Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Articles
The 1920s Migration of Old Colony Mennonites
from the Hague-Osler Area of Saskatchewan to Durango, Mexico
Bill Janzen, MCC Ottawa
Presented to the Annual General Meeting of the Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan,
Hague, Saskatchewan, March 3, 2006
It is a privilege to be invited to this occasion
and to speak on this topic. The topic has been
close to me for a long time. I remember, as a
child in the 1950s, the letters that came to our
home from my maternal grandmother who, as
a widow, had moved to Mexico in the smaller
1948 migration, with seven of her adult children.
Her letters seemed always to speak of hardship
and the sadness of her family’s separation.
Later, in my University studies, I came across
papers about the 1920s school crisis - papers that
confirmed the stories that my mother and father
had told me about how their parents had paid
fines for keeping them out of the public schools
in those years. Then, in my MCC work, I was
able to help returning Mennonites whose parents
came from here, with their residual claims to
Canadian citizenship. These and other things
have led me often to reflect on this topic.
It is not a simple topic, with one side being
completely good and the other bad. Nor is it
easy to place ourselves in that context, almost
one hundred years ago, when so many things
were different. Nevertheless, our task is to try
to understand. To help with that, I have broken
the topic down into five time periods, each representing
a particular phase of the story. I should
also explain that I will use the popular name
“Old Colony Mennonite Church” even though
its official name in the 1920s was “Reinlander
Mennonite Church”.
1. 1892 - 1908: Two School Systems With a
Little Friction
Even before Saskatchewan became a province
in 1905, the law allowed for public schools.
People in any given area could organize a school
district, hold a vote, and if a majority wanted
to set up a public school then the land in the
district would be taxed to help pay for it. Also,
the government would then provide an inspector
to check up on the school and give some other
assistance. But attendance was not compulsory;
nor was it compulsory to organize such districts.
As a result, the Old Colony people were free to
continue with their German language private
schools. There the curriculum included reading,
writing and arithmetic as well as Catechism,
the New Testament and the Old Testament.
The “sacred” and the “secular” would be held
together. And children would attend until age
twelve or thirteen. The purpose of these schools
was to prepare children, not for life in the larger
society, but for the Old Colony way of life. For
that purpose they were not bad.
It is not surprising, however, that some
people living on the edges of the Old Colony
settlement would want something different. In
the Rosthern area where, starting in 1892, Mennonites
of different backgrounds had settled,
the prominent Gerhard Ens, who later became
a member of the provincial legislative assembly,
complained that the Old Colony people
always voted against getting a school district
and a public school. Finally, in 1899, when an
Englishman came and built a mill in Rosthern,
they quickly organized an election and got all
the construction workers that he had brought in
to vote. With that majority Rosthern got its first
public school. 1
In the Osler area in 1902 a certain Mr. Wilson
also complained to the government about
the opposition of Old Colony Mennonites. The
response he got back from the Department of
Education advised: “if at all possible … arrange
the boundaries of the district [so] that when the
vote ... is taken a majority [will] be in favour of
it.” 2 Soon thereafter when the Hague school district
was formed they used a similar approach.
The boundaries were drawn so as to include
much land owned by people in nearby villages
but not the villages themselves, thus gaining
their tax money but not their opposing votes.
2. 1908 - 1917: Public Schools Gain Supporters
One Old Colony person who wanted to
send his children to a public school was Isaac
P. Friesen. He lived in Rosthern where he had
a store and where he had also begun to attend
the Mennonite church. He had decided that at
some point he would join that church. Also,
once his children reached school age, he would
send them to the public school in Rosthern. In
other words, his mind was no longer oriented
toward the Old Colony. But he had been baptized
into that church and he wanted, very much, to
avoid getting excommunicated from it, partly
because if that happened then many members
of that church would no longer do business in
his store.
To prevent that from happening I. P. Friesen
visited the Old Colony Aeltester, Rev. Jacob
Wiens, and asked if he could withdraw his membership
from that church. Later he told government
officials, “I begged and prayed Mr. Wiens
more than I ever did any man for any favour.” 3
Even Rev. David Toews, the minister of the
Rosthern Mennonite church, visited Aeltester
Wiens to ask about this. But the theology of the
Old Colony church at that time held that once
people are baptized into the church they could
not be released - excommunicated yes, but not
released. This will seem unusual to us but some
other churches also held to this position.
Another person in a such a situation was Jacob
J. Friesen. In 1908 he wrote to the provincial
Education Minister, J. H. Calder, stating:
As I am one of the excommunicated Mennonites
I think it very necessary to tell you
briefly my experience in this matter and hope
that it might stir up the Government…. I lived in
Warman until last spring and my business connections
were principally with the members of
the so-called Old Colony Church; and as I had
two boys of school age I was sending them to
the public school in Warman,…As soon as the
leaders of the Old Colony church got notice of
my steps they excommunicated me and forbade
all the members to have any more dealings with
me. The consequence was that I had to give up
my home, my business, and everything for the
sake of giving my children a better education. 4
What was the government to do in the face
of such appeals? It set up a Commission of
Inquiry headed by the Deputy Ministers in the
Departments of Education and the Attorney
General. These two senior officials held hearings
in Warman on December 28 and 29, 1908. They
heard more than a dozen such excommunicated
people. They also interviewed Aeltester Wiens
and two other Old Colony leaders. These church
leaders explained that they were following the
teachings of the Bible, referring to Deuteronomy
6:7 about the sacred calling to teach children,
and to Romans 16:17-19, 2 Thess. 3:6 & 14, and
2 John 10, about church discipline. They also
referred to the Privilegium, meaning the fifteen
point letter from the federal government, given
to them in 1873, on which they had relied in their
decision to leave Russia and move to Canada.
That letter promised them unrestricted freedom
in the schooling of their children.
How could this situation be resolved? The
Saskatchewan government threatened to cancel
the right of Old Colony ministers to solemnize
marriages if the church did not give its people
the freedom to attend public schools. But the
government did not carry out that threat. Indeed,
it appears not to have taken further steps at this
66 - Preservings No. 26, 2006