Writing Low German Mennonites into a History of Canada

Dr. Royden Loewen

“Writing Low German Mennonites into a History of Canada”

Royden Loewen is the Chair of Mennonite Studies and Professor of History at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. He has published widely on Mennonite and immigration history in North and South America. 

His most recent book, published by University of Toronto Press in 2013, is Village Among Nations: ‘Canadian’ Mennonites in a Transnational World, 2016-2006.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Royden Loewen at the lecture. It was recorded on Friday, March 7, 2014. 

2014 Bechtel Lecture 2 

Durango-Mazatlan

According to Mail Online News. 

Once a dangerous road in a treacherous Mexican mountain range known for marijuana and opium poppies, the Devil's Backbone has been transformed by what may be one of the country's greatest engineering feats.

The Durango-Mazatlan Highway, designed to bring legitimate commerce safely across the Sierra Madre in Mexico, is now completed.

“It will change the landscape of this part of the country,” Sinaloa state tourism Secretary Francisco Cordova said. “It's an opportunity to develop these areas and diversify the local economy.”

The highway project, 140-miles-long, has 115 bridges and 61 tunnels.

Officials predict the $2.2 billion highway to transform northern Mexico for the good, linking port cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific with a 12-hour drive.

Plans for the project began 15 years ago. Eventually, the highway will move 5 million vehicles a year—four times the number handled by the old road.

Some locals of the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Durango think the new highway will improve access, will others fear they will lose business when cars and trucks bypass the towns.

Authorities hope the project will increase tourism to such areas plagued by drug violence. On either side of the Balaurte Bridge, part of the highway in the western part of the country, Sinaloa and Durango were among the deadliest states in terms of drug-related killings between 2006 and 2011.

“The road will increase jobs and keep people busy,” said Eligio Medina, mayor of the city of Concordia, Sinaloa. “When there is social mobility, criminal groups are more limited.”

I got this information and the pictures from Mail Online News.

Long: The Durango-Mazatlan Highway in the western Sierra Madre near Concordia, Mexico, vies to be one of the country's greatest engineering feats.

Long fall: The canyon the new the Baluarte Bridge crosses is deep enough to fit the Chrysler

Building, which is more than 1,000-feet-tall

Connection: The $2.2 billion highway will link port cities on the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean with a short 12-hour drive.

Dangerous: The new highway replaced what was known as the Espinazo del Diablo, or the Devli's Backbone, a road stretching along the spine of a mountain with drops of hundreds of feet on either side.

It’s all worth it when you get here, my favorite place to stay is at the Royal Villa Mazatlan.

  The locals are always wary nice to me, i have never came across any unfair treatment or violence.

Before the new road was built it took about eight hours to drive from Durango to Mazatlan.  Plus an hour an a half from the Mennonite Colonies to the City Durango.

The population of Mazatlán, Mexico is 354717 according to the GeoNames geographical

database.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

As soon as we turned fifteen, we started talking about getting married.  My friends were so worried they might not meet someone because our colony was far from the rest of the colonies. We were the only colony on the other side of the main highway; most of the other colonies were side by side.  

There was no church in our colony and no preachers lived near us either. We were considered schtolt because we were not watched closely so we could get away with changing our dresses and sock colours more than the rest of the colonies.  I guess you can say that I am from the wrong side of the colonies.  Maybe that is where my misguided thinking started!

The only way the guys from other colonies could visit us was by horse and buggy and it would take a long time to get there.  Once in a while, there would be some that hired a Mexican to drive them but, even then, if they decided to date us they would have to do this every time they wanted to visit. It would be time consuming and expensive.  

A lot of people just married someone from their own colony.  Even then, however, we didn’t have a lot of options because most of us were cousins.

When a guy was interested, he would just sit beside us with his arms around us so we couldn’t move.  It was so annoying that they had no courting skills whatsoever.  

They came at us like a bunch of animals. Most of them only had the nerve to do that if they were drunk and, most of the time, that was the case.  

They were drunk and acted really obnoxious.  Even if someone would look past all that and agree that they could visit again, they would only see each other twice a week, on Sunday and Thursday nights, and occasionally on Sunday afternoon.  

We really never got to know the person that way.  It was okay with me if we didn’t get visitors too often from other colonies.  

Once in a while I got to stay at my grandma’s in a colony far from ours.  My favorite cousin, Susie, lived in the same colony.  One weekday afternoon, Grandma told Susie and me to go to the kisaree, the Cheese factory, to buy some cheese with her horse and buggy.  

So, we were riding along in the colony and noticed a few guys sitting on the side of the road. We thought that it was our chance to really impress these guys by riding past them with Grandma’s best horse and looking all cool but, of course, this didn’t happen. The horse decided to go right up to the guys and take a big dump right there in front of them. We shamed ourselves half to death! 

        

There were rumours going around other colonies that guys were afraid to come to our colony because of our neighbours.  They were so different. They moved there because they got kicked out of a colony in Chihuahua were they lived before.  

They bought the first piece of land that was not part of the colony so they could build a house there, even if the colony didn’t want them there because the land was sold to them by the Mexicans.  The reason the colony was not happy with them living so close was because they were not Old Colony.

They dressed like worldly people, they cut their hair and they didn’t belong to any church. The people of the colony were afraid that these outsiders would influence and misguide them.  They tried to get them to move but it didn’t work. 

They stayed. These are the neighbours who inspired me to learn Spanish.  Their kids spoke Spanish fluently and most of them married Mexicans and stayed living on that property.  They had six girls and six boys. 

The boys would beat up guys that visited our colony just to mess with the elders in order to get back at them for trying to force them to leave. Eventually, the guys of this family left the colony.  

       

The reputation stuck for a while but it wore off and we had visitors again once in a while. The guys of our colony at least had a choice.  They could take the bus to town and catch a ride to other colonies but the girls were stuck sitting around waiting for others to visit.  

The girls would settle for the first boy that asked because they were so worried that it would be the only chance they would have to meet someone. Parents would encourage the girls to get baptized and get married between ages sixteen and nineteen.

I think parents were worried that, the longer their daughters stayed single, they might get ideas and change their minds about wanting this life. They might be misguided by people that came from Canada because the girls in Canada would wait longer to get married.  But it’s not like there was much of a choice. 

If you didn’t get married, your life would be horrible because you wouldn’t fit into any of the groups.  You couldn’t visit with the married people because they might talk about sex and, since you were unmarried, you couldn’t be part of that conversation yet.

If you were twenty you were too old to be with the youth because you might already know too much about sex and having babies and you might tell the young people who were not to know about this until marriage. This happened to some girls. 

They would stay home and help their parents on the farm and that was their life. This never happened to the men. They could stay single as long as they wanted and, as soon as they decided to date someone, there were tons of girls ready. Since it was a man’s job to find a girl, he could take as much time as needed. 

  

The only chance the old women had to marry was when someone’s wife died and, even then, sometimes the widower would marry a younger girl.  It seemed like there were way more women than men. 

They had all the options so we had to pray that someone would choose us.  It happened in our colony that there was a couple that only had one daughter. This was odd since most people had about twelve.  

So, they adopted a boy and a girl from a family in Zacatecas where the wife had passed away and left a bunch of kids behind.  We all loved him and, as he got older, he looked and acted so different from the guys in our colony. We all were ready to marry him at the drop of a hat!

But some “shenanigans” happened which we do not speak of. The only daughter got pregnant by her step-brother and so, of course, he had to marry her. There went our dream man marrying his step-sister! At first we were told the parents finally had another baby but, when the daughter and step-brother married, they took care of the baby because the parents were too old to raise him. 

We heard more stories like these than we could count.  The newly married couple never had any more children and about seven years into the marriage she had a heart attack and passed away. She was only in her early thirties.  

There was only one girl left from my youth group never chosen for marriage. Back then we used different words to describe her but she was short and chubby and had a unique personality. 

She ended up marrying the widower, the man of all our dreams! The girl we thought would be alone and miserable for the rest of her life wasn’t worried about it. She was as happy as she could be, like her pockets were full of candy, when she ended up marrying the guy we all wanted!

In 1926, Rev. Johann P. Wall and his family moved to Mexico.

This is my Great Grandfather, Johann P. Wall my dad’s Grandpa.  After i saw a picture of him in the book Village among Nations By: Royden Loewen i got all exited and started looking for him and this is what i found.  My grandpa's name is also Johann Wall, my dad's name is Johann Wall and i have a brother named Johann Wall and he has a son named Johann Wall.

Johann P. Wall, 1875-1961

Rev. Johann P. Wall was born June 16, 1875 to Peter Wall and Aganetha Vogt. He came to Canada with his parents from Russia in 1891. They arrived in Gretna, Manitoba, and in 1892, they lived at Neuhorst, Manitoba.

Johann P. Wall married on Nov. 11, 1894, to Anna Wiebe. She was born May 20, 1875, to Heinrich Wiebe and Maria Froese. Her parents lived at Rosengard, Manitoba. They came to Canada on the S.S. Peruvian, which arrived in Quebec City on July 13.1875.

[line missing]

Minister on Nov. 10, 1903. He was elected as a delegate together with Johann Wall of Neuan\age in 1919, to find a new for his people. In Sept. of 1918, Rev. Johann P. Wall had written a letter to the Honorable Arthur Meighen to express their reasons for s leaving Canada. "Jesus said, when you are expelled from one city fly to another and we must follow the preceipts of Jesus our Master no matter how hard it must be for us to leave and our dearly beloved Canada, and see whether we could live in another corner where we could live in accordance with our faith."

His wife passed away in 1920 and he then married the widow of Rev. Johann Wall. In 1926, Rev. Johann P. Wall and his family moved to Mexico where he continued to serve as a minister for a total of 57 years. He lived to be 86 years old, dying in Mexico in 1961. During this time he preached 1,536 sermons; he married 162 couples and preached at 217 funerals.

He was known for a few things. When it came to the question of private schools he was seen as one who did not compromise on principle. He 'was very gifted when it came to speaking a variety of languages, namely: English, High and Low German, Spanish and Russian. He also loved horses and was, therefore, often nicknamed "cowboy and preacher."

Rev. Johann P. Wall moved to Saskatchewan in 1899 and homesteaded NW 22, Tp41, R4, W of 3rd, west of Hague.

In 1899, he broke 27 acres and cropped 6 acres; in 1900, he broke 35 acres and cropped 42: In 1901, he broke 35 acres and cropped 57: in 1902, he broke 20 acres and cropped 97. He built a 24x32 ft. house in the village of Hochfeld valued at $200. He also built a stable, a granary, a shed and dug two wells all valued at $250. In 1902, 'he owned five head of cattle, five horses and three pigs.

Rev. Johann P. Wall was ordained as an Old Colony minister ... [line missing].

Credits go to: Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan (MHSS) 

Sinner Lost in Translation

Continued from Mennonite Schmuck

Growing up in a Mennonite colony in Mexico, I remember at a very young age hearing all sorts of talk about the ¨end times,¨ the ¨mark of the beast¨ and how much sin there was in the world. Canada was associated with sin in most conversations. Nevertheless, poverty and hardship left many families with no other option but to dig out their dusty old Canadian Citizenship cards, tucked away since moving to Mexico some seven decades prior, and drive back to Canada to work in agriculture.

Some families returned home to Mexico at the end of October every year. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I could only assume that what was sinful about the people returning were the items they brought back—such as cameras, watches, colourful socks, and shiny Christmas decorations, which we all knew were not allowed.

Like most others from my colony, I was illiterate when I first came to Canada at the age of 16. I had only written my own name a handful of times. In a Mennonite colony in Mexico there was no need for girls to know how to read and write. To work in agriculture in Canada, reading and writing weren’t necessarily a requirement either.  But we all knew that one had to have a ¨worker’s card¨ and that this card was very important. I had a trusted cousin who helped me apply for it as soon as I arrived.

Not long after I received that card, I was lucky enough to be hired at a sewing factory. I hit the job jackpot for a Mennonite girl who was illiterate and only spoke a few words of English. What I had actually won quickly became more complicated than I had anticipated. When I received my first paycheque I went to the first bank on my way through town. I was so happy. For the first time ever, I held in my hands a cheque with my name on it. I had never seen my name printed on paper like that before.

I stood in the line-up at the bank feeling all sorts of happy feelings. Finally, when it was my turn to go up to the teller, I carefully placed my cheque in front of the man and said, ¨Cash, please.¨ I could tell right away that this man was not as nice as all the other English-speaking folks I had met up to that point. He began laughing under his breath as he asked if I had an account at that bank.

¨No,¨ I said.

¨Okay, then I will need to see some ID and your SIN card,¨ he said.

My heart skipped a beat, ¨A SIN card?¨ I asked.

My thoughts immediately traveled back in time and began connecting the dots. I decided right then and there that that was the reason why it was such a sin to come to Canada.

¨Yes, do you have your SIN card with you?¨ he asked.

¨No, I don’t have a SIN card,¨ I explained.

¨Well, you need one in order to open a bank account,¨ he said.

A woman came over and asked, ¨What’s going on?¨

¨She wants to open an account but she doesn’t have a SIN card,¨ answered the teller.

They looked at each other and the teller said some things to the woman that I couldn’t understand. They both looked at me and laughed. When the woman caught her breath she asked, ¨Where are you from?¨

¨Mexico.¨

¨Of course,¨ she said and continued to laugh as she picked up my cheque. She studied it for a while and asked, ¨So, you work at that factory down the street and you don’t have a SIN card?¨

By that time I had already concluded that I was doomed. I knew that it was true that I couldn´t cash my paycheque without owning such a card. I thought to myself, ¨It’s happening, just like I heard people talk about back in the colony.¨ One day we would all be faced with a choice: take the ¨666¨ mark of the beast or starve to death. At that very moment, I was standing on the threshold of that choice. ¨It’s not too late; I could still make a run for it,¨ I thought.

The story that was unfolding in my head was becoming too real to handle as the bank tellers were enjoying themselves making fun of me. The woman proceeded to tell me, ¨You know, you can’t work in Canada if you don’t have a SIN card; you can get deported.¨  I took my cheque and ran out of the bank as fast as I could, thinking, ¨What does deported mean anyway?¨

I had hellish nightmares that night about the ordeal. The next day I went to work feeling sick to my stomach with worry. I told my fellow Mennonite co-worker about my experience, and she explained to me that the ¨worker´s card¨ was a SIN card, and that’s the day I learned about acronyms. Also, it was true that all people working in Canada had to have such a card.

I explained my concerns to my co-worker. She assured me that a Social Insurance Number card would not contain the mark of the beast. I decided that I couldn’t trust anybody with something as important as that. When I got home after my shift, I carefully inspected my ¨SIN¨ card. I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a combination of the numbers 666 on my card in any way, shape, or form. I was relieved when I couldn’t find any such combinations on the card anywhere.

The next day, I took my ¨SIN¨ card and went to a different bank. The man who helped me was very nice and even asked if he could help me with anything else. It was sinfully easy to open a bank account. To this day I am a loyal customer. Click here to continue reading my story.

"The more learned, the more misguided"

We are Russian Mennonites not Mexican Mennonites.  My ancestors came to Canada in the 1870s from Russia.  The Old Colony Low German speaking Mennonites emigrated from western Canada to Mexico in the 1920s. 

The name, “Old Colony”, derives from the origin at Chortitza, the oldest Mennonite settlement in Russia. 

They were Russian settlers that originally came from Prussia and the Prussian Mennonites can be traced to Holland.  You can read how this happened in my post “Low German Mennonite History”.  In Canada, I often get asked. 

“Were your grandparents Old Order Mennonites?” 

The first time someone asked me that, I had never heard of Old Order Mennonites and I would say, “You mean Old Colony?” 

They would say, “No, Old Order.”

Growing up in Mexico we never heard of other types of Mennonites. We thought we were the only ones. Our parents probably knew but never told us, since history or any kind of knowledge is not important to the Old Colony.  

The Old Colony group represents the Old Order element of Dutch Mennonites, a separate branch from the Swiss Mennonites from which the Amish and Old Order Mennonites descend.  The Old Colony Mennonites emerged as a distinct group in the 1880s in Manitoba, Canada.

It is my understanding that the most conservative group among the Old Colony Mennonites settled in Nuevo Ideal, in Durango province, Mexico originally.  They tried to keep it very conservative but it was really tough to survive.  

In the 1990s, when the Old Colony church in Nuevo Ideal, Durango agreed to allow us to drive cars and use hydro, a large group of the Old Colony Mennonites did not approve of this change and left for Campeche,Mexico. 

I was a teenager during this time. I remember wondering, “Why don’t they want to drive cars? You can get to grandma’s house so much faster and it’s nice plugging in the lights instead of putting oil in the lamps every afternoon.”  

We had to do this in the day light so they would be ready to be lit when the sun went down.

When I first came to Canada in the summer of 1993 I felt like I didn't know anything. I felt stupid in a way.  I couldn't read or write and I could barely write my name.  I didn't know any history at all, let alone Mennonite history. 

There were occasions when I was in a group of people with Low German backgrounds that would talk in English about Menno Simons; I could figure out that they were talking about a person.  I once asked, “Fonn wäaem fe'tal jie?” Who are you talking about? 

Some of them would look at me and roll their eyes.  I wasn't sure what exactly the meaning of the eye rolling was.  But I was not going to ask those people anything again that I was sure of.   

It made me feel so stupid and just for a brief moment I wanted to go back to never asking any questions again.  Who cares about this “Menno” person anyways?  

It didn't take long for me to learn who OJ Simpson and the Kardashians were.  When the radio alarm woke me up in the morning, all I heard was OJ murders and the Kardashians.  I was comforted by the fact that this was happening in the US; surely my new home country would not have murderers! 

I would sometimes cry myself to sleep, feeling so overwhelmed by all the things I needed to learn.  Especially if I wanted to speak English as fast as all those people talking about Menno Simons did!  

Now I know that it wasn't that I didn't know ANYTHING when I first came to Canada. I knew some things but what I knew was just different from what the rest of the people living in Canada knew.  

Now that I know how to read, I’m reading that the very reason my great grandparents left Canada is because I was not supposed to learn how to read. Darn it to heck, it’s too late for me and a bit messed up I would say. There is no delete button.

They disassembled and loaded their houses onto the train cars, along with farm machinery and animals and moved to Mexico.  They didn't even speak Spanish.  They did this so they could save me from “ji meha jiliehet, ji meha fitchiehet” (The more learned, the more misguided.)

I didn't know any of that history and I couldn't wait to come to Canada.  Knowing this now does make me feel guilty.  Most of my life I have felt like I am doing the right thing by doing the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing by doing the right thing, but I wouldn't change it for the world. 

Not knowing any of the history and the reasons why such sacrifices were made is what caused me to search for my sense of belonging. Leaning how to read actually literally saved my life!

During a book signing of Royden Loewen's book Village among Nations at Conrad Grebel University College. I learned that I am actually the Great Granddaughter of Johann P. Wall one of the men  who sacrificed so much and lead his people to Mexico.  

Why are most Low German people illiterate?

The Old Colony believe “ji meha jiliehet, ji meha fitchiehet” (the more learned the more misguided).

“Why waste all that time going to school?” “You don’t need to go to school to learn how to be a good hard worker, a house wife or a mother.”  I went to an Old Colony Mennonite school in Mexico.   At this school we learned how to do basic math and how to copy verses from the Bible.  We learned only from the Bible.

We did not need to learn how to write our name, or read anything else.  We were even told not to read the Bible too much because we were not supposed to know too much about the Bible either.

There are four levels we learned.  The High German Bible, the Old and New Testament, the Catechism and the Fible.  We would sing from the hymnbook in High German as well.

The photo to your right is from the Fible that is the first book we learned from when we stared school. we would learn how to copy the ABC'S you see in the photo.

When I read the Bible I only understood a few words I was reading because at home we spoke Low German and at school we read and spoke High German.  We were never introduced to High German before we started school.

I didn't like school at all.  It was not a fun environment.  There would be one teacher per school for all the kids in the village ages 6 to 13, about 75 to 85 kids in total.  The boys sat on the right side of the school and the girls sat on the left side.  

If you were caught looking out the window you had to sit in the window if you were late, you had to stand in the door for 10 minutes.  I often sat there and pretended to read, but I would fantasize about being a Mexican school girl. Whenever we drove past a Mexican school, those kids looked so happy.  They would play basketball and skip and laugh. 

I would be having pleasant time thinking about this and then the teacher would throw the belt at me.  Whenever this happened you had to bring the belt up to the front, so everyone could see who was slacking.  I barely got to the third level by the end of my last school year.

Most kids went to school until they were 12 or 13 years old. I went only from the age of 7 until I was 10 years old.  I got to stay home and learn how to cook, bake, sew, clean and do the laundry because I was labelled a “hard learner.”

“Anna is a hard learner.”  “That was a never ending story,” That is why she is not at school,” my mom would explain to everyone she met.  It was embarrassing and I felt like a failure.  

Being a “HARD LEARNER” I spent a lot of time alone, in hiding reading Spanish books that Mexicans would sometimes drop off while driving through our village, old books their kids would no longer need.  

I heard some kids singing the alphabet in Spanish.  It was so interesting to me that I memorized it not even knowing that it would help me to read Spanish.  My mom didn't care as long as I was done doing my chores. 

I could read all I wanted i even understood some words I was reading. That was foreign to me.  I remember the feeling of being lit up from the inside out, which was the first time I felt a tingling sensation in my stomach that was not from being scared.

Words of Old Colony Mennonite Bishop Isaac Dyck: “When the school, as the first plating place in man’s hart, was held in common with the world, then the church also couldn't remain free from it.”