Preservings 11 (1997) - Plett Foundation

pact upon Steinbach.
Perhaps Mr. Loewen will see fit to remedy
this with a second improved volume which will
contain the stories, folk lore and history which
the members of this family such as Helena
Friesen, Mrs. C. T. Loewen, and Katharina
Friesen, Mrs. C. K. Friesen—to name a few,
so richly deserve.
______
Maryanne Wiebe, The Jakob L. Toews Family
(Crooked Creek, Alberta, 1996), 77 pages.
Jakob L. Toews was the son of Jakob B.
Toews (1853-1938), one-time school teacher
from Hochstadt, E. Reserve, who moved to
Swalwell, Alberta shortly after the turn of the
century: Profile 1874, pages 52-3. Two family
books have already been published about the
Jakob B. Toews family, and so this volume covering
the family of son Jakob L. Toews is an
extension of this work. The book includes a
family listing as well as a limited amount of
historical information.
______
Marian and Les Plett, Family Register of
Peter F. Plett 1884-1990 (923 Midgidge Dr.
S.E., Calgary, AB T2X 1H5 1990), 123 pages.
This book traces the family of Peter F. Plett
(1884-1970) and Sara B. Koop (1885-1963) two
pioneers of the East Reserve who lived in the
Neuanlage, Hochstadt, and Prairie Rose (Landmark)
areas during their long and productive
lives. The format of the book consists of brief
biographical comments for each individual,
some photographs, and a listing of descendants.
Unfortunately the quality of the reproduction
of photographs in my copy of the book were
quite poor, with some faces totally blacked out.
Hopefully this was only in my copy—given the
hard work that obviously went into compiling
all the information, it would be unfortunate to
spoil an otherwise laudible indeavour.
I must confess quite frankly, also, that the
layout of the material utilizing only one side of
the page seems wasteful of the space when there
are so many exciting stories and family anecdotes
which would have filled up the other side.
A few dollars more spent on a professional typesetting,
photo reproduction and layout would
have been money well spent.
Nothwithstanding these comments this is a
worthy project which will be treasured by family
members for the generations to come. Some
well-known descendants of this family in the
Steinbach area are Brenda and Curt Loewen,
and Verda and Abe Toews.
______
Anna Heinrichs-Friesen-Thiessen, Pioneer
Nursing in Paraguay (Winkler, Manitoba,
1996), 29 pages.
Pioneer Nursing in Paraguay is the story of
an extraordinary woman, Anna, whose nursing
career began in a time when it was not usual
for a Mennonite girl’s life to go beyond the
boundaries of marriage and motherhood.
Anna was raised in Manitoba, Canada. She
took her training in Winnipeg, and graduated
No. 11, December, 1997
with honors in January of 1948; just six months
before joining the great migration of Manitoba
Mennonites to Paraguay, South America.
On the ship ‘Volandam’ (which transported
the 1800 immigrants from North America to
Paraguay) Anna, as assistant to the ship’s medical
doctor, began what was to become her life’s
calling; care of thc sick and hurting.
Anna married John Friesen, a fellow immigrant
and teacher in August 1948, just one
month after her arrival in Paraguay, first in a
civil ceremony with Paraguayan officials presiding
and then two days later in the traditional
Mennonite fashion of an open church service
and a meal of ‘pluma mousse’, borscht and ham.
In November of that year Anna and her busband
of three months moved by ox-cart from Colony
Independencia to Colony Sommerfeld, where
she lived and worked for the next 45 years.
Much of the narrative is taken up with short
stories and anecdotes of her experiences as a
nurse in the fledgling colonies of Sommerfeld
and Bergthal and are told with humor and sensitivity.
Anna recounts that many times she dealt
with diseases, illnesses, childbirth and accidents,
situations where she would be the sole
medical caregiver, often lacking even the bare
minimum of supplies, and sometimes in the face
of family and religious opposition.
The dauntless spirit of this courageous
woman shines throughout the book; a spirit of
adventure, of steadfast commitment to her calling,
and of a deep abiding faith in God.
Anna Heinrichs-Friesen-Thiessen’s Pioneer
Nursing in Paraguay is a book of quiet heroism,
and of a woman ahead of her times.
Book review by Anne Funk.
______
In Her Own Voice: Childbirth Stories from
Mennonite Women, collected and edited by
Katherine Martens and Heidi Harms. Winnipeg,
University of Manitoba Press, 1997.
This book would have been unthinkable a
generation a go. Childbirth was not a subject
for public story telling in Canada, and even less
so among Mennonites. Much as Mennonites
have welcomed children into the world, the
subject of pregnancy and birth has been offlimits,
as if there was something shameful about
such a basic bodily function. Even women
themselves did not think to talk to each other
about their experiences of giving birth.
And now, for anyone to read and hear, there
is this plenitude of childbirth stories. Like 19th
century explorers, Katherine Martens and Heidi
Harms have ventured where no one before them
had dared to go, and have come away with a
great treasure. Ms. Martens interviewed 26
Mennonite women of three generations, while
Ms. Harms assisted with transcriptions and
translations. Whether farm women at ease in
Plautdietsch or university professionals, the
story tellers are by turns brave and frightened,
critical and accepting.
Of particular interest to historians of the
pioneer Mennonite experience in southern
Manitoba is the interview with Sara Kroeker,
101
who tells of her mother Aganetha Barkman, the
daughter of Reverend Jakob Barkman who
drowned in the Red River in 1875. Aganetha,
who became the wife of the widower John R.
Reimer of Steinbach, delivered more than 600
babies in the first decades of the 20th century.
Mrs. Reimer must have been wonderfully
skilled at her work: of all these births, only two
mothers died.
Often Mrs. Reimer would be nursing one
of her own babies when the call would come,
and she would take the child along, not knowing
if she would be gone for a few hours or a
few days. Sometimes she baked Schnettje in
the homes she entered, or brought chicken
noodle soup. Once she delivered a child just
three days after having her own baby. Mrs.
Reimer’s activity slowed after a hospital was
opened in Steinbach in 1938—see Harvey
Kroeker, “Aganetha Barkman Reimer 1863-
1938,” in Preservings, No. 6, June 1995, pages
23-4.
Elizabeth Krahn, of today’s generation, tells
of her two home births, observing that she felt
a connection with women of the past, who prepared
themselves for home birthing as a matter
of course, and were more involved and more
in control as a result. Having children, she says,
caused her to take a greater interest in her roots,
and brought her to the question that intrigues
every good family historian: “What do we carry
in our lives that may have begun in the hearts
of our parents or our grandparents?”
A number of the story tellers relate the frustrations
of having to go along with hospital rules
and being alienated from their own bodies and
birth-giving. Some, like Susanna Klassen, also
found that the church was not supportive, almost
as though the fact of birth and new motherhood
was so demonstrative of a natural state
that it was seen as a threat to the spiritual. I
think the church was not in touch with the natural
relationship between a mother and child,”
says Klassen, pointing out that breast-feeding
in church was frowned upon.
Varied as the experiences of the story tellers
are, all, in every generation, attest to the
joy brought to them by their children and even
by their pregnancies.
While some husbands are very much involved
in their spouses’ birth experiences, the majority
are on the periphery of these stories. One
respondent, born at the turn of the century,
makes a very insightful comment about gender
differences:
“But what can you expect from a man who has
never been pregnant? I sometimes feel a woman
should not expect too much from a man. ..... if
she feels she has to pour out her heart, she has
to do that with another woman.”
In this non-judgemental observation lies a
challenge for men of today, who have the advantage
of being much more likely to be brought
into the birthing experience than were their
fathers.
In Her Own Voice is a practical book with a
lot of teaching in it. Women readers, Mennonite
or not, will find that this book makes them
feel part of a shared community of experience