Gerald Gerbrandt and Harry Heubner have worked together since around 1970 and have vacated their combined office after finally going into full-time retirement.

Gerbrandt, the President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Bible at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) taught undergraduate bible courses focusing on the Old Testament. He also did part-time teaching for graduate studies when he retired in 2012.

Huebner is the Academic Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Theology and retired in 2008.

"I was quite involved in starting and continuing an education program for seniors, which we call Explorer," says Gerbrandt. "A program that began in-person, but then when the pandemic came, it went online and so now it has 300 people all across Canada taking courses in it. I was involved in organizing conferences for pastors from across Canada, and I did seminars in churches and that I will continue to do."

The two retired professors have been good friends for more than 50 years. Beginning their studies at Canadian Mennonite Bible College (one of CMU's founding schools) and eventually moving to teach, they have had lots of good memories together. Especially after sharing an office for the past number of years, but Gerbrandt recalls a significant memory he has with Huebner before they split an office.

"The most significant concern, the years, let's say 1995 to 2000 when he was academic dean and I was President of Canadian Mennonite Bible College. Those are the years that we were in the process of conversations with Concord College and Menno Simmons College about the possibility of greater cooperation and even a merger, and so those were very, very intense years of negotiations, of dreaming, of trying to decide how it would work if we would actually work together," says Gerbrandt. "And the end result of that, of course, was the formation of Canadian Mennonite University in 2000."

Gerbrandt says that he will miss seeing the process that students go through in university, deciding what they want to do and discovering who they are.

"That's been the most satisfying part."