MCC opens central Canadian warehouse

A warehouse for Mennonite Central Committee Canada’s material aid programs was dedicated in Plum Coulee Sept. 1.

The occasion was marked by delight – at the fine weather in an otherwise cool and wet summer, at the large crowd which came to show support, and most of all at the surprising series of events that landed MCC’s central Canadian warehouse in an unprepossessing building in the small southern Manitoba town of Plum Coulee.

A central warehouse for Canada was needed, explained executive director of MCC Canada Don Peters, for two reasons. It would reduce the amount of space provincial MCC offices need for storage, allowing them to use their space as activity centres for preparing material aid and engaging the local constituency. Further, a central warehouse would allow for a quicker and more coordinated response when there is a disaster, such as the current crisis in Sudan.

A feasibility study on a warehouse facility several years ago had concluded that it should be built at the Winnipeg offices of MCC Canada and MCC Manitoba. Fundraising was launched. By last December, some 80% of the required funds had been committed.

Don Peters, executive director of MCC Canada, doing a radio interview.

Then some MCC supporters in Plum Coulee suggested their community be considered for the building. The suggestion included the possibility of donated land and geothermal heat from a nearby building.

Although intrigued with the new proposal, the MCC Board hesitated to change sites before the logistics of the rural location could be tested. When an empty building next to the railway line was then offered for rent, it seemed an ideal solution.

The Plum Coulee location will be tested by MCC Canada during a two-year lease of the building. Part of the building will also be used by MCC Manitoba as an activity centre for local volunteers.

Cutting the colourful pieced-fabric ribbon to officially open the warehouse was Helen Dyck of Winkler. She was the recipient of an MCC blanket in 1945 while a refugee in Europe. Dyck told her story with the blanket, which has been traced back to a women’s group in B.C., behind her. It was, she remembers, “a comfort not only to our bodies but to our broken spirits”; it was a symbol, she said, that God had not abandoned them.

Daniel Lepp Friesen, director of MCC Manitoba, reminded the assembly that material aid is just part of a wider story. MCC responds to crises with material resources – some 100,000 blankets will be shipped to Sudan, for example – but it also works in re-establishing people, in peacemaking, and in connecting people around the globe.

—Dora Dueck