It’s time for a course correction
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It’s time for a course correction

Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff once observed that to do justice to any tradition, one must understand how it interprets its vision, how it expresses that vision and the relevant highlights of its narrative. I accepted this daunting task when I decided to investigate and give an account of the tradition of alternative Christian education promoted by…

Saints in the Making
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Saints in the Making

On July 26, 1942, a young Nazi nurse administered a lethal injection to a patient in the Dachau hospital. The patient was a Dutch clergyman named Titus Brandsma; he passed out of this life within 10 minutes. That moment doubtless seemed of little consequence. The clergyman had been in poor health and unrepentant of his…

History Rhymes
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History Rhymes

As the old saying goes: “history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The past does not give us a blueprint for the future, but it can provide us insights into the trajectory of current events. This year, many Dutch towns are celebrating the 450th anniversary of one of the most important turning points…

Mother tongue

Mother tongue

De taal is ons vaderland, waaruit we nooit kunnen emigreren. Language is our fatherland, from which we can never emigrate. This slim volume of eclectic essays is a rich exploration of questions of identity, landscape, family, and translation. It is of particular interest to Dutch immigrants who might enjoy a thoughtful, playful look at language…

Dutch Reformed Bingo in Canada
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Dutch Reformed Bingo in Canada

When I was an adolescent in the late-70s and early-80s, Calvinist Contact was the place to find out what was going on, for the Dutch Reformed immigrant community in Canada. CC wrote about the wider world in which we lived. And it shaped our smaller ethnic and religious world. It reflected the ease with which Dutch Reformed folk made connections with each other, figuring out people that they knew in common.

Seven Generations
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Seven Generations

Thankfully, “Mush Hole” Indian Residential School no longer exists. Its horrific legacy, however, remains. It is hard to know how to address the harms my parents’ generation (unwittingly?) caused our Indigenous neighbours, who also acknowledge they are made in the image of the Creator and who clearly live in a world infused with the Creator’s presence. But now we are aware, and are thus both implicated and responsible.

The Thanksgiving flood of ‘54
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The Thanksgiving flood of ‘54

If you were in eastern Canada around Thanksgiving Day of 1954, you’ll remember Hurricane Hazel. Hurricane Hazel killed at least 400 people in Haiti and caused 95 fatalities in the U.S. It struck Canada as an extratropical storm, raising the death toll by 81, mostly in Toronto when it slammed into the city on October 15. It left 1,868 Ontario families homeless.