The Dream

We got to the marina at six in the morning. The pilot of the float plane met us and checked us in.

“Klassen and Derksen, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Heading way up north today, I see.”

“Fort Hall Lake, near the Territories – here’s the GPS.”

“Well, let’s get your canoe tied to the floats, and then we’ll be off. It’s a long ride.”

“Almost eleven hundred clicks.”

“Don’t forget your paddles. You wouldn’t want to be up the creek . . .”

“Without a paddle.”

We flew over millions of trees and many hundreds of lakes until we finally got there. We quickly made camp on the abandoned site of Fort Hall, probably once a fur-trading station.

After breakfast the next morning we set off toward the south until we found the mouth of a small creek on the east shore of the lake. We followed the creek for an hour or two into Agerbak Lake and then followed another short creek and there it was – Klassen Lake, a small heart-shaped lake surrounded by black spruce.

It was named after Dietrich V. Klassen from Myrtle, Manitoba, a member of the Princess Pats Light Infantry who died in the Second World War in 1943 in Sicily. The Allies did a pre-D-Day landing in July of 1943 on the island of Sicily and then they moved up the boot of Italy. It was a costly and tragic battle. The British and Canadians suffered 14,932 casualties: 2,938 killed, 9,212 wounded, and 2,782 missing. The Italians and Germans lost more than twice as many.

We took some pictures and did some fishing, thinking of the young Mennonite boy who gave his life for the country at the age of twenty. His parents were Gerhard and Anna. He was their fourth of seven children. Dietrich was buried in Agira, Sicily.

The next day we found another small creek with enough water for the canoe and shortly found ourselves in Derksen Lake, named after Jacob Derksen from Morden, a member of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, who was also twenty when he died, near the end of the war. His parents were Aron and Anna, and he was the seventh of ten children. He is buried in Groesbeek, in the Netherlands.

We wondered how these young men ended up in the military and how they felt about it.

Then I woke up.

Manitoba’s Memorial Lakes

During the last ice age, a massive ice sheet covered what is now Manitoba. When it retreated and melted, many small lakes were left behind. Most of these thousands of lakes have not been named.

At the end of the Second World War, the Geographic Board of Canada started a program to officially name lakes, bays, and islands in honour of the fallen. In Manitoba, this project was completed in 1995; subsequently, names of casualties from the Korean War, Afghanistan, and UN peacekeeping missions were added. More than 4,200 soldiers were honoured. A volume published by the province provides biographical details and identifies the geographical features named after the war dead.¹

Among the war dead were about fifty who possibly had a connection to the Mennonite community. These men were identified by their Mennonite last names, addresses, and inclusion in the Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry (GRanDMA).² Doubtless some have been mistakenly thought to have Mennonite connections, and some Mennonites may have been missed.

Our table of lakes, bays, and islands named for men with a probable connection to the Mennonite community contains forty-nine entries. Family data were taken from GRanDMA, the Canadian Virtual War Memorial (CVWM), and from cemetery websites. The CVWM website may be consulted for cemetery locations; many of its entries also have photographs of the soldiers.

Many of the memorial lakes named for Mennonites are found in the extreme northwest corner of the province. The map shows the locations and shapes of thirteen of them. The area is within Treaty 5 territory, in the homeland of the Dene Nation.³ The other sites are scattered throughout the province, but most are in the north. They can be found with Google Earth.

Historically, Mennonites have been known as pacifists, although there have been times when some within the community have taken up arms. When thousands of Mennonites immigrated to Manitoba in the 1870s, their first concern was exemption from military service. The letter of guarantees they obtained from the government of Canada, which they called their Privilegium, listed fifteen “privileges” granted to the immigrants, military exemption being the first.

Why, then, did Mennonite men enlist in the military? The answer is complicated and has been addressed elsewhere. Many enlisted because they felt it was their patriotic duty, and they were attracted to the prospect of adventure. In the “Mennonite” village of Steinbach and its surroundings,117 served, most of them voluntarily.⁴

The National Resources Mobilization Act of 1940 authorized the national registration of all individuals over the age of sixteen and the conscription of men for home defence. A plebiscite in April 1942 released the government from its promise not to require overseas service, and a November 1944 order authorized the transfer of conscripts overseas.

Descendants of the 1870s Mennonite immigrants to Manitoba were entitled to the military exemption promised by the Privilegium, but other Mennonites had to seek exemption under the category of conscientious objector (CO). However, members of both groups, in Manitoba and the other western provinces, first had to convince the mobilization board of the sincerity of their beliefs. If they failed their examination, they were ordered to undergo military training; those who refused faced jail time.

A major effort to document the stories of men who went to war was made by Ron Friesen in his 2006 book When Canada Called.⁵ He tells the stories of George R. Barkman, David H. Hiebert, Peter N. Sawatzky, Frank Giesbrecht, Jacob Klippenstein, Nicholas Peters, Leonard S. Dueck, Louis Scharein, and John Krawchuk. The book also tells the stories of men who were conscientious objectors. These are extended narratives providing family history and records of enlistment, embarkation, final battles, and awards.

The examples of Jacob Patkau, a medic in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, and Nicholas Peters, a navigator in the No. 214 Squadron, give us insight into the experiences of Mennonites who went to war.

The Jacob Patkau Letter

The following was published in the Mennonitische Rundschau on February 7, 1945.

While our pain hardly allows us to speak about it, as there are friends who are anxious to hear about it, I will relate how it all happened.

Jacob was drafted and taken to court on account of his nonresistant belief, where he was not recognized as a CO because he was not (yet) baptized. He was not content with this and did not turn himself in. So he was imprisoned. He was treated very well there. Upon release, he was taken to the recruitment office. There they presented him with active service papers and urged him to sign them. He was to sign them quickly. After this, they told him what he had done. He wasn’t pleased with this and would not rest until he was in the Red Cross. He had a good Grade 11 education, so he was able to receive good training in treating the sick. He also mastered the French language and the use of a typewriter. He was in training for six months before being sent overseas. There another attempt was made to get him to accept active service, but he refused. What followed was not so easy; he was tormented very badly. Still, his prayer was that the Lord might open their eyes. When he was sent over, he sent us a telegram. It said, “God be with you, till we meet again.” There was nothing we could do except to pray for him. He wrote saying he could feel we were praying for him. Then, writing from France, he said he was physically well and spiritually happy, having entrusted himself fully to the Lord. He was working in an ambulance. They had driven to a town for the night, and at about eleven o’clock, the town was attacked by enemy planes and he was wounded. It was the 25th of August, and on the 26th he died. We have received many letters of condolence from the government and from friends and relatives as well as from the King and Queen in his own handwriting and from his commanding officer, who wrote that he had many friends among the soldiers. He wrote that he had done all his work well, that he had completed his work on earth and that the Lord needs him above, that he wished all his soldiers were like him, and that we were fortunate to have such a son. Those were the words of his superior.

Jacob lived to be twenty-four years and nineteen days. We grieve for him as he was a great support to us and gave us much joy and was a great blessing in our home.

We held his funeral on the 9th of September. It was a solemn ceremony for us and for our young people. We were much comforted by our friends and our ministers. Rev. H. Janzen spoke from the text “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones.” He told how Jacob had been a blessing to the youth and a great support in singing. Rev. H. Olfert spoke on the text of Luke 7:11–17. He stressed the words of comfort that the Lord spoke, “Weep not.” By God’s grace I was able to speak about Revelation 21:3–4. It is our assurance that, after these days, God will wipe away all tears. We know that we will see him again. We rejoice now that we will see him again, yet this joy will be shared by our Saviour.

From his grieving parents and relatives,

Jacob and Liese Pätkau
McCreary, Manitoba⁶

The Nicholas Peters Story

Nicholas Peters’s family emigrated from the Soviet Union to Canada in 1925.⁷ He was ten years old at the time and spoke German and Russian. As he grew up, he developed many skills in farming, mining, and aviation. After starting a career in the aircraft industry and his marriage to Emma Tustian, Nicholas enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and became a navigator.

On March 7, 1945, Nicholas was part of a crew of ten in a Boeing B-17. After a successful bombing run to Hamburg, they were returning home to England when they were targeted by a German night fighter. The fighter attacked and destroyed the airplane. Five of the crew bailed out and survived, and five, including Nicholas, went down with the plane. His body was eventually identified and buried in the cemetery at Soltau, Germany. He left behind his grieving widow, who requested that tulips be planted on his grave instead of poppies, in honour of his Dutch origins. The government refused the request for practical reasons but affirmed her intentions.

Nicholas left behind a collection of poetry titled Another Morn, which includes the following poem.⁸

The Wars We Make

I gaze into the world with sorrowing eyes
And see the wide-abounding fruits of hate.
We fight, we say, for peace, and find
The wars we make
To be a spring of hate and source of future war.

Is there no peace for man?
No hope that this accursed flow
Of blood may cease?
Is this our destiny: to kill and maim
For peace?
Or is this ‘peace’ we strive to gain
A thin, unholy masquerade
Which, when our pride, our greed,
our gain is touched too far,
Is shed, and stands uncovered, what we are?

Show me your light, O God
That I may fight for peace with peace
And not with war;
To prove my love with love,
And hate no more!

They were mostly young men – many of them boys. They were like the lakes that were dedicated to them – fresh and beautiful, inspiring pride and joy. If only they could have heard the loon call over the lake at dusk and seen the deer sipping at the shore. If only they could have seen the Milky Way above without the boom of artillery. Lost to war, their northern lakes hold a peace they would never know again.

Following a career teaching biblical and religious studies at Tabor College, Kansas, and elsewhere, Harold Dyck has applied himself to family and Mennonite historical research and mapmaking. Glen Klassen is a retired biology professor, co-author of the Historical Atlas of the East Reserve, and author of Hope, Healing and Community: Celebrating 50 Years of Eden.

1. Gerald F. Holm and Anthony P. Buchner, eds., A Place of Honour: Manitoba’s War Dead Commemorated in Its Geography, 2nd ed. (Manitoba Geographical Names Program, 2005). ↩︎
2. Much of the GRanDMA research was conducted by Al Hamm. ↩︎
3. Canadian Geographic Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada, vol. 1 (Ottawa: Royal Canadian Geographic Society, 2018), 42–43. ↩︎
4. Abe Warkentin, Reflections on Our Heritage: A History of Steinbach and the R.M. of Hanover from 1874 (Steinbach, MB: Derksen Printers, 1971), 286. ↩︎
5. Ronald Friesen, When Canada Called: Manitoba Mennonites and World War II (pub. by the author, 2006). ↩︎
6. Translated from German by Harold Dyck. ↩︎
7. Friesen, When Canada Called, 289–307. ↩︎
8. Marguerite Peters, comp., Another Morn: Poems of Nicholas Peters (pub. by the compiler, n.d.), 58. ↩︎