Cameron Dueck - Menno Moto: A Journey Across the Americas in Search of My Mennonite Identity

Contents

Menno Moto

A Journey Across the Americas in Search of My Mennonite Identity

Cameron Dueck

Biblioasis

Windsor, Ontario

For Leonard Dueck

mylegendaryfather,

apioneer

andadventurer

Authors Note

T his is a book of non-fiction. The story it tells is true to what my eyes saw, my ears heard, and my mind remembered. Many of the conversations were translated from Plautdietsch to English in my note-taking, and I remained as true to the original meanings as I understood them to be. Some peoples names have been changed or Germanized in order to reduce confusion as there are many Mennonite men named John or Peter, and Loewen is a very common family name. For example, Johann, my great-grandfather, was actually named John W. Dueck. In some cases, such as conversations involving numerous people, I have combined characters. However, when dealing with controversial or strong views, I did my best to attribute them to the people who shared them.

Prologue

T he Mennonites were nearly there.

God has given us a new home in Canada, a place where we can live our own way, undisturbed, without the Russians telling us what to do, Pa said.

Johann, who had to stand on his tiptoes to see over the railing of the ship, nodded. This dream, the utopia they talked about so often, had helped push, pull, and lure them on, for mile after thousands of miles.

What will it be like, Pa?

It will be good. Good farming, a good life, Pa said as he looked at the clearings on the riverbank. Rough wooden cabins surrounded by tethered horses that stamped their hoofs in frustration at the clouds of flies and mosquitoes. Many of the Mennonites on the ship were unable to afford their own land in Russia, and the opportunity to achieve this in Canada, a country newly formed and optimistic in the 1870s, had them beaming. Everyone wanted land. The young men, as soon as they were married, wanted land. Johann wanted land, or at least Pa said he would in a few years time, once he was old enough. Now there would be plenty of rich farmland for all. They could start over, doing things the old way.

But most important of all, you will never have to be a Russian soldier. Pa tousled Johanns light brown hair, but his eyes did not stop roving the riverbank.

Russia was thousands of miles behind them now, but the fear was still close, like the soot the trains and ships of their journey had spewed into the sky, which clung to them and besmirched their clothing long after theyd disembarked. Fear that the Russians would take away their way of life along the Molochna River and shut their small village schools. Fear that the Russian language would replace the flat guttural Plautdietsch they spoke at home, and the proper German that the preachers and teachers used. And that, once they spoke Russian, the young boys would be marched off to war, wearing those horrible uniforms, carrying guns, as dictated by the new laws introduced a few years earlier. The slow peaceful farm life that had become synonymous with Russias Mennonites had come to an end.

So Pa sold everythingthe horses, the machinery, the entire farmcheap to those who were staying in Russia. Everything except the bedding, a few small pieces of furniture, and a change of clothes for each family member. Pas mouth still tightened into a pointed, bitter pout when he thought about it. All those years of work, building up the farm, to have to give it all up because Russia had broken its promise to the Mennonites.

It had taken them two months of trains and ships and waiting and transfers. The toasted zwieback theyd brought were almost gone, and the few rolls that were left had gone stale. Every morning Johann ate one of the zwieback, sometimes with a dab of butter.

Its the last bit, were almost there, Pa reassured Mutta. Just a little bit farther.

Then the real work will start, Mutta said. She was exhausted. Heinrich, their sickly toddler, had spent much of the last few months in her lap, listless and becoming weaker every day. And Johann noticed Muttas lap had become smaller as her belly had become larger over the course of the journeyanother child was on its way. But now they were on the last part of the journey. The International was a flat-bottomed, double-decked sternwheeler with grubby white topsides and two tall, blackened smokestacks. They had boarded the ship in the United States and sailed down the Red River, into Canada.

The riverbanks were a tangle of green forest that leaned in on the narrow river. The branches scraped and slapped and tickled across the steamboat, robbing one man of his hat as they chugged northward. Elms, oaks, maples, and poplars crept to the rivers edge and kissed above the water. But the better the shade, the bigger the mosquitoes. Theyd known mosquitoes in Russia, but not this big, not this thirsty. The men waved their hats, the women slapped at fleshy backs, and the children scratched until they bled. It would be a good story, another one about Mennonite perseverance that they could tell during the long evenings on their new farms.

The dark-skinned, long-haired crew of the ship spat out their curses in a babble of tongues. Several wore beaded leather thongs in their hair. Some of them wore buckskin shirts and smelled of campfire smoke and life in the woods.

Theyre those Indians, the ones we heard about, Pa said when Mutta asked if he was sure they were in good hands. The agents who had arranged their passage, patching together ship-to-train-to-carriage-to-riverboat, had told them about the Indians who lived on the land. Their land.

Theyre no good at farming, I heard, Pa said.

One of the Indians wore a red sash around his waist and winked at Johann when he caught him staring. They had a reckless, can-do air about them that made Johann want to copy them and spit tobacco juice over the railing and laugh, open throated, like these weltmensch.

Johann, Pa called. Those are not our people. You stay here, with the rest of us.

In the afternoon of the third day Johann was on the forward deck when the International slowed, stopped, and its great dripping wheel went into reverse. The ship crab-crawled across the current towards a muddy bank. A smaller river joined the Red River right where the helmsman was aiming the International. This was Canada, the place theyd talked about for two years, where the Queen had promised the Mennonites land and peace and freedom. There was no dock or town, just a break in the trees. Then, through the trees, on a slight rise, Johann saw wagons and horses, stacks of gleaming raw lumber. Several long, low buildings that shone with newness. And on the riverbank, where the earth had been torn by trampling horses, a group of men, shirtsleeves rolled up, muddy to their knees, waving their hats.

The ship listed to starboard as more than three hundred silent Mennonites pressed against the railing for a glimpse of their new land. Hours earlier, as they passed a few open fields and signs of development, the men had eagerly taken note of the greenness of the pasture, the thickness of the oak trees. Now they silently stood along the rail and nervously cleared their throats as they stared at the riverbank.

Long warps were run out and wrapped around the tree trunks. A gangplank landed just short of the shore with a splash. The young men leapt across the muddy gap onto the bank. Extra planks were found and tied together with a few logs to reach dry land.