CMU award recognizes lifetime of achievement and service
For release September 28, 2010
CMU presented its inaugural Blazer Distinguished Community Service Award on September 25, 2010 naming Altona citizen Ted Friesen as the first recipient. The award recognizes distinguished achievement and service within the broader community or church, through business, leadership, artistic, political, or volunteer contributions. Presentation of the award was held in conjunction with CMU’s President’s Dinner during annual Homecoming Events.
“I am pleased to announce the Blazer Distinguished Community Service Award and feel privileged to introduce its inaugural recipient, Ted Friesen,” said CMU President Gerald Gerbrandt to a full house in CMU’s Great Hall.
Retired businessman Ted E. Friesen, together with his two brothers, further developed D.W. Friesen & Sons (now Friesens Corporation) into a major business, fully employee owned, and serving the community in significant ways. Throughout his career, Friesen has been an active participant in Mennonite Central Committee, the Canadian Conference of Mennonites, and Eden Mental Health. He also served as the Secretary and President of the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada for 28 years (1968 – 1996) and it was during this period that the three-volume Mennonites in Canada was published. A lifelong resident of Altona, Friesen is a founding member of the Altona Mennonite Church.
“I am very grateful for the honour bestowed on me on this occasion by CMU,” said Ted Friesen in accepting the award. “That feeling is also accompanied by a sense of humility when I remember colleagues and co-workers in the various organizations that I have been associated with in the past who would be as worthy if not more worthy for achievements in the area of our mutual work. So, as a survivor, I also accept this award remembering their contributions.”
Friesen began working with his father’s business at the age of 16, Gerbrandt said, noting that today, nearly 75 years later, Ted Friesen still walks across town to the company office, in summer and in winter. “Over the 35 years that Ted and his two brothers, Dave and Ray, led the business, they grew it into one of the premier, most technologically sophisticated printing companies in North America,” said Gerbrandt. “Ted, like his father and brothers, believed that a business should serve its community, and Friesens has modelled that commitment.”
Friesens Corporation has grown into a company of international status and prints for such organizations as National Geographic and major American universities. Not only is it the largest employer in Altona, said Gerbrandt, the employees actually own the company in a unique employee ownership structure
Gerbrandt noted that, besides being an outstanding businessman, Ted Friesen is a churchman and an involved community citizen. “Ted grew up in the Altona Bergthaler Church, and remained active there for many years. Later, he became a founding member of Altona Mennonite, where he and Linie remain active. As a young man, he became involved with the Board of Christian Service of the Canadian Conference,” said Gerbrandt, “and in 1964 he was on the first executive of MCC Canada, helping to establish MCC’s office in Ottawa in 1970.” His involvement with MCC developed his conviction that Mennonites in Canada needed their history told, said Gerbrandt, which led to the establishment of the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada in 1968,
“I worked in two communities,” Friesen commented, “the local one, which is the Altona community; and the community of Canada, on the board level of Mennonite Central Committee and the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada and other organizations. When I look at all of these today, I am amazed at how they have grown from humble beginnings and have reached a position that is making a significant impact today, in today’s society, both in the Mennonite and in the larger community. I rejoice that past efforts have been blessed beyond all expectations.”
Gerbrandt further noted Ted’s passion for quality classical music, observing that Ted and Linie raised their family to appreciate fine music and today remain regular attendees at concerts. “Many a young musician has been encouraged through support from Ted and Linie,” said Gerbrandt.
Gerbrandt expressed the appreciation and gratitude of the CMU community for Ted Friesen’s lifelong service to the community: “Thank you, Ted Friesen.”
“I want to give tribute to my good wife Linie and my family who have been very, very supportive all the way. And, in closing,” said Friesen, “I simply want to say with JS Bach, Soli deo Gloria – to God be the Glory.”
Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) is a Christian university in the Anabaptist tradition, offering undergraduate degrees in arts and science, business and organizational administration, communications and media, peace and conflict resolution studies, music and music therapy, theology, and church ministries, as well as graduate degrees in Theological Studies and Christian ministry. Located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, CMU has over 1,800 students at its Shaftesbury Campus in Southwest Winnipeg, at Menno Simons College in downtown Winnipeg, and enrolled through its Outtatown discipleship school. CMU is a member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).
Media contact:
Nadine Kampen, CMU Communications & Marketing Director
nkampen@cmu.ca;
204.487.3300 Ext. 621
Canadian Mennonite University
500 Shaftesbury Blvd., Winnipeg, MB R3P 2N2
Students from Canadian Mennonite University’s Media Workshop launched into their course by providing news coverage of the opening of CMU’s new Science Lab. Students were just 10 days into the class and did a great job on this first project!
Students from Canadian Mennonite University’s Media Workshop launched into their course by providing news coverage of Homecoming Weekend 2010. Students were just 10 days into the class and did a great job on this first project!
Cynthia Enloe’s career has included Fulbrights in Malaysia and Guyana, and guest professorships in Japan, Britain and Canada, as well as lecturing in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Korea, Turkey and at universities around the U.S. Her books and articles have been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, and German. She has written for Ms. Magazine and has appeared on National Public Radio and the BBC. At Clark, Professor Enloe has been selected “Outstanding Teacher” three times and named University Senior Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship. In 2009, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of London’s School of Oriental and Asian Studies. Enloe’s twelve books include Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2000), Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (2004), and Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (2007). Her newest book is Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (forthcoming from University of California Press, spring, 2010). In years past, Enloe’s feminist teaching and research has focused on the interplay of women’s politics in the national and international arenas, with special attention to how women’s labor is made cheap in globalized factories (especially sneaker factories) and how women’s emotional and physical labor has been used to support governments’ war-waging policies—and how many women have tried to resist both of those efforts. Racial, class, ethnic, and national identities and pressures shaping ideas about femininities and masculinities have been common threads throughout her studies.
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Chief Ovide Mercredi is a Cree, a lawyer, a negotiator, an author, a lecturer in Native Studies, and an activist on behalf of First Nations in Canada. He was born into a traditional trapping hunting and fishing lifestyle in Grand Rapids, Manitoba in 1946. He is currently serving as Chief of the Misipawistik First Nation, Grand Chief of the Swampy Cree Tribal Council, and is also National Spokesperson for Treaties 1 through 11. Chief Mercredi is perhaps best known for his deep involvement in constitutional law reform issues, and Aboriginal and Treaty rights negotiations. He acted as a key adviser in First Nations’ opposition to the Meech Lake Accord, and in 1989 was elected Manitoba Vice-Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He was first elected National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 1991, and served two terms until 1997. He also led the First Nations negotiations in the Charlottetown Accord. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours. In 2006 he was invested with the Order of Manitoba; the province’s highest honour. He was nominated for the Gandhi Peace Prize and has received honourary degrees from Bishop’s University, St. Mary’s University, and Lethbridge University. He has published a collection of his speeches in a book entitled In The Rapids – Navigating the Future of First Nations, and has contributed articles to two other recent books. He is also the subject of two Canadian documentary films. Chief Mercredi has spoken at hundreds of venues, from small community gatherings to universities and colleges throughout North America and internationally about his experiences.
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Sherene Razack is professor, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests lie in the area of race and gender issues in the law. Her courses include: ‘Race, Space and Citizenship;’ Race and Knowledge Production’ and ‘Racial Violence and the Law.’ Her most recent book is entitled Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims From Western Law and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2008). She has also published Dark Threats & White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (University of Toronto Press, 2004), an edited collection Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping A White Settler Society Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002), Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) and Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women’s Legal and Education Fund and the Pursuit of Equality (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1991). Razack has been described as “one of the most influential thinkers in Cultural Studies in Canada.”
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Sandra Whitworth is Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Sandra did her Ph.D. at Carleton University in Political Science (1991), and her first book, Feminism and International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan) was published in 1994. That book was translated into Japanese and was published by Fujiwara Shoten Press in 2000. Her most recent book was published in 2004 (Lynne Rienner) and is entitled Men, Militarism and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis. She also adapted Joshua Goldstein’s textbook International Relations for use in Canadian university and college classrooms. She has written various articles and book chapters on issues such as gender in Canadian foreign policy and human rights and was invited (with co-author Dyan Mazurana) to produce the 2002 United Nations Secretary-General Study Women, Peace and Security. That study won one of the American Library Association’s ‘Notable Government Documents Awards’ for 2002. Sandra teaches courses at York in Global Politics, Gender and International Relations, and graduate courses in International Relations Theory. She is serving currently as the home base editor for International Feminist Journal of Politics. Sandra is an enthusiastic (though not particularly skilled) hockey player and thinks the world could be a better place if everybody played the guitar, read David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and listened to live music whenever they have a chance.
