125^th Manitoba Mennonite Anniversary

Celebration Plans

Jacob H. Dyck Family Reunion at Altona Centennial Park in 2000. Contacts: Art K. Dyck, chair; Melvin Klassen, secretary - both Altona.

Hoeppner, Bergen, Wiebe and Dyck families are making reunion plans for the summer at Steinbach, Gretna, Otterburne and Altona respectively.

Manitoba Sunflower Festival in Altona July 28 - 30^th. They have already arranged with local people for opening of the AltBergthal School for the day. The heritage demonstration includes threshing, but also cutting, and a woodwork - pre power tools - demonstration, and much more. The heritage event is set for four hours Sat. afternoon, following the forenoon parade.

Marking 125 years

The Mennonite people, coming to Manitoba in 1874, settled on the East Reserve on land the federal government had allocated for a settlement by Mennonites who were coming here from the Ukraine of Russia to establish homes and villages in the Niverville area.

Hundreds came landing where the Rat and Red Rivers meet, making their way across bush and grasslands to the Jacob Y. Shantz immigration sheds near Niverville. They were a farming people and quickly took up homesteads and began to clear the land for crops in spring.

In 1999 Mennonites east of the Red and in Winnipeg marked the 125th anniversary of their arrival in Manitoba with summer celebrations at the Forks and in Steinbach. They had come to build homes, and farm in a country which guaranteed them basic religious freedoms.

Communities in the former West Reserve (WR) of southern Manitoba are now going into high gear on its 125th anniversary planning for the year 2000. Hoeppner, Bergen, Wiebe and Dyck families are planning reunions this summer at Steinbach, Gretna, Otterburne and Altona.

Tentative plans are for a community homecoming on the July 1 weekend at Neubergthal, a WR Mennonite village here which has been designated as a national historic site. It has been recognized as a distinctive form of group agricultural settlement known as a Mennonite street village, and Parks Canada will be erecting a plaque in the village this summer.

Neubergthal was one of over a hundred street villages in southern Manitoba founded by Mennonites from the Ukraine in south Russia, the first of many large groups recruited to settle the western prairies. According to oral tradition, the village was established in 1876.

Altona and Winkler have both created new heritage societies, and Plum Coulee has recently upgraded its museum. A group of 18 community representatives met at the Winkler Senior Centre in October. It was observed that both Plum Coulee and Winkler are looking at centennial celebrations a few years down the road.

A celebration of Mennonite art - a special anniversary photo exhibit - at Morden in November was an early kick-off for 125th anniversary celebrations. It featured early scenes of life in the West Reserve, and special aspects of two communities, Reinland and Neubergthal.

Other ideas for 2000 being tossed around include a landing re-enactment of the first Mennonites landing at Fort Dufferin, West Lynne on July 14, 1875, the publication of a West Reserve historical insert for local papers, and the possible erection of a memorial for Aeltester Johann Wiebe of the former Reinlaender Mennoniten Gemeinde.

They travelled from eastern Canada west on the Great Lakes to Duluth, and then to Moorhead/Fargo where they took a ship going north on the Red River. Days after their arrival, a brotherhood meeting confirmed Johann Wiebe as Aeltester of a church, later referred to as the Old Colony Church.

The first villages were established in the Reinland to Winkler area. A few years later to about 1880 more villages were established on the eastern part of the reserve. As in the east reserve, there were mosquitoes, swamps, but less bush land, and many thought, better soil.

There is much more to this story. It all happened 125 years ago, but is part of what we are and do today. It is good to remember foundations, since we continue to build on them.

Elmer Heinrichs