The resistance of Mennonites in Saskatchewan and Manitoba to efforts by their provincial governments to impose public schools, which intensified during the First World War, resulted in fines, property seizures, and prosecutions for violating new compulsory attendance laws. Community leaders petitioned their governments to respect the guarantee of the 1873 Privilegium letter that they would be allowed to operate their own private schools. The Manitoba Sommerfelder Gemeinde initiated a legal challenge in defense of this position in 1919, which went all the way to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, but in July 1920 the Privy Council ruled against them, confirming the lower court’s ruling that the 1873 letter did not exempt Mennonites from provincial education laws.¹ The ruling made it crystal clear that there would be no favourable outcome for the Reinlaender, or Old Colony, Mennonites on the Swift Current Mennonite Reserve (SCMR) in the matter of schools.

Their leaders in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan had anticipated as much and had begun to explore places to live outside of Canada before they even learned the verdict of the Crown. They looked for a country that would guarantee them more freedoms. Here is a description of an early delegation that went to look for another country to which their group might migrate: “In the summer of 1919 the Reinlaender Church met and decided to investigate emigration possibilities. They selected two delegates, who, together with Saskatchewan Reinlaender Church representatives, journeyed to Ottawa, and then on to Latin America. In Ottawa they made one final futile attempt to get the federal government to intercede on their behalf, and then proceeded to Argentina, Brazil and a number of other Latin American countries. None of these countries were willing to grant them the privileges they were looking for.”²

From August of 1919 until August of 1921 the Reinlaender Mennonites from the SCMR, together with those from the Hague-Osler Reserve and from Manitoba, participated in eight land-seeking trips. Their delegates travelled to Quebec (the only option they explored within Canada), to Argentina and Brazil, to Mississippi, and to Mexico.³ Many, if not most, of the leading members within the SCMR felt little compunction to give in to the government’s demands regarding sending their children to the public schools nor did they feel a sense of loyalty to Canada. They saw their primary loyalty as being to God and to the way of life they felt that He had called them to live. For this reason they eagerly participated in the search for a new location for their people.

The search for a new area or country, however, was fraught with disappointments.⁴ The land they were offered in Argentina looked promising but the “request for a Privilegium [was met] with something less than enthusiasm.”⁵ The guarantee of freedom regarding education and exemption from participation in military service was too important for them to risk being denied these privileges; after all, this is what had happened in Canada. The Reinlaender received an offer of land in Mississippi early in 1920. Their leaders agreed to purchase the land but in the process of finalizing the conditions for settlement and making a down payment on the land, their delegates were prevented from even entering the United States. The delegates and Reinlaender leaders saw this as a bad sign and abandoned this option.

These setbacks caused friction at home. The three groups of Reinlaender people – located in Manitoba’s West Reserve, and in settlements in Swift Current and Hague-Osler, Saskatchewan – struggled to maintain unity among themselves and solidarity within their respective communities. In some cases, the delegates were not of the same mind about the viability of the land they viewed, nor the trustworthiness of the promises offered by officials in the respective countries that they visited. In other cases, only delegates from two of the three reserves were able to go. This left their Aeltesters (bishops) and ministers with the task of maintaining and consolidating an enthusiasm for leaving Canada. It is easy to imagine the discussion among neighbours and family members as to whether to stay or go, and if to go, when would be the best time to sell their land and belongings. It didn’t help that during all this time they had to run their farms and live with the ongoing pressure from the government to send their children to school.

It was Mexico that finally offered the Mennonites a glimmer of hope. In 1920 President Álvaro Obregón gave the delegation from Manitoba and Saskatchewan an audience. Having just emerged the victor from a revolution, President Obregón saw the potential immigration of the Mennonite settlers as a welcome development for the government of Mexico. He guaranteed their freedom from military service, the right to establish their own schools, and the right to run their own economic institutions.⁶ Once more the Reinlaender Mennonites successfully negotiated a Privilegium; the Mexican president and his minister of agriculture approved and signed the document on March 1, 1921.⁷

Challenge of Emigration

After more than a year of searching and after various possibilities had failed, the delegates and Old Colony leaders had become quite discouraged. It is no surprise then that when they finally found an open door in Mexico the delegates were relieved and excited. Their enthusiasm was short-lived, however, as on arrival back home they realized that migrating would mean leaving well developed villages and the growing prosperity that had been their experience in Canada. It remained for the Aeltester and other community leaders to convince their people that they should move. What had seemed to the delegates like such an obvious leading of God in Mexico now came up against the stark reality of giving up farms, friendships, and economic certainty, and all for what? Not surprisingly, Aeltester Abram Wiebe and the other ministers framed the decision to move as a matter of being faithful to God and to the baptismal vows they had made. The Aeltester in Manitoba, Johann Friesen, “challenged the people to accept anew the tribulations required of all people. . . . Suffering . . . was necessary for the testing and refining of the church.”⁸

The next step proved to be particularly difficult and confusing for the Mennonites on the SCMR who had committed themselves to leaving. All those who wanted to migrate needed to sell their land; unfortunately, putting all that land up for sale at once would flood the market, depressing the prices. An unexpected opportunity arose that appeared to promise a financial rescue. A Florida company offered to buy 107,000 acres of their land for five million dollars and the leaders of the SCMR struck the deal.⁹ Unfortunately, the landholding company was unable to secure the money, which in turn resulted in legal action on behalf of the SCMR to recover money that had been given as a deposit to the law firm acting as their agents. They lost the court case and had to “forfeit 10,200 acres of land in lieu of a settlement of $222,000 and court costs.”¹⁰ With the joint sale for all the farms now impossible, every family had to sell their own land.

The whole process of finding a real estate company that was willing to buy all the land of those who wanted to emigrate to Mexico, then having that company fail and finally losing the court case to recoup their money, had left the would-be immigrants disappointed. It proved to be a difficult and trying time for many. Some left for Mexico unable to sell their land; others had implements and tools that they had also hoped to sell. In both cases the ones who were emigrating gave the responsibility of selling these items or land over to neighbours and relatives.¹¹

Emigration at Last

Frank Peters, a resident of the village of Rhineland on the SCMR, kept careful notes as to the migration details; his records indicate that from 1922 to 1927 thirteen trains left from Swift Current transporting 1,892 of the Old Colony people from Saskatchewan to Mexico.¹² This represented 37% of the total population of the community.¹³ According to Peters, the first two trains carrying Mennonite passengers and their goods to Mexico left in March of 1922 and included 470 people. The eight-day trip ended at the cattle station in San Antonio de los Arenales (now called Cuauhtémoc) in the Mexican province of Chihuahua.¹⁴ Over the next five years (1923–1927) eleven more trains left Swift Current, with the final one leaving on March 1, 1927, carrying 62 people.

The emigration process was a mixture of confusion for those who felt swept up by the encouraging words of the Aeltester and at the same time felt fearful about what Mexico might be like or how they might make a living there. The major land sale fiasco, in which the Swift Current group was involved, was still in litigation when the first group of emigrants boarded the trains for Mexico. For some, not having sold their land or having had time to settle all their affairs added to the stress of moving.

The book Patchwork of Memories, the local history of the communities in the area around Swift Current, has very little detailed information about the move to Mexico itself or about the first months and years in which the Mennonites attempted to establish homes and farms in the new country. It does include a few pictures of the migrating families beside the railway cars, and one or two family stories mention the Mexican migration in passing. One picture, dated March 9, 1922, shows snow on the ground and people crowded around the railway cars.¹⁵ Several other pictures are similar – people are standing around or moving toward the train. In another picture we see cattle and wagons which are waiting to be loaded.

The Abram Wiens family, who lived on land seven miles southeast of Wymark and on whose land the village of Hochstadt stood, recalled: “In 1924 all the residents except us moved to Mexico.”¹⁶ They say nothing else about the details of the move. The writer of a short history of Wymark states that in 1921 two trains “with 25 carloads of settlers and their belongings” left for Mexico.¹⁷ (Probably it was in 1922, as there is no other record of Mennonites moving to Mexico prior to that year.)

Perhaps it is not surprising that so few stories about the Mexican migration or the first years there are told in Patchwork. After all, the ones who stayed in Saskatchewan are the ones who wrote the family histories for the book. Harry Leonard Sawatzky details those early years in Mexico in his book They Sought a Country. He makes it clear that the transition was very difficult. It was, however, not the political interference of the Mexican government that created those challenges. The major problems rose from unfamiliarity with the land and how best to farm it; the new immigrants also had to adjust to lack of adequate rain for their crops. There was a decided lack of infrastructure in the area of Mexico where they had settled and, to top it all, there was harassment and sometimes violence that came at the hands of some agraristas – ranchers who had no title to land but who, prior to the arrival of the Mennonites, had run their cattle on the land that the Mennonites now occupied.¹⁸

Family Relationships

The emigration of one-third of the Reinlaender population from the SCMR deeply affected those members of the reserve who stayed. Many no doubt agreed that the measures the government imposed regarding English schools and the ways it had enforced those measures were unfair, unreasonable, and even unjust. Certainly the government’s posture and action toward the various Mennonite churches and their congregants appeared to be contrary to the Privilegium. But other individuals and families in the community were less sure that their own leaders should have been as intransigent as they were throughout the process.

There were human costs involved. Siblings were divided over the issue of emigration as were adult children and their parents. My maternal grandparents, Wilhelm and Katharina Rempel, are an example of a family that stayed in Saskatchewan and struggled with the departure of siblings and parents. They lived in Rosenhof from the time of their marriage in March of 1917. In Wilhelm’s family only he and his younger brother Jacob, who lived in Blumenort, Manitoba, decided not to go to Mexico; his parents and all his other siblings emigrated. In Katharina’s family it was only her older brother Bernhard Rempel (b. 1885) and his wife Maria (Teichroeb), besides herself, who stayed in Canada. Her parents and the rest of her siblings – many of whom lived in nearby Rhineland, Saskatchewan – moved to Mexico in 1923. And while I do not know in what ways or how stridently Wilhelm’s own parents pressured him to move or take sides in the schooling debate, there is evidence of the difference in opinion between him and Katharina’s father. In a letter Wilhelm received from his father-in-law, Bernhard Rempel (b. 1860), in October of 1929, Bernhard writes this: “Recently we have received two letters from you, one from September 12 and the other September 30. Yes the letters from there are very valuable, but if you should come here it would give us even greater joy. Your brother Joh. Rempel recently said to me that he had been in Canada too long, and you have been there for several years. We greatly pity you, and your children are receiving a great loss through the worldly schools. The scriptures say that when the prophecy is completed, the nation becomes wild and desolate. You write in your letter that if Paul should travel through the congregations, he would have to say to you, as he once wrote to the Galatians: ‘You have begun in the Spirit, do you want to finish in the flesh?’

“Yes, there are people here who write to you, if they had not already moved here, they would not do so now. When we began the emigration, we all thought unanimously, that we could no longer stay there because of the worldly schools, but now it seems that the worldly schools are no longer a hindrance; but it is written in the scriptures, that if one knows the scriptures from childhood, it can lead to salvation. But when children instead of the scriptures learn the worldly caricatures in worldly schools, it cannot lead to salvation, and when they have completed learning, they are no longer valuable to Mennonitism. They are wild children, and who is to blame for that? The door has been opened for us to flee.”

If Bernhard Rempel was this critical of his daughter and son-in-law’s decision to stay in Canada six years after his emigration to Mexico, what had he been like prior to this, that is in 1921 and 1922 when the villagers of Rosenhof and Rhineland were debating the move? It is not hard to imagine that there were some pointed discussions in at least some of their exchanges during those years. Was the same tension present in many other families in the area? Again it seems safe to assume this was the case. Although no overt tension is mentioned, the Abram Giesbrecht family who lived in the Highfield (Hochfeld) area was split on moving to Mexico; several of the oldest ones stayed behind while their parents and the younger ones emigrated in 1925.¹⁹ Not everyone in the Peter Janzen family wanted to move to Mexico either, as their family story says: “Some of us older children were not in favour of going to Mexico. A couple of us said we would go only to see how things were and then turn around and come back again.”²⁰

Starting the whole pioneering process again in another country did not appeal to many families on the SCMR, certainly not those who were relatively young and had children. They also may have, like my grandparents, just started their farming operations or were seeing them nicely develop. Then too there is some indication from what these grandparents valued in later life that there was a reticence to emigrate for another reason. Both sets of my grandparents had a view of education and of the world which was somewhat different from the view held by the church leaders who had promoted the move to Mexico. They were less afraid of English schools or more confident that they could adapt to or modify the demands of the provincial government.

Bernhard Rempel (b. 1885) obviously felt the same as his brother-in-law Wilhelm Rempel did for he too refused to leave. Unfortunately for Bernhard, he was caught in the fallout from the failure of the land deal with the Florida entrepreneurs. His land was part of the court settlement. He and his family were able to live on it for a few years, but eventually Bernhard and Maria lost their farmland, their farm buildings, and were unable even to harvest their final crop. Bernhard hired a lawyer to fight their case but even he was unable to facilitate the return of the land and farmyard for them. In the end they moved, first to the village of Rhineland and then in 1927 to a rented farm in the village of Hamburg.²¹

No More Reinlaender

The Reinlaender Mennonites who remained on the SCMR felt leaderless because among those who went to Mexico were Aeltester Wiebe, all the church ministers except one, and many of the families who had created stability in the community and on the reserve. The Aeltester took with him the church records – a tangible and powerful symbol that their church community (Gemeinde) was no longer on the Swift Current Reserve in Saskatchewan. The one service that the church leaders who were now in Mexico provided to the Mennonites on the reserve – presumably to those who intended to migrate later – was a twice-yearly visit to Swift Current by some of their ministers for the sake of baptismal instruction, baptisms, communion, and a thanksgiving service. But after the last train left for Mexico in 1927 these visits ended, and those who remained on the reserve were on their own when it came to spiritual nurture.²²

The message that the Aeltester clearly communicated to those who refused to join the migration to Mexico was this: you are being influenced by the world and are not maintaining a true faith. Other leaders and ministers supported the Aeltester’s ruling; that is, families who planned to stay would no longer be part of the Gemeinde, in fact, no longer part of the true church. Perhaps being told that they were being disobedient to God’s will created an even deeper wound. Some who remained struggled with a sense of guilt and uncertainty as to matters of faith; the impact on the spiritual life of those who stayed was significant.

My own paternal grandparents’ struggle with the loss of the Reinlaender Church perhaps typifies the confusion and uncertainty experienced by those who felt their church had abandoned them and shamed them in the process. During the years when there was no church in Rosenhof (approximately 1924–29) my grandfather Jacob J. Friesen and his wife Justina (Wiebe) would on some Sundays gather their family together and lead them in a short service, sing some well-known hymns, and then most likely read a sermon. It wasn’t until their oldest son Jacob W. Friesen was to be married to Eva Martens in 1929 that Jacob Sr. and Justina joined the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church which had come to take the place of the Reinlaender Church that had functioned in Rosenhof from its beginning.

Other villagers on the SCMR for whom regular worship in a church was important were in a similar quandary as the Friesens. So much had changed: neighbours were gone, land nearby was changing hands, families were grieving the loss of their siblings or parents, and churches were no longer there to provide direction and stability. Gathering as Reinlaender congregants, without ministers, was not an option. For at least a half-dozen years there were limited community church services on the reserve.

It was only in the late 1920s that those who wanted to worship God and receive the spiritual nurture that church services could provide looked to the one other Gemeinde in the area that had church services similar in style and format to their own – the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church (SMC). A few of the villages invited the ministers of this church to conduct services in their communities. The historical records that describe the work and ministry of the SMC during this period of transition do not suggest that there was an overall plan on the part of the SMC’s ministers to take over the Reinlaender church buildings on the reserve and install their own ministers. The evidence suggests rather that they responded to invitations from the villagers and that even this happened on an ad hoc basis.

In Patchwork of Memories a few of the village and family histories speak about the loss of the Reinlaender Church and the formation of Sommerfelder congregations. Jacob and Susanna Knelsen, for example, lived in the village of Chortitz, Saskatchewan, and in their family’s story they recall that there were no church services for a number of years after the Reinlaender people left for Mexico. The Chortitz village’s history states: “The remaining people here then asked the Sommerfelder Mennonite ministers, Reverend Peter Dyck and Reverend Abraham Peters of Dunelm, to come and serve them.”²³

Economic Changes

In addition to the psychological, spiritual, and emotional pain experienced by those who stayed in Canada, there were economic effects as well, particularly related to land ownership. The family stories written by those who lived on the reserve after the migration indicate that some purchased farms from those who moved to Mexico. Philip Lang, for example, bought land from Jacob Hiebert of Reinfeld.²⁴ Diedrich Dyck took over his father’s homestead near Blumenhof when the family moved to Mexico in 1922.²⁵ Similarly, Abram and Gertrude Heinrichs purchased land in the McMahon area from his sister and brother-in-law who had moved to Mexico, and Jacob Schlamp bought Jacob Klassen’s house in Rhineland and the farmyard that lay just west of the village itself.²⁶ The writer of the Iris School District’s history remarks: “Many of the Old Colony Mennonites [Reinlaender] decided to move to Mexico from 1922–1927 because of religious reasons so they sold their homesteads. The land was excellent for grain farming so it was quickly purchased by new families.”²⁷ Part of the reason for the quick sales was that the sellers, who were already in Mexico, were usually quite desperate to sell and were in no position to hold out for a higher price.²⁸

One other change on the reserve was the influx of new families who wanted to farm the land. Ironically many of these were also Mennonites and often referred to as the Russlaender. They were the ones who were arriving in Canada from the Soviet Union at the same time as the Reinlaender members were moving to Mexico. Some of these new arrivals were eager to farm and took the opportunity presented by those who wanted to and probably needed to sell their farms.

Abram Hiebert tells the story of his father Kornelius who came to Canada from the Soviet Union and, at the age of fifty-nine, “started farming six miles northwest of Neville.”²⁹ Abram and Elizabeth Froese came to Canada from Soviet Ukraine in 1923 and two years later moved to Reinfeld where they leased and farmed the Peters’ farm, which presumably became available after the migration to Mexico.³⁰ Also in the same district were Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Pauls, who had come from the Soviet Union in 1924 and moved to a farm in or near Reinfeld.³¹ Justina Wernicke tells the story of her parents (Mr. and Mrs. Ben Kehler) who came from the Soviet Union in 1926 and moved to Schoenfeld, where they began to farm.³² The arrival of these Mennonites was not always a happy occasion though. Elizabeth (Olfert) Wall tells the story of her parents Abram and Maria Olfert, who had rented land in the Highfield area. Their landlord sold his land to some Mennonites from the Soviet Union rather than offering it to her parents.³³

The emigration to Mexico brought upheaval to the Mennonites who remained on the SCMR. For some like my grandparents it was a time when they experienced both the loss of family and the loss of a church community; they felt this loss for many years. For individuals such as Bernhard Rempel (b. 1885) it was the loss of his land that no doubt left the most bitter taste in his mouth. There were those who surely missed their neighbours, friends, and family members from whom they heard perhaps only occasionally. Moreover, among those who stayed there was a feeling of uneasiness if not guilt – a feeling that the church leaders, who believed emigrating to Mexico was the will of God, had planted in their minds and hearts.

The stories that Patchwork of Memories includes are by and about the families who did not move to Mexico. Nevertheless, several of the stories speak about the direct impact emigration had on their lives for these were families that returned after having lived in Mexico for a year or more. The Pete Giesbrecht family, for example, moved to Mexico in 1926 and returned in 1928 “flat broke.”³⁴ Johann and Maria Schapansky returned from Mexico in 1923 having gone there the year before.³⁵ John Wiens was sixteen years of age when his family (Isaac and Elizabeth Wiens) moved to Mexico (1923). They returned in 1926 “having traded the farm in Mexico for one of equal value in Reinfeld.”³⁶ Peter and Maria Friesen who lived in Schantzenfeld (near Wymark) moved to Mexico in 1924 but returned the same year.³⁷ Henry and Agatha (Friesen) Froese had been married nine years when they decided to move to Mexico along with her parents in 1927, but ill health forced them to return a short time later.³⁸

Nonetheless there were some positive changes on the reserve following the exodus to Mexico. Those who stayed soon began to send their children to the public schools. Whether it was the absence of someone telling them this was the wrong thing to do or simply the changing attitude of the Reinlaender Mennonite families is hard to say, but it really was not that long before both parents and children started to enjoy all that came from having new teachers and new ideas such as were introduced in the public schools. Many Mennonites on the SCMR began to see learning English as an asset rather than a danger. Some, because of more opportunities to purchase or rent land, enjoyed the opportunity to expand their farming operations and help their children to begin to farm as well.

The Russlaender Mennonites also helped to broaden the community’s horizons as they shared about their former lives and introduced new ideas and skills to the reserve. While not directly related to the loss of family and neighbours to Mexico, those who stayed were able to continue with their farming operations, which by this time were, for the most part, quite well established. Thus there were some good farming years – years when the harvests were good and the prices reasonable. More and more families were able to afford better equipment and improve their lives, that is until the 1930s, but that is another story.

This is an excerpt from Henry Friesen’s new book, The Swift Current Mennonite Reserve, 1904–1927 (2022).

1. Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940: A People’s Struggle for Survival (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1982), 107. ↩︎
2. Delbert F. Plett, ed., Old Colony Mennonites in Canada, 1875 to 2000 (Steinbach, MB: Crossway Publications, 2001), 18. ↩︎
3. For more on the trip to Mexico, see Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 110, and Harry Leonard Sawatzky, They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 31–55. ↩︎
4. Sawatzky, They Sought a Country, 31–49. ↩︎
5. Sawatzky, They Sought a Country, 32. ↩︎
6. Plett, Old Colony Mennonites in Canada, 18. ↩︎
7. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 113. ↩︎
8. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 115. ↩︎
9. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 118. ↩︎
10. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 118, and Adolf Ens, Subjects or Citizens? The Mennonite Experience in Canada, 1870–1925 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1994), 209. ↩︎
11. Sawatzky, They Sought a Country, 49. ↩︎
12. George E. Rempel, Our Story (Aylmer, ON: Mennonite Community Services, 2017), 58–59. ↩︎
13. Ens, Subjects or Citizens, 214. ↩︎
14. Sawatzky, They Sought a Country, 1971, 49, and William Schroeder and Helmut T. Huebert, Mennonite Historical Atlas (Winnipeg: Springfield Publishers, 1990), 146. ↩︎
15. Wymark & District History Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories (Swift Current, SK: Wymark & District History Book Committee, 1985), 35. ↩︎
16. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 1047. ↩︎
17. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 999. ↩︎
18. Sawatzky, They Sought a Country, 67. ↩︎
19. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 776. ↩︎
20. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 293. ↩︎
21. Frank Rempel with Martin M. Culy, About Our Father’s Business: An Autobiography (Winnipeg: Word Alive Press, 2015), 9–10. ↩︎
22. G. Rempel, Our Story, 61. ↩︎
23. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 757. ↩︎
24. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 609. ↩︎
25. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 276. ↩︎
26. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 400, 497. ↩︎
27. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories,569. ↩︎
28. G. Rempel, Our Story, 59. ↩︎
29. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 298. ↩︎
30. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 593. ↩︎
31. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 619. ↩︎
32. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 682. ↩︎
33. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 439. ↩︎
34. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 704–705. ↩︎
35. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 709. ↩︎
36. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 633. ↩︎
37. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 904. ↩︎
38. Book Committee, Patchwork of Memories, 676. ↩︎