Film documents journey of Mennonites who left Manitoba for Paraguay

With 18,000 students in 59 government-funded schools, independent schools are playing an increasingly important role in Manitoba.

Many of these schools are religious schools like The King’s School, Dasmesh School, Springs Christian Academy, Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, Beautiful Saviour Lutheran School, Linden Christian School, Steinbach Christian School and IQRA Islamic School.

On its website, the provincial government says it “strongly supports the rights of parents and guardians to choose their child’s education. Parents choose independent schools for reasons such as faith, philosophy of teaching and learning, and tradition.”

This is quite a contrast to 110 years ago. That’s when the province passed the School Attendance Act of 1916 as a way, during wartime, to promote integration and social cohesion.

While the act didn’t prohibit independent schools, it did mean that ethnic communities no longer had full control over their schools, and that parents could no longer decide where and how their children would be educated.

It gave the province greater say over curriculum and, through additional legislation, mandated English as the language of instruction. Communities that refused to comply with the new rules could see their schools closed and their children forced into public schools.

One group strongly impacted by the act was the Mennonite community. They saw the act as the breaking of a promise made to them by the federal government in the 1870s when it recruited them to come to Canada from Russia.

Called a “Privilegium,” it guaranteed exemption from military service, the freedom to practise their religion and control over their own education system — something the Mennonites considered vitally important as a way to pass on their faith.

Since education is a provincial matter in Canada, the federal promise didn’t apply when Manitoba decided to change the rules. Over the next 10 years, Mennonite community leaders petitioned the provincial government to let them retain control over their schools — to no avail. When some parents continued to send their children to church-run schools, they were fined and some were jailed.

Some Mennonites accepted the changes. But in 1926 the first group of 1,700 left Manitoba in 1926 for new lives in Paraguay where they could retain control over their schools. Altogether, over 8,000 Mennonites left Manitoba and Saskatchewan over the next number of years for new lives in that country, and also in Mexico.

This year, on the centenary of that first departure, a new film is being produced to tell that story. Titled Under the Lapacho Tree, it is being produced by Toronto filmmaker Dale Hildebrand. It follows his 2025 documentary Where the Cottonwoods Grow, which marked the 150th anniversary of Mennonites coming to Manitoba from Russia.

“When I was asked to do this, I immediately thought it would be an absolutely amazing adventure to tell this story,” Hildebrand said.

The film documents the challenging journey of that first group of Mennonites from Manitoba 100 years ago. That includes discovering, when they arrived in Paraguay, that the land they had bought wasn’t ready for them. Around 10 per cent of the group died while living in tents for 16 months while they waited for the land to be surveyed and ready for settlement.

“They got typhoid, they got everything under the sun, and so many children and adults died,” said Hildebrand.

Despite those hardships, they were resilient, Hildebrand said. That’s why he chose the Lapacho tree, the national tree of Paraguay, for the film’s title since it represents hope, endurance and rebirth. “It’s symbolic of their story,” he said.

Producing the film “was an insane amount of work,” Hildebrand said. “But I appreciated every second. I had fun every step of the way.”

Conrad Stoesz is the archivist at the Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg. He is glad to see the film being made since it shares a story about how Mennonites back then resisted efforts by the government to assimilate their children into Canadian culture — a story few Manitobans know.

“The idea was if they couldn’t change the minds of adults, they would change the minds of children by requiring them to go to public schools,” he said.

For Stoesz, what makes the film unique is that it is being made at the request of Mennonites in Paraguay, and with their input. “It’s a chance for them to tell their own story,” he said, adding that Canadians who see the film will become aware that “Canada has not always been the welcoming place we think it is.”

Under the Lapacho Tree was made with support from Manitoba’s Plett Foundation, which supports projects related to the migration and settlement of Mennonites who came to Manitoba from Russia in the 1870s. It will premiere next year in Paraguay and Canada.

Jdl562000@yahoo.com

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