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

for those older teens who wanted to learn English.
My mother recalls attending such classes
for two winters - the only English language
schooling she ever had. In Grunthal, in 1929, a
Jacob Miller still taught in the German school
but his younger brother, George, had studied in
the public system and obtained certification as
a public school teacher. Thus, at one point, the
people in the village, some of whom were still
paying fines to keep their children out of public
school, hired George to hold English language
evening classes for them. They paid him $1.00
per month. 44
What happened to the church? The Old
Colony leaders from all three areas who moved
to Mexico portrayed the move as a move of the
church, meaning that people who did not move
were no longer part of the church. But this was
not quite as true in the Hague-Osler area as
in Swift Current and Manitoba where the Old
Colony churches disappeared when the trains
left. (In Manitoba a new Old Colony church
was established fifteen years later. In the Swift
Current area many of the people who stayed
eventually joined the Sommerfelder church,
as did the one remaining minister Rev. Jacob
Peters. 45 )
In the Hague-Osler area things were different
largely because Rev. Johann N. Loeppky
stayed back, as did Rev. Abram Wall. Loeppky
was a key leader. Why did he stay back? Had
he become disillusioned with the migration
and its many problems? Was it his compassion
for the many people who, because of the fines,
had become too impoverished to move and who
needed a spiritual shepherd here? Whatever the
reason, the ministers who did move were very
upset with him. They saw him as a betrayer. 46
But when the others left, he, and Rev. Abram
Wall, continued to hold worship services here
even if in many villages the services were only
every third Sunday.
After some years, when it became clear that
many people would not move anyway, there was
a sense among the people that the church here
should be rebuilt. But how could they do this?
There was no Old Colony Aeltester. The people
then asked Rev. Cornelius Hamm, Aeltester of
the Bergthaler church here, to preside over an
Old Colony Aeltester election. Loeppky was
elected. Hamm was then requested to ordain
him. Not long after that Loeppky arranged to
have more ministers elected so as to better serve
the people and rebuild the church. 47 Loeppky
then also helped to get the new Old Colony
church in Manitoba going.
In the 1940s and 50s the Old Colony church
in this area started having Sunday Schools. 48
Back when they had their own private schools
with a lot of Bible teaching in the curriculum,
Sunday School was not an issue. But when
those schools closed, their children received
no Christian education except that from their
homes. It took some time but eventually Sunday
Schools were accepted.
Also significant is the emergence of other
churches. Already in the 1930s I. P. Friesen
who had been excommunicated from the Old
Colony church thirty years earlier and who,
subsequently, had been ordained as a minister
in the Rosthern Mennonite church, came and
held services in these villages if he was invited.
He was an unusually gifted speaker. People
responded well. Eventually, some people in the
Grunthal and Chortitz areas were inspired by his
preaching to organize a new church, calling it,
Rudnerweider, the name of the new church that
arose in Manitoba from a similar revival there.
Later that church was renamed the EMMC. 49
Other churches appeared too.
Is there a way of summarizing this whole
story? We can note that there has been an extensive
diversification in many aspects of life.
In terms of church affiliation, people gradually
joined a range of different churches or chose not
to join any at all. In their educational pursuits
people began to take many different directions.
In their occupations, they made their living in
increasingly diverse ways. In their geography,
people moved to many different places, including
big cities and remote rural areas. In their
lifestyles and their ways of thinking people also
became increasingly diverse.
Most of us now accept that diversity. It has
some good aspects. But some people would say
that instead of calling it diversity, we should call
it a fragmentation or even a fracturing process.
Certainly, it is different from the Old Colony
vision of keeping a whole community of people
on the same path, of holding the sacred and
secular together, and of enfolding everyone in
the embrace of the church. There is much to be
admired about the Old Colony vision but in my
view we should not be too sentimental about it.
Keeping everything and everyone together can
be stifling. But the harshness with which that
way of life was broken down was not justified
or inevitable. A little more leniency and wisdom
from government leaders, and in some instances
also from church leaders, could have spared a
great deal of heartache.
What does it mean for us? Certainly, we
should acknowledge that people struggled
hard, with deep issues, and that many acted
with courage, devotion and self-sacrifice. We
can learn from them even if we do not fully
agree with them. We should also acknowledge
that the descendants of many who moved have
become very poor, with little access to education
or economic opportunity. But staying in
Canada has not prevented problems either, as
all of us know well.
It would be nice if we could solve every
problem, heal every wound, and bring home
every lost sheep, both there and here. But that
is not in our power. Nevertheless, we can, by
God’s grace, take some steps and bring a little
understanding and reconciliation to the scattered
pieces that make up this story to which many of
us are connected.
Endnotes
1 Leonard Doell, “The Mennonite Private Schools” in
Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, published by Hague-Osler
Reserve Book Committee, 1995, 639
2 Ibid, 651
3 “Proceedings of the Commission of Inquiry at Warman,
December 28 - 29, 1908”, 27, Saskatchewan Archives Board
(SAB) files, Saskatoon.
4 Quoted in William Janzen, Limits on Liberty: The Experience
of Mennonite, Hutterite and Doukhobor Communities
in Canada, University of Toronto Press, 1990, 100
5 Ibid, 103
6 Doell, op. cit., p. 653. See also, Adolf Ens, Subjects or
Citizens? The Mennonite Experience in Canada, 1870 - 1925,
University of Ottawa Press, 1994, 115
7 See Adolf Ens, op. cit, 116
8 Doell, op. cit, 652
9 Quoted in Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920
- 1940: A People’s Struggle for Survival, Toronto, MacMillan,
1982, 99
10 Quoted in Ibid
11 Quoted in Ens, op. cit. 123
12 Ibid
13 Quoted in Janzen, op. cit., 105
14 Ibid, 88
15 Quoted in Ibid, 96
16 Ens, op. cit., 151
17 William Janzen, “The Limits of Liberty in Canada: the
Experience of the Mennonites, Hutterites, and Doukhobors”,
Ph D. dissertation, Political Science, Carleton University,
Ottawa, 1981, 240
18 Ens, noted in Janzen, Limits on Liberty: The Experience
of Mennonite, Hutterite and Doukhobor Communities in
Canada, University of Toronto Press, 1990, p. 107
19 Janzen, Ibid, 107
20 Ibid, 106
21 Epp, op. cit., 111. See also H. L. Sawatzky, They Sought
a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1971, 32
22 Sawatzky, Ibid, 31
23 Epp, op. cit., 112 and Sawatzky, Ibid, 35
24 Sawatzky, Ibid, 36
25 Ibid, 39
26 Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, op. cit., 374
27 Ibid, 43, note 36
28 Ibid, 49
29 Ibid, 44
30 Ibid, 49
31 Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, op. cit., 386 and 220
32 Ibid, 374, See also Sawatzky, 50, Ens, 214, and Abram
Janzen, “Aeltester Johan M. Loeppky, 1982 - 1950: As I Remember
Him” self published, Hague, Saskatchewan, 2003
33 Agreement, Oct. 10, 1921, Between Johann P. Wall, Jacob
Friesen, Benjamin Goertzen and Peter Reddekopp, and The
Union Liberty Company Limited, of Winnipeg, SAB files.
Both of my grandfathers, Peter P. Janzen and Wilhelm R.
Wiebe are on the list alongside more than a hundred others.
34 The reason why my mother’s parents did not move in the
1920s had to do with one daughter’s medical condition.
35 Quoted in Janzen, Ibid, 108
36 Ibid, 110
37 Quoted in Janzen, op. cit., 110
38 Ibid, 108
39 Ibid, 109
40 Ibid
41 Ibid, 111
42 Ibid, 112
43 Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, op. cit., 41
44 Doell, op. cit., 659
45 Leonard Doell, “Swift Current Old Colony Mennonite
Church” in, Old Colony Mennonites in Canada, 1875 to
2000, (ed) Delbert F. Plett, Crossway Publications, Steinbach,
Manitoba, 2000, 153.
46 Abram Janzen, op. cit. Also informative is a letter, dated
September 10, 1933, from Rev. Johann P. Wall in Mexico,
responding to Mr. C. B. Dirks who, while teaching in the
Renfrew public school, wrote to Wall in an effort to help a
local individual who had been excommunicated before the
move to Mexico.
47 Leonard Doell, “The Old Colony Mennonite Church” in
Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, op. cit., 585
48 Ibid, 587
49 Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, op. cit., 618
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