Author: Ken Hiebert

In January of 1959 Robert Chapman, 19 years old, was convicted of murdering his older brother John on a farm a few miles from us.  He was sentenced to hang.His parents went to work to have his sentence commuted.  I recall that one Sunday in church our minister, Rev. McNair, announced that the mother of…

Inspired by Anne’s account of her family.First my Uncle Pete and Aunt Helen and family.  My Uncle Pete was born in 1915 in Kazakhstan (According to his obituary. This is the first I heard that)He arrived in Canada with his family.His son Bob told me that once as a young boy he travelled to Moose…

According to the teachings of our church, the earth was a few thousand years old, not millions or billions.  So it was an unpleasant surprise for them when an archeological dig in the Fraser Canyon suggested that there were people living in the canyon about 7,000 years ago.  (My recollection suggested that the figure was…

Howard’s account of his travels in Ontario reminded me of another story. When Dad was about 16 he and a friend left Saskatchewan and travelled to Ontario, looking for work. This could have been 1937, so maybe thirty years before Howard’s trip. They made it to Fort William and Port Arthur, today Thunder Bay. There…

From my previous message “Nor was Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister and the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ever mentioned in our church.” This brings me to the issue of racism in the church. I can’t say that explicit racism was a steady diet in our church. In fact, we often sang…

I have no recollection of first attending church.  Presumably I was taken from earliest childhood.I remember the name of the minister, Rev. Orthner, who was there as late as 1952 or 1953, but nothing else.I do remember Rev. Paul Edwardson, who was there as early as 1953.  He played trumpet and was quite tall. The…

When I arrived at UBC in September of ’63 I was pretty green. It took me a day and a half to register for all my courses. I kept running into conflicts between one course and another, until someone kindly informed me that there was a master schedule all in one booklet. Finally, I got…

Something I wrote about 12 years ago The world has changed so dramatically that even someone who has not reached retirement has seen remarkable changes. I record these memoirs not with the thought that my insights are particularly profound, but with the view that my recollections, taken with other memoirs of the time, may give…

When I was a kid we lived near Chilliwack.  Vancouver was a long way away.  There was no freeway and no Port Mann Bridge. Trips to Vancouver took us through Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Aldergrove, and Langley.  We passed by Cloverdale and then over the Pattullo Bridge.  Then along Kingsway.  That’s why there are still a few…