding, that your riding can’t provide (inaudible)[uh, I'm going to guess ... "water"? -ITQ]Paul Dewar: You know, I’m going to have to talk to our mayor and
see what his plumbing credentials are. This has never happened as far
as I know in, in Parliament. I think that many people are concerned
about, about our city and making sure that Ottawa is able to provide
the basic. So I’ll look into this and get back to my constituents as
soon as possible. City Hall is just down the way and I haven’t had a
chance to call them yet. But maybe this is an indication of the, the
deficit and the debt for infrastructure of $123 billion. And so, I’ll
talk to our, our mayor first and then maybe get back to some of the
Ministers in this cabinet to maybe suggest we need some investment in
our infrastructure here. -
First, the committee system breaks down, and now this.
By kadyomalley - Monday, May 5, 2008 at 11:23 AM - 0 Comments
UPDATE: Colleague Wherry has the details.
Just after Question Period, the House of Commons…UPDATE: Colleague Wherry has the details.
Just after Question Period, the House of Commons was shut down for the rest of the day, by unanimous consent, due to the (temporary, we hope) demise of the parliamentary plumbing system, which crashed earlier today due to unspecified water pressure issues in the downtown core. Committees are cancelled, MPs’ offices are closing early, staffers are going home, and ITQ is going for ice cream, but will report back later. Hopefully with actual answers on what went so very wrong with our institutional innards, and when we can expect to be back at work. Further bulletins as events warrant.
