My first awareness of The Beatles was in Woodlawn School in Steinbach back in the mid-1980s. I don’t remember much, but the older students were doing some kind of dramatic performance in the gymnasium and, for a brief moment, “The Beatles” made an appearance. I remember asking my teacher who or what I had just…
I’m excited to announce that my new novel Once Removed (2020, Turnstone Press) is available now! Ask for it at your local independent bookseller! An affectionate pastiche of small-town Mennonite life, replete with duty, folly, irreverence, and joy. —David Bergen Hilarious as Schitt’s Creek, sinister as Hitchcock, Once Removed gives us Timothy Heppner, the quintessential non-resistant Mennonite, in a comic…
Last night, after a long semi-stressful day–one of the craziest that I can recall in recent memory–my wife and I decided we needed to wind down with a movie. Even though Erin, no doubt, would fall asleep within a few minutes, she rebuffed my suggestion of The Blob. Too scary. Night of the Living Dead was a…
I started the Daily Bonnet on a whim, really. Back in 2016, I wrote one article about Steinbach city council moving the entire community to the Mennonite Heritage Village and posted it on my website. After a few days I noticed that thousands of people had read it and I figured, “hey, people seem to…
In the spring of 1992, my father accepted a pastoral position in Calgary and our family moved from Manitoba to Alberta, heart of Reform Party country. I think I had an interest in politics before then, but it really ramped up when I arrived in Calgary at the height of Preston Manning mania. Ahh, yes,…
From about the age of twelve to fourteen, I filled Hillroy notebooks with poorly-drawn, occasionally funny, political cartoons. Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister at the time and it was fun to exaggerate the length of his chin while offering my Junior High critique of his tax plan. I can’t say this type of writing was…
Hello. I’m Andrew Unger, a church-going Mennonite pastor’s son from Steinbach. Surprised? Well, some of you know me as Andrew J. Bergman, the pen name I used from 2014 until now. I used the pen name for two years before starting the Daily Bonnet, the name selected as a tribute to my grandfather, an amateur…
Recently I wrote a satirical article for The Daily Bonnet with the headline “Canada Pays Off Entire Federal Debt One Day After Marijuana Legalization.” Surprisingly the post went viral and actually became the most read post ever on The Daily Bonnet. If I could write a post like that every day I would, but one…