Mennonite Practices

Originating from Germany and moving to Russia, Mennonites were one of the many denominations that splintered from the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

An influential religious leader by the name of Menno Simons, a Catholic priest in the northern part of Germany and the Netherlands, had expressed his doubts about infant baptism and believed that baptism should be a choice made by adults. He left his priesthood and became the leader of a group of Anabaptists, who first became known as “Mennists” before finally being referred to as Mennonites. Voluntary baptism was not the only difference between Mennonites and other Christian-based religious sects. Mennonites practiced pacifism and chose to be somewhat closed off from the rest of the population. Mennonite settlements were farms and were primarily self-sufficient. This set them apart from some of the other religious sects as they saw themselves as a culture in addition to being a religious denomination.1

The Journey to Yarrow

The Lumsden Ranch in Vedder c. 1890.2

During the interwar years, many Russian Mennonites immigrated to Canada to escape persecution under the Communist Soviet rule following the Russian Revolution. The Mennonites that decided to leave left because of tension that had predated World War II. The tension was mostly due to the Mennonites not wanting to assimilate. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Mennonites began to lose their sense of security. Russian nationalists saw German-speaking settlers, including Mennonites, as intruders. They began to start attacking them through the press which made the public resent the ethnic Germans, including Mennonites settlers.3

While Mennonites began to settle in North America as early as the 1870s, the first Mennonite settlers in Yarrow date back to 1928. Their community began to grow as families of similar faith began to migrate here from other parts of Canada. At the time, there were approximately 5,000 Mennonites living in British Columbia, with a majority of them choosing to settle in the Fraser Valley.4

The goal of immigrating was to start over and create a self-sufficient settlement, much like the ones Mennonites grew up on5. It was also a chance to escape the resentment and persecution Mennonites were facing in Russia. Unfortunately, the settlers would soon realize that Yarrow would not be as promising as they had thought.

  1. Frank H. Epp and Leo Driedger, “Mennonites,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed March 28, 2023, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mennonites. ↩︎
  2. Leonard N. Neufeldt, Before We Were the Land’s: Yarrow, British Columbia: Mennonite Promise (Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2002).  ↩︎
  3. Neufeldt, Before We Were the Land’.s ↩︎
  4. Neufeldt, Before We Were the Land’s. ↩︎
  5. Neufeldt, Before We Were the Land’s. ↩︎