Despite my ominously Irish last name (which I eagerly adopted from my partner given its appropriateness to my scholarly endeavours), my heritage is all German. In 1847 my great-great-great-grandparents John and Anna Kaster emigrated from Mecklenburg, Germany, arriving in Ohio before moving to Canada as part of the Pennsylvania Dutch migration, a historical footnote that is given its due attention by Kyle Gerber in this issue of Rhetor. The Kasters settled in Blandford-Blenheim, Ontario, as Mennonite farmers, where they raised their family. Berlin, now Kitchener, was established as a largely German-speaking Mennonite community in the 1840s, and may have been what drew John and Anna to the surrounding area.

While the name of the town has changed, the geographic proximity of the Kaster family has not. Today, I live minutes from where generations of Kasters have established their lives, and as a child, I lived in a century-old home on a hundred-acre farm that has housed three generations of Kasters (and continues to house them today). You could say my German roots run deep, but not in any stein-collecting, Oktoberfesting, pretzel-loving sense. Rather, my sense of identity is largely tied to religious tradition.