I learned about a community-minded, influential Canadian academic and passionate activist named Nettie Wiebe from an inspiring story about her told in graphic novel style by Jonathan Dyck and Josiah Neufeld in the most recent issue of Broadview Magazine.

Nettie a university philosophy student was spending the summer at home on her parent’s farm in Warman Saskatchewan in 1976 when she discovered that not only her family but others in the area were being approached by a provincial crown corporation to sell their farms to Eldorado Nuclear so they could build a uranium refinery in the area.

Nettie researched and discovered that uranium could be used to build nuclear weapons. Nettie was a Mennonite who believed in pacifism and so the thought of selling land to a company that might make weapons was unsettling to…