Louis Riel Day

Acts 2: 20-21  The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come:

 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Today Is Louis Riel Day here in Manitoba. So I thought I would share a bit of information here about the person Louis Riel.  The picture below is from the site http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca

Louis Riel was a passionate Métis leader. He was the driving force behind Manitoba becoming Canada’s fifth province and joining confederation. Louis Riel’s dream of a province that embraces all cultures is still shared by Manitobans today.

This Day celebrates the life and achievements of Louis Riel. He was a leader of the Metis people. It is celebrated in February here in Manitoba. For most of us it is just a day off from school and work - just a long weekend to enjoy with our families. The information posted below is from the website www.timeanddate.com


Manitoba's government introduced a holiday in February in 2007. This was because there was a long period between New Year's Day and Good Friday when there were no holidays. A competition was held among school children to name the day. The winning name was 'Louis Riel Day' to commemorate this Manitoba politician. The date does not have any special connection to a particular event in Louis Riel's life. The first Louis Riel Day in Manitoba was in 2008.

Louis Riel was a leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies. These are an Aboriginal people with their own culture, language and heritage. The area, which was their ancestral homeland, is now in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia and the Northwest Territories and parts of the north-west of the United States. Louis Riel was also a founder of the Manitoba province and a Canadian politician. However, during his lifetime, he was a controversial figure and lived in exile in the United States for a number of years. He was involved in a number of uprisings and, after a controversial trial, he was executed for treason in 1885.

Louis Riel Day is observed on or around November 16 in other areas of Canada, particularly Toronto. This is the anniversary of Louis Riel's execution in 1885. Louis Riel Day is held in Toronto to commemorate Louis Riel's life and to celebrate the Métis people's culture, language, heritage and ancestral homeland.

Portzelky - A Mennonite New Years Tradition!

Happy New Year! With the arrival of New Year's Day come family traditions - maybe you have something special you do on New Years. As many of you who follow my blog and have read more of my posts will know, we are Mennonites. And as Mennonites we have traditional foods that we enjoy as part of our heritage. So growing up in my Mennonite family, my Mom always made Portzelky for New Year's Day, as also her Mother did before her. And now I carry on that tradition with my family - so today I made Portzelky for lunch. What is Portzelky? It is a deep fried treat that is very closely related to the apple fritters you can buy at most bake shops or even at a Tim Hortons except that these Portzelky have raisins in them and not apples as other fritters have.
Here is a picture of my New Years Day Portzelky!

My New Years Day Portzelky

 And here is a recipe for you in case you decide to try them!
Portzelky Recipe
2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 and 1/2 tablespoons instant yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil or melted butter
1 teaspoon salt
6 eggs, well beaten
6 cups flour ( more or less to make stiff batter )
2 pounds raisins  - I use about 2 cups but you can use more
Stir the yeast into lukewarm water. In large mixing bowl beat together the milk, sugar, oil or butter, salt and eggs. Add the yeast/water mixture and stir well. Stir in raisins and flour. Stir in a cup of flour at a time and stirring it in well with wooden spoon. Batter should be very stiff but still sticky. Set batter in warm place to rise about 45 minutes. Drop by tablespoons in hot oil in deep fat fryer. Fry on both sides till done - a medium golden brown. Cool on absorbant paper towel. Serve with granulated sugar to dip or coat with icing sugar. Enjoy!

Our Family Traditions....

Phillipians 2:1-2 says If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies,  Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

As I thought about our family traditions, I realized how traditions are so often connected with holidays, special occasions and food. I also realized that in the now almost 21 years of marriage to my husband that we have not developed nearly as many of our own family traditions as I would have liked. Though it may not be much, I still feel it is important to acknowledge the traditions we have for what they are.
One tradition we have developed in our family here is that we have Mennonite pancakes for lunch every Saturday. Allow me to describe the Mennonite pancake. The batter is made similar to regular breakfast pancakes (flour, salt, eggs, margarine, and milk) but with no baking powder or baking soda and more milk is needed to make the batter quite thin. About 1/2 cup of batter is poured in a large hot greasy frying pan, making the pancake as large as the bottom of the frying pan. Flip the pancake to fry so it is fried on both sides. Serve. Sprinkle with white sugar, roll up the pancake and enjoy. Most people can only eat about two of these pancakes at a mealtime since they are so large. Most of our family really really enjoys this so that is why we made it a regular every Saturday lunch treat.

Some other family traditions we have tried to create is to celebrate the short life of our baby Darcy on the day of the birth by eating an ice-cream treat called revels. It is vanilla ice-cream covered in a chocolate coating. The revel seemed to make sense to use as a remembrance because what child does not like to eat ice-cream on their birthday? Also the white ice-cream part represents life while the dark chocolate represents the sorrow of having to lose baby Darcy to death. We did celebrate that way for many years but as the years have gone by it is something we have not been able to keep up.

We also started a tradition to celebrate Mother's day with a special more expensive type of ice-cream for breakfast on Mother's day. The kids loved it when they were younger to have ice cream for breakfast. Recently I was reading in my kid's early school years journals and it was interesting to read there how important that was to them in those elementary school years to have ice-cream for breakfast on Mother's Day. That too is something we have not kept up though I still always try to do something special for the family for Mother's day because I appreciate the fact that they are my children. So this past Mother's day I purchased a large tin of Tim Hortons coffee as my part to make Mother's day a little special for us all. We go through a lot of coffee in our house now since the boys are all mostly grown up so that worked out well.

When the kids were younger we also tried to make a tradition of celebrating Canada Day on July 1 every year by going to see the fireworks display in one of our local communities. It was nice to do that but the mosquitoes are so bad at night most years. It doesn't get dark enough here for fireworks till at least 10:30 pm or later so it was always a really long wait for our young children back then.

For birthdays I usually make a special supper and a cake for the person whose birthday it is. We put candles on the cake and sing Happy Birthday. When our kids were younger the local Coop Food store and also the IGA store had what they refered to as kid's club. So then for birthdays, the store would give each child a decorated birthday cake and often a small toy. That was quite special for them to get that every year while they were young.  We always ended up having a lot of cake around on our twins birthday - two boys and two cakes!!

One other tradition I will mention is Christmas. Perhaps when it gets close to Christmas I will post more about Christmases past. In our family we have carried on the tradition that I grew up with in my family which was to not have a Christmas tree at Christmas. My parents taught me and my sisters that the tree does not make it Christmas.  It is actually kind of fun when people find out that we do not have a tree because the usual question that follows is - Do you not celebrate Christmas?  and it is nice to be able to say -Yes we do celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus but we do not need to have a tree for that. Then they will ask if we share gifts which we definitely do. We usually put up a few Christmas lights on the outside of the house and I put up a few in the house as well.

In hindsight, I wish I would have been more diligent with creating traditions. I wish I could have passed on the German language to my children but that was not meant to be.  Traditions  help to create memories that no one can take from you - memories are  treasures you can take with you wherever life takes you.

Psalm 90: 1-2 says  Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
² Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

I like the words on a poster at our kids school. It says:
START NOW
STAY FOCUSED
FINISH STRONG