The Mennonites: A Pictorial History of Their Lives in Canada

T.D. Regehr is a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan and
the author of For Everything a Season: A History of the Alexanderkrone
Zentralschule and Mennonites in Canada, Volume 3, 1939-1970.

This work, in the words of its author, is “a general interest,
nonscholarly introduction to the history of one of the world’s most
singular people.” It is divided into two parts.

The first half of the book is a brief chronological overview of the
Mennonite experience in Canada. It begins with a short discussion of the
origins of the Mennonite people, but moves very quickly to descriptions
and pictures of rural Mennonite community and church life in Canada. The
impact of the two world wars and of the 1930s depression receives
considerable attention, and there is a fairly extensive treatment of the
Mennonite experience in Canada after 1950.

The broadly chronological section is followed by a series of
“photographic essays,” each dealing with a specific theme or aspect
of Canadian Mennonite history. Mennonite farms, families, communities,
relief activities and charities, the arts, businesses, and, finally,
Mennonite faces yesterday and today, are the subjects of these
photographic essays.

The photographs document the everyday life of ordinary Mennonites at
various times and in various places in Canadian history. There are very
few formal or official photographs of leaders or of important or
impressive churches and institutions. The focus is very obviously and
deliberately on ordinary Mennonite people. There are certainly some
pictures of Amish and Old Order people with their horses and buggies,
and the dust jacket depicts an old-fashioned Ontario Mennonite
barn-building bee. But there are also many other pictures of Canadian
Mennonites who have become integrated into Canadian society.

The short written chapters accompanying the photographic materials are
drawn mainly from well-known sources. The work and interpretations of
Frank H. Epp, Mennonite historian, and of E.K. Francis, an American
sociologist who did a major study of the Mennonites of southern
Manitoba, are used extensively. The work is not based on new research in
primary sources, and it does not offer important new insights or
interpretations. It is a carefully compiled and attractively produced
introduction to the Mennonites of Canada.