Faithful Readers
We are meeting online! You are welcome to join us.
If you would like to be part of the online gathering and discussion, please email or call the church office and we’ll add you to the list.
Email secretary@harrowunited.ca or call the church office (204) 284-0079 to be included.
Zoom Meetings 1:30-3:30pm
Click here to download the reading list
May 25, 2022: ‘Butter Honey Pig Bread’ by Francesca Ekwuyasi
Presenters: Dianne B. /Karen C.
Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision.
Windup Dinner at 6 pm with book recommendations
September 28, 2022: ‘The House by the Lake’ by Thomas Harding
Presenters: Dorothy F. /Susan K.
In the summer of 1993, Thomas Harding traveled to Germany with his grandmother to visit a small house by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. It had been a holiday home for her and her family, but in the 1930s, she had been forced to flee to England as the Nazis swept to power. Nearly twenty years later, the house was government property and soon to be demolished. It was Harding’s legacy, one that had been loved, abandoned, fought over-a house his grandmother had desired until her death. Could it be saved? And should it?
October 26, 2022: ‘Broken Circle: the Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools’ by Theodore Fontaine
Presenter: Shirley M.
Theodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Canada. Twelve years later, he left school frozen at the emotional age of seven. He was confused, angry and conflicted, on a path of self-destruction. At age 29, he emerged from this blackness. By age 32, he had graduated from the Civil Engineering Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and begun a journey of self-exploration and healing.
In this powerful and poignant memoir, Ted examines the impact of his psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, the loss of his language and culture, and, most important, the loss of his family and community. He goes beyond details of the abuses of Native children to relate a unique understanding of why most residential school survivors have post-traumatic stress disorders and why succeeding generations of First Nations children suffer from this dark chapter in history.
Told as remembrances described with insights that have evolved through his healing, his story resonates with his resolve to help himself and other residential school survivors and to share his enduring belief that one can pick up the shattered pieces and use them for good.
Now an approved curriculum resource for grade 9–12 students in British Columbia and Manitoba.