Hard Passage: A Mennonite Family’s Long Journey from Russia to Canada (review)

The reminiscing nature of this book is probably of more interest to older readers because it documents the ethnic immigrant settlement period in Canadian history. My own Mennonite forebearers arrived in Manitoba from Russia in 1874–76 and later migrated to Saskatchewan. They had the same skills and aspirations as the group discussed in this volume.

The narration of this book follows developments pertaining to a second emigration of Mennonites to Canada in 1925–26, the first arriving in the 1870s. Both groups were required to make very difficult adjustments since they lacked English language skills, had virtually no financial resources, and suffered discrimination from resident Canadians. Like Kroeger, many young Mennonites of both groups migrated to urban areas and worked hard to become educated and make their contribution to the socio-economic fabric of Canada.

Kroeger is a good storyteller, and although the book will be enjoyed primarily by his Mennonite counterparts, it is also a well-documented account of early-twentieth-century settler life in Western Canada. Life was difficult for the newcomers, jobs were scarce, and food supplies were short. For example, one year, just before Christmas, a large amount of sugar was accidentally spilled on the floor of the local grocery store. Kroeger’s mother swept it up, dissolved the sugar, and strained out the dirt, and that year the family had baked sweets for Christmas.

In another incident, ingenuity was displayed when skis were needed. Two of Kroeger’s brothers took a set of boards, four inches (ten centimetres) wide and six feet (two metres) long and cut a point on each end. They boiled the pointed ends until they pointed upwards and tied them into position until they dried. They attached short pieces of leather harness to the boards and arranged them so they could be looped onto the skier’s feet.

Kroeger is quite blunt about the negative welcome that Mennonites received in Canada. One Calgary Herald writer described their arrival in these terms: ‘Canada has become the dumping ground for the refuse of civilization.’ The Manitoba Free Press echoed this sentiment by deploring the fact that the government was admitting ‘those serf-ridden, stiletto-carrying Dago, and the degenerate central Europe.’ No one was more cruel than George Exton Lloyd, Anglican bishop of Saskatchewan, who called the potential citizens ‘dirty, ignorant, garlic-smelling . . . continentals.’

The book has one recurring reference, no doubt because of Kroeger’s consistent concern about his father’s continuing battle with ill health. Happily, we read that Kroeger’s father lived to a ripe old age and died in 1970 at the age of eighty-seven. In June 1926, one physician, E.W. Drury, who was chief medical inspector for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, even declared Kroeger’s father to be in good health.

The book has a sombre ending. The last paragraph accounts Kroeger’s visit to the old family farm in 1998 where he sadly views a rusting bedspring in the prairie sod where the old family home once stood. It is a melancholy picture mingled with the reality of significantly changing times in Western Canada. The book ably tells the story of one family, but it also serves as a vehicle by which to document the challenging events that shaped the lives of those who, during the early part of the last century, chose to settle in Canada’s West.