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

trustees who would then hire teachers, and
impose fines and prison terms if children did
not attend.
Premier Martin took a direct hand in things.
In the summer of 1917 he came to Hague to visit
the Old Colony Aeltester, Jacob Wiens. He also
visited some Old Colony schools. Early in 1918,
he wrote to Aeltester Wiens stating:
After seeing the schools that were being
conducted in the Mennonite colonies I came to
the conclusion that it was high time that some
improvement should take place; and I now desire
to advise you that it is the intention of the Department
of Education to enforce the provisions
of the School Attendance Act …If you desire to
retain your private schools you must have these
schools conducted according to the standards of
efficiency of the public schools and the teachers
employed by you must be recognized by the
Department of Education and the authorized
text books of the Department of Education must
also be used. 13
To be fair we must note that the Premier’s
letter appears not to close the doors to private
schools completely but there was a big difference
between private schools as he envisioned
them and the Old Colony private schools.
How did the Old Colony church respond? It
now sent a delegation to Ottawa to request of the
federal government that it ensure that the provincial
government respect the promise about full
religious freedom, including freedom in relation
to schooling, that had been given to them in that
1873 letter from the federal government. The
relevant paragraph in that letter stated:
“The fullest privilege of exercising their
religious principles is by law afforded to the
Mennonites without any kind of molestation
or restriction whatever, and the same privilege
extends to the education of their children in
schools.” 14
Unfortunately, when the Old Colony church
now approached the federal government, it
took a different view. The government now
interpreted that 1873 letter to mean that what
the Saskatchewan provincial government was
now doing did not really violate that letter. Later,
Manitoba Mennonites took the matter to court.
But the Courts, even at the highest level, ruled
that the federal government had never had the
authority to make that promise since education
was within provincial jurisdiction not federal
jurisdiction. 15 Either way, that 1873 promise
turned out to have no value in relation to the
schools question. For the Old Colony Mennonites,
and for others, this was a major blow.
In the summer of 1918 the Saskatchewan
government began to expropriate land in Old
Colony areas, to send in construction crews,
and to build schools. Passchendaele (Hochfeld),
Pembroke (Neuanlage), Venice (Blumenthal),
Renfrew (Blumenheim), and Scarpe (Blumenhoff)
were built that year. Early in 1919, La Bassee
(Reinfeld), Embury (Gruenfelt), and Steele
(Schoenwiese) were erected. 16 (In the Swift Current
area, a similar number were opened in 1918
Johann P. Wall (1875-1961), Hochfeld, Hague, Saskatchewan.
Wall was a delegate to South America
and Mexico in 1919 and 1920. He was instrumental
in the migration to Durango in 1924. Leonard Doell,
Hague Osler, 580.
and 1919.) The government appointed official
trustees who then hired teachers. These teachers
went to the schools even though, in some
cases, no children came. Interestingly, often
the teachers and the official trustees were other
Mennonites. (In the Renfrew school building,
which now stands on the grounds of the Hague
museum, there is a chart showing that in the first
two years no children attended.)
The government now took enforcement actions
mainly by fining people. It decided not to
send parents to jail, lest they appear as martyrs.
Nor did it fine people in every village, only in
some, counting, presumably, on a demonstration
effect. Both Neuanlage, where my father
grew up, and Blumenheim, where my mother
grew up, were among those that were fined.
For Neuanlage, for 1920, there were 231 fines
resulting in the payment of $2,250.00. For 1921
the total for Neuanlage was $3,178.00. For
Blumenheim, the respective totals were just
over $1000. 17 Eleven Saskatchewan Mennonite
districts paid a total of $26,000 in 1920 - 21 in
fines and court costs. That was a lot of money
in those years, enough to construct and furnish
five one room country school buildings together
with teacher’s residences. 18
For the Old Colony people the burden was
heavy. In addition to the fines for not sending
their children to the public schools, they also
had to pay taxes for those schools. On top of that
they paid a certain church levy to keep the private
schools running. In the Swift Current area
when some families did not pay, the police came
and seized, “three horses, a hog, and five cured
hams,” and sold them at a public auction. When
the resulting sum did not cover all the outstanding
fines they came back and seized, “five cows,
two heifers and two horses”. Gradually more
and more people became impoverished. 19
The government would not have taken such
a hard line if public voices had not supported it.
The Provincial Liberal Party at its convention in
1917 passed a supportive resolution. So did the
Saskatchewan Rural Municipalities Association
and the Council of the Rural Municipality of
Warman which included most of the affected
Old Colony Mennonites of this area. The Saskatchewan
School Trustees Association met
in Saskatoon and called for “national schools
and one language”. At Swift Current a citizens
meeting passed a resolution stating that, “the
children of these people must be educated up to
our standards of British and Canadian citizenship,
so that they may, in the future, voluntarily
relinquish their claims to an unjust exemption.” 20
This is what the Old Colony people suspected,
namely, that one purpose of the public schools
was to persuade people to abandon the teaching
about not going to war.
4. 1919 - 1924: Facing Continued School Pressure
and Seeking a New Homeland
By the summer of 1919 the Old Colony
churches in the three areas - Hague-Osler,
Swift Current, and Manitoba - had come to
two conclusions: (i) that the provincial governments
in the two provinces were determined to
force them to accept the public schools, and (ii)
that the federal government’s 1873 promise of
unrestricted freedom in matters of schooling
would not protect them. These groups now held
meetings where they made the momentous decision
to look for a new homeland. (Some people
from the Manitoba Chortitzer and Sommerfelder
groups and from the Saskatchewan Bergthaler,
soon made a similar decision.)
Finding a new homeland would be complicated.
They needed to find a country which
would give them the freedoms they were losing
here and which had a piece of farm land large
enough for all three Old Colony groups to settle
in together. Further, in order to raise the money
to buy such a large piece they needed to sell their
land in Canada. Each of these tasks was a huge
challenge. Having to deal with them together
was bound to be very difficult, not to mention
that at the same time they continued to face the
burden of the school fines.
(a) Getting a Privilegium and Finding Land
On August 4, 1919 a delegation with representatives
from all three Old Colony settlements
set out for Latin America, not to return until late
in November. They spent most of these four
months in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. A
personal tragedy happened in Brazil where Rev.
Johann J. Wall, one of the two Hague delegates,
got sick and died. A more general blow was that
the delegation, despite their diligent search,
did not find what they were looking for. None
of the places they visited was suitable, either
because of problems with the land or because
the governments were not willing to give them
a sufficiently broad religious freedom. 21
68 - Preservings No. 26, 2006