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In the 1920s some 3,800 Mennonites who had settled in Manitoba in the 1870s left their farms to migrate to the Bustillos Valley of northern Mexico. While conflict over education was the main stimulus for the move, this paper argues that the migration also offered an opportunity to restore the system of land tenure Mennonites had practiced in Imperial Russia. Conservative Mennonites had reified a tsarist-imposed system of semi-communal land tenure, making it a requirement of faithful religious and social practice. These sensibilities were, however, incompatible with the land tenure system of the new Dominion of Canada giving rise to tension and conflict. When migration became a reality, conservative Mennonites sought to reestablish the colony and village tenure system by seeking a block sale of their individual lands in Manitoba and by purchasing land in Mexico under colony title, thereby restoring semi-communal land tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although bridges were among the first civil engineering structures to use structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies, research is now expanding to explore other types of applications, including Manitoba's famous Golden Boy statue. Global research is identifying the value of using SHM technologies for civil engineering applications. Structural health monitoring uses a variety of sensors to gather information about the behaviour of a structure. The information creates a valuable knowledge base that can be analyzed to help identify potential structural risks, develop safer and more efficient new structures, and determine more effective ways to rehabilitate existing structures. This paper briefly describes the history of the Manitoba Legislative Building and the Golden Boy and also the use of SHM technologies to help preserve the Golden Boy statue, an icon of provincial heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]