The folk art of the Swiss-German Mennonites living in the Waterloo, Ontario region is compared with that of the Dutch-German Mennonites from the same area. Traditional arts discussed include Fraktur, needlework, wood-working and cooking.

The immigration and acculturation of German speakers of Waterloo Region, south-west Ontario, Canada. The places of origin of the interviewees: Mennonites, and others from south-eastern Europe, east-central Europe, Germany and Austria. The situation immigrants faced and their first impressions when they arrived in Canada: earning a living, who they are, how they reflect on and actively live their German heritage, how they feel about their home in Canada, and how they still connect to German culture and the places from which they came, the languages, and family life and the next generation.

The Waterloo Mennonites is truly a communal book: the substance treats the communal aspect of the Mennonite community in all its complexity, while the book itself came about through communal effort from the students and researchers assisting Fretz, the various organizations and individuals providing support, the larger community including the two universities and Wilfrid Laurier University Press, and public funding agencies. This book seeks to derive a clearer understanding of the sociological characteristics of a single Mennonite community, beginning with the historical and religious background of the Waterloo Mennonites, reviewing their European origins, their ethnic identification, and their immigration experience. It also examines their basic institutions: religion and church, marriage and the family, education and the school, economics and earning a living, government and how they relate to it, their use of leisure time and methods of recreation. It also looks at the way Mennonites interact with the larger society and how that society responds.

The editor provides an important new scholarly tool for locating and understanding the enormous expansion of scholarly research dealing with the sociology of Canadian Mennonites, Hutterites and Amish. Although the book includes research from American scholars, the editor devotes special attention to Canadian works concerning these important and interesting minorities. Using the tripartite division of Mennonites, Hutterites and Amish, the bibliography includes 800 entries each with a concise summary and evaluation. The entries are listed under the subheadings: books, theses, articles and unpublished manuscripts. Preceding the bibliography itself is an essay by the editor originally presented to the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association. The essay outlines the differing conceptual assumptions of the researchers included in the book, the major methodologies employed and the main conclusions to be drawn from their work.

In the 1960s, Edna Staebler moved in with an Old Order Mennonite family to absorb their oral history and learn about Mennonite culture and cooking. From this fieldwork came the cookbook Food That Really Schmecks. Originally published in 1968, Schmecks instantly became a classic, selling tens of thousands of copies. Interspersed with practical and memorable recipes are Staebler’s stories and anecdotes about cooking, Mennonites, her family, and Waterloo Region. Described by Edith Fowke as folklore literature, Staebler’s cookbooks have earned her national acclaim. Including this long-anticipated reprint of Food That Really Schmecks in our Life Writing series recognizes the cultural value of its narratives, positing it as a groundbreaking book in the food writing genre. This edition includes a foreword by award-winning author Wayson Choy and a new introduction by the well-known food writer Rose Murray.

The smartphone was an incredibly successful Canadian invention created by a team of engineers and marketers led by Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. But there was a third key player involved — the community of Kitchener-Waterloo. In this book Chuck Howitt offers a new history of BlackBerry which documents how the resources and the people of Kitchener-Waterloo supported, facilitated, benefited from and celebrated the achievement that BlackBerry represents. After its few short years of explosive growth and pre-eminence, BlackBerry lost its market to digital juggernauts Apple, Samsung and Huawei. No surprises there. Like Nokia and Motorola before it, BlackBerry was eclipsed. Shareholders lost billions. Thousands of employees lost jobs. Bankruptcy was avoided but the company's founding geniuses were gone, leaving an operation that today is only a fragment of what had been. For Kitchener-Waterloo — as Chuck Howitt tells the story — the Blackberry experience is a mixed bag of disappointments and major ongoing benefits. The wealth it generated for its founders produced two very important university research institutes. Many recent digital startups have taken advantage of the city's pool of talented and experienced tech workers and ambitious, well-educated university grads. A strong digital and tech industry thrives today in Kitchener-Waterloo — in a way a legacy of the BlackBerry experience. Across Canada, communities hope for homegrown business successes like BlackBerry. This book underlines how a mid-sized, strong community can help grow a world-beating company, and demonstrates the importance of the attitudes and decisions of local institutions in enabling and sustaining successful innovation. Canada has a lot to learn from BlackBerry Town.