Mennonite Literature • by Tanis MacDonald • 1

Hamilton Arts & Letters (With apologies to Mary Ruefle) One of the first lines in Di Brandt’s Questions i asked my mother is “some of this is autobiographical and some of it is not.” This is followed by a quotation from Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire”: “If I have been untrue/ I hope you know it was never to you.” Trueness and untrueness: birds on a wire like notes on a scale. * I missed the Mennonite Miracle entirely. I was someplace else, frying other fish, and the explosion in Canadian Mennonite literature happened in my home city without my notice. My ignorance was broad and deep. I didn’t know until Di asked me to comb through the University of Winnipeg archives about the Compulsory Education Act of 1916, which abolished – for a significant period of time – the right for public schools in Manitoba to teach in languages other than English. Until I read Magdalene Redekop’s Making Believe, I didn’t know about the revivalist movement that swept through Mennonite communities in southern Manitoba during the 1950s. *    [  >>>>>  FORWARD ]   + [Distillate © HA&L + Tanis MacDonald {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]