President’s Report
On behalf
of the board of directors, I am pleased to report that 2007 has been another
successful year in the life of our Society.
We have sponsored several well-attended public events and our annual
genealogy workshop, and have continued to add interesting content to our
newsletter. To acknowledge our accountability to you our members, this report,
including our financial statements, is accessible on line.
We are
pleased to note that this year again public participation has increased both in
terms of attendance at our public events and the number of people visiting our
centre. We continue to enjoyed strong volunteer support which has allowed us to
collect, process and preserve a growing volume of historical information which
would eventually be lost. Thanks to the generosity and loyalty of our
constituency, we have again received the necessary financial support to
maintain our programs.
John Konrad
Major Events
Special events serve to connect and educate the Mennonite community, and they provide an avenue for fund raising for the archives. With many others, we explore stories from the past, celebrate our rich heritage, and enjoy being together as an extended Mennonite family.We held four special events this year:
Feb. 17, 2007 - Quilt show and a lecture by Ron Matthies on “The MCC Story”.
We had an afternoon quilt show in the Garden Park Towers that featured 2 quilts from the 1940’s with Mennonite historical ties, among many others made by volunteers for the world wide work of MCC, as well as a variety of artistic quilts. Ron Matthies, who used to be CEO of MCC, was well received.
May 6, 2007 at 3 p.m.: Saengerfest”:
Choir Festival of Praise and Worship.
Songs from four choirs, a mass choir and the congregation filled the sanctuary at Central Heights Church with song. An evocative and moving for the 1,000 attendees.
Oct. 13, 2007 Annual fundraising banquet with Dr. John B. Toews as speaker.
A full house at Emmanuel Church gym heard about “In Defense of Mothers and Sisters: The Mennonite Selbstschutz in Ukraine, 1918”.
Nov. 24, 2007 Lecture: Peter Letkamen spoke about “Ben Horch and his Contributions to Mennonite Church Musicology” at Bakerview Church.
For 2008, we have 5 events planned:
Feb. 23 2008…documentary and book launch “Letters from Stalin’s Gulag” with Dr. Ruth Derksen Siemens at Bakerview MB Church. With 2 Encore presentations
Apr. 20, 2008 at S. Abbotsford MB Church, & Apr. 27, 2008 Peace Mennonite Church in Richmond.
May 10, 2008…”Celebrating the Contributions of “Der Bote” and “Die Mennonitsche Rundschau” with Helen Franz and Dr. David Ewert.
Oct. 18 & 19, 2008… “Sixty years of Peace and Plenty: Mennonite Refugees Remember”
Visiting, displays; “Great Trek” film, annual banquet with Dr. Harry Loewen and celebration service, all at Emmanuel Church.
Events Committee: Ben Stobbe, Richard Thiessen
Helen Rose Pauls (Chair)
The Archives
“Service to others is the payment you make for your space here on earth.”
Personnel
Our Center is indebted to the volunteers who serve
here. It is very gratifying to see the consistent dedication of more than 30
individuals who give part of each week to assist in the numerous tasks that
want attention in our Center. We especially appreciate the work of Mary Ann
Quiring, our hard working permanent staff member.
Visitors:
The location of our office in the Garden Park Tower in Abbotsford offers convenient access, encouraging a steady flow of visitors. This year some 1,400 signed our guest book.
People come to our Center for a variety of reasons. Genealogical research and the writing of family histories continues to excite much interest. Other visitors come to pursue research or borrow books from our lending library.
Genealogy Workshop:
Public interest is growing in the annual genealogy workshop hosted by MHSBC. I wish to acknowledge the contribution of Dr. Tim Janzen of Oregon as well as that of Henry Schapansky and Richard Thiessen for impressive expertise being developed with respect to genealogical research. We also support DNA research and welcome anyone contributing DNA samples, as means of searching for their own family roots.
Sales:
Our Center is pleased to market a core selection of Mennonite books and CDs. Several titles continue to be good sellers. Owing to interest spawned by the Dnieper River historical cruises, sales of the Mennonite Historical Atlas and Rudy Friesen’s Building on the Past continue briskly.
This year the recently published Yarrow books have also been popular items, so much so that the entire printing has been sold out.
Projects:
A very generous supply of volunteers has made it possible to continue with several significant projects, including digitization of the Die Mennonitische Rundschau, indexing of EWZ (Einwanderungszentralstelle Documents), indexing of obituaries as published in the MB Herald and Der Bote, and our continued work on the Inmagic Program.
Mennonite
Historical Society of Canada and GAMEO Meetings:
The networking of MHSBC with other Mennonite historical societies across
the country
symbolizes a common vision in the task
we have undertaken in preserving a Mennonite memory.
John Konrad and Richard Thiessen
represented MHSBC at the January 2008
annual meetings of the
Mennonite Historical Society of Canada
and the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia
Online, in Winnipeg.
David Giesbrecht
Website
The MHSBC website provides information about the Society and some of the resources available at the Archives. Some of the material listed is available for purchase, some for lending and some for reference on site at the Archives.
The largest volume of material available on the website itself consists of Genealogical Resources. There are Census Lists, Migration Lists, Obituary Indexes and Cemetery Lists. To use the Obituary and Death Notice Indexes, you find the name you are researching and tell an MHSBC volunteer which periodical, issue and page number it is and they will provide you with a photocopy of that notice.
The MHSBC website continues to expand. Last year we added Annual Reports. This year we are including the Text of past lectures on the Events page.
Special Projects
Inmagic Program
Twelve volunteers assisted by five others have been working hard at arranging, describing archival textual files. In addition, Dave Giesbrecht and Erica Suderman have been continually appraising and accessioning documents.
Once accessioned, the documents are arranged into series such as constitutions, minutes, correspondence, financial records, reports and additional categories as needed. This description will make it possible to access the information once it has been entered into our InMagic software. We are pleased that the process of entering the data into the software has begun. This project which we began in November of 2005 is now at the halfway mark. We had originally set a goal of five years to complete this task and we are well on our way to completion. To date, we have completed our institutional records such as church, schools and provincial conference files. The 600 photographs which accompany these files have been scanned and described. In our societal records we have completed the executive files of the MCC records and have mostly completed the Historical Society files. This summer we will begin the manuscript files or people files.
In archival language, we have completed 112 regular boxes with 30 cm. of textual material in each box plus 33 document boxes with 15 cm. in each box which equals a total of 38.60 metres of textual materials.
Erica Suderman & Lora Sawatsky
Friends of the Mennonite Center in Ukraine
The Mennonite Centre in Ukraine is a restored, former Mennonite girls’ school in Molochansk (then known as Halbstadt). The Centre provides community based humanitarian services to Ukrainians in Molochansk and the neighbouring communities in the Molotchna area.
The Mennonite Historical Society of BC maintains a close and supportive relationship with the Mennonite Centre in Ukraine. Board member, Ben Stobbe and his wife Linda, spend ten weeks a year, serving as North American Directors at the Mennonite Centre. Centre projects are often described in the MHSBC newsletter “Roots and branches”. Centre programs have also been presented at the MHSBC’s annual banquet. Plans are underway to present the work of the Mennonite Centre in Ukraine at the 2008 annual meeting and to provide surplus historical Mennonite hymn books to the music library at the Pedagogical Institute in Melitopol.
Ben Stobbe
Peter Bargen Project
In 1930 Franz Bargen and his family escaped Russia in one of the last trains to leave Moscow. After numerous trials and tribulations. They eventually reached Carlyle, Saskatchewan and a life of peace, if not plenty. Bargen then set about contacting friends and relatives who had stayed behind, and despite the risks to the senders, he received replies, even though correspondence was illegal and punishable by prison sentence or worse.
Almost by a miracle these letters, some written on tiny scraps of paper, survived for more than sixty years when the were about to be discarded by an elder son of Franz Bargen. Before this was done the letters were offered to Peter Bargen, a younger son of Franz Bargen. Peter, a history teacher, recognized the historical value of this material and together with his wife Anne, set about translating and editing these letters.
Ruth Derksen Siemens, a doctoral candidate at the time, learned of these letters. After a review, she developed an enthusiasm for the story contained therein. Dr. Siemens knew this story had to be told and set in motion a program to publicize this story of Stalin’s oppression and cruelty for all who opposed or were perceived to oppose the glories of Communism. Her efforts culminated in a book and film that are scheduled to be presented on February 23, 2008. ( This was told as a Mennonite story but the Mennonites were only a small part of a much, much larger story involving millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Germans and other nationalities of the Russian Empire.)
The Mennonite Historical Society of B.C. has been pleased and honored to support Dr. Ruth Derksen Siemens in this work.
E. Hildebrand
Newsletter
Putting
together our newsletter, Roots and Branches, is time-consuming work, yet it is
also extremely rewarding. Thank you to
our readers for the many kind words of encouragement. We appreciate this very much.
Thank you
to contributing editors Helen Rose Pauls and Robert Martens, without whose work
this newsletter would not be possible; to numerous other writers; and to the
staff and volunteers at the archives office who stuff envelopes, sort, stamp
and mail.
Our policy
is to try to provide a broad range of articles ranging from the scholarly to the
“folksy,” so that all of our members will find something to interest them. We are always interested in new ideas,
letters and photos from the past, stories, book reviews, biographies. Stories and articles may be in German or
English (please direct German articles to Louise B. Price or Bob Martens, and
we will translate.)
In 2008, we
begin a series on historic figures who influenced Mennonite thought. We also plan to initiate a series on the
relationship between Mennonites and Tsars.
We are also
planning a newsletter supplement to celebrate the 60th anniversary
of the arrival of post-WWII Mennonite refugees to Canada.
Please direct any comments or
questions to the Newsletter committee
c/o the Mennonite Historical Society of BC, or email archives@mhsbc.com.
Louise
Bergen Price, Editor
Financial Support
This past year our true and faithful members have again supported our work most generously, and we thank them. We believe our work honors God, a well as our ancestors who served His community most faithfully. Therefore your gifts will be doubly rewarded.
Although most of the work for the Society and at the Archives is done by our loyal crew of volunteers, there are inevitable cash costs that must be paid. Our annual cost for premises, supplies, part time staff, and other operating costs are approximately $50,000. About one third of this is covered by Investment Income and Revenue from Book/CD Sales. (Our Endowment Fund has a value in excess of $270,000 yielding a return of about $20,000. Of this amount $12,000 is taken into current income.)
For the balance, we have only one source of funds, namely, the generosity of you, our loyal members and friends. We do appreciate the support we have received in the past from all our members and friends and hope this will continue in future.
Edward Hildebrand
In Memorium
Financial
Statements
2007
Treasurer’s comments
Financial Statements for 2007 (with comparative statements for 2006) and a Budget for 2008 are included in this Annual Report for your consideration.
1. Income exceeded expenses by $9,500 for the year.
2. Long term Endowment is shown at cost ($224,773). The market value as at December 31, 2007 was
$271,420.
3. Our thanks to Henry Martens for performing the Society's financial review for the 2007 year.
Ben Braun
Financial Review
To the Directors
MHS of BC
Abbotsford, B.C.
I have reviewed the balance sheet of the Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia as at December 31, 2007 and the Statement of Receipts and Expenditures for the year then ended. These financial statements are the responsibility of the management and Directors of the Society.
I conducted a review to determine if the financial statements are free of material misstatement. I reviewed, on a test basis, evidence supporting the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The financial statements have been prepared on a cash basis.
The financial statements present fairly the financial position of the Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia as at December 31, 2007 and the results of operations for the year ended, in accordance with principles of cash accounting.
Original signed by
Henry Martens
Abbotsford, B.C.
May 8, 2008.
Mennonite Historical Society of B.C.
Balance Sheet
As at December 31, 2007
(With comparative for 2006)
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Year 2007 |
Year 2006 |
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ASSETS |
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CURRENT
ASSETS |
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CASH
-PETTY |
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$200.00 |
$200.00 |
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CHECKING
ACCT.-ENVISION |
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47,270.53 |
31,874.76 |
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US -
ENVISION |
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480.39 |
624.04 |
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INVESTMENTS |
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ENDOWMENT
- CLOSED |
174,873.75 |
135,465.75 |
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ENDOWMENT
- OPEN |
49,900.00 |
49,900.00 |
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SUBTOTAL
INVESTMENTS |
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224,773.75 |
185,365.75 |
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SUBTOTAL
CURRENT ASSETS |
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272,724.67 |
218,064.55 |
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FIXED
ASSETS |
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SHARES |
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760.05 |
733.64 |
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TOTAL
ASSETS |
$273,484.72 |
$218,798.19 |
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LIABILITIES |
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CURRENT
LIABILITIES |
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BARGEN
PROJECT |
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$5,686.50 |
$0.00 |
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SUBTOTAL
CURRENT LIABILITIES |
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$5,686.50 |
0.00 |
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