Mennonites have contributed much to Canada

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This article was published 30/05/2019 (2408 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was pleased last week to speak in favour of the motion to designate the second week of September as Mennonite Heritage Week. This is an important step to recognize the contributions of the Mennonite community to Canadian society.

While Canada’s 200,000 Mennonites contribute to social, cultural and economic life throughout our country, those contributions are especially prominent in Manitoba, especially in the North Kildonan-River East area.

When I spoke in favour of establishing Mennonite Heritage Week, I noted that in the Kildonan-St. Paul constituency alone there are more than seven Mennonite churches. The thousands of Mennonites in KSP are among the largest Mennonite population living in any city in Canada.

Manitobans who visit the Concordia Hospital benefit from the vision of Mennonite immigrants who gathered in 1928 to found a hospital. In 1933, the Mennonite Hospital Society acquired a property in Elmwood and developed it into a full-service facility, which eventually grew and moved to its current location on Concordia Avenue.

Fittingly for a community that arrived in Canada after centuries of religious persecution in Europe, Mennonites have helped Canada open its arms to people fleeing conflict and persecution. In 1979, in response to the plight of Vietnamese refugees, the Mennonite Central Committee was instrumental in Canada’s establishment of a program for private sponsorship of refugees.

Since 1979, the MCC has sponsored more than 12,000 refugees — providing financial support to help them get on their feet in a new country at no cost to the taxpayers. When Canada successfully opened its doors to 25,000 people fleeing the war in Syria, the Mennonite community stepped up again through sponsorship. Many Mennonites are themselves children or grandchildren of people who fled famine and persecution in the Soviet Union in the 1920s or the destruction of the Second World War.

Despite arriving in many cases with nothing, the Mennonite community has created countless jobs by building many of the most innovative businesses in our province. One of them, Palliser Furniture, is headquartered in KSP and was born 75 years ago in a home in East Kildonan.

I hope that we will be celebrating our first Mennonite Heritage Week this September. It’s high time we recognize a community that has enriched Canada’s spirit and contributed to health and prosperity across our country.