This story tells the recent history of so-called ‘horse and buggy’ Mennonites who live in Canada today or are linked to Canada by ancestry. The story is one of contrasts: of Old Order Mennonites in Canada who have confronted modernity by hunkering down in a highly developed country; and Old Colony Mennonites of Canadian ancestry who have done so by scattering throughout Central and South America, especially to places in southern Mexico and eastern Bolivia. Both groups are obscure. Neither has received the scholarly attention of the more numerous and now iconic Amish (mostly of the United States) have, nor gained the affection of modern media. This paper tells the story of these highly reclusive people by listening to them, reporting on approximately 250 interviews conduced between 2009 and 2012 in about 25 communities in five countries. It recounts their anti-modern ways, their pre-modern cosmologies, their communitarian ways, their inefficient economies, shameless fertility rate, and simple stubbornness. But it makes a case why, within the wider scheme of things, their very existence adds richness to global discourses. Their sense of history, simple ways, closeness to nature, and contestation of consumer culture, is a story worth telling. And who knows, perhaps aspects of their maddeningly primitive communities may one day hold the key to our own survival.
12 November 2013
Royden Loewen is Chair in Mennonite Studies, Professor of History, University of Winnipeg, Canada.
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