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G. Randy Rothenberger
G. Randy Rothenberger
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Why did our ancestors choose Canada?
As conditions deteriorated for Germans in Russia at the end of the 19th century, North America became the new promised
land. Canada and America were publishing their own invitations and manifestoes for settlers. Just as the Russian
government had attracted Germans with free land and special rights, the governments of this New World made similar
offers less than a century later. About 300,000 Germans left Russia to seek land and freedom in the Americas.
According to Canada's Dominion Lands Act of 1872, every immigrant could obtain for $10 a 160-acre homestead in the
West, which became his property after three years if certain conditions were met. Through the efforts of Canada's land
agents and intensive recruitment advertising, the German people in Russia heard about these offers. The Prairies, like
those in the Dakotas, resembling as they did the steppes of southern Russia, were to prove very attractive to many
German Russians, especially Black Sea Germans. Thousands of them took up the invitation to come to Canada,
especially between 1900-1913 when expanding railway branch lines made the Prairies readily accessible to new settlers.
Some originally migrated to the U.S., before continuing on to the Canadian West.
The emigrating Germans from Russia travelled by train across Europe to northern shipping ports. There they boarded
huge ships as third-class passengers for trips across the Atlantic lasting nearly two weeks. Crammed below deck, they
fought sea sickness and sometimes life-threatening disease. Many landed at Canadian ports of entry at Halifax or Quebec
City before taking further long train rides aboard "colonist cars" to the Canadian West. There they begin life's struggles all
over again under harsh, Prairie conditions.
The Pre-World War I Era
About half of the Germans who settled in Western Canada in the pre-1914 era were from the German colonies in Russia--
from Volhynia, Bessarabia, the Odessa region, the Crimea, the shores of the Sea of Azov and the banks of the Volga.
One of the heaviest migration movements to Canada in that period was that of Americans steaming northward across the
border, including Germans from Russia who had first settled in the U.S.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, immigration of Germans from Russia came to a stop and did not resume again until the
early 1920s. Before that, however, there was one movement worth noting from the United States to Canada--a mass
migration of Hutterites from South Dakota to Alberta and Manitoba in 1918. They were descended from the 100 Hutterite
families who had chosen to settle in theYankton, South Dakota, region by 1879. When anti-German war hysteria led to
persecution and harassment of the Hutterites after the U.S. entered the war in 1917, they received permission to enter
Canada.
The relatively smooth admission of Hutterites to Canada in 1918 came to public notice later, arousing a storm of wartime
suspicion and protest against these German-speaking pacifists. Under public pressure, the federal government in 1919
prohibited the entry to Canada of Hutterites, Mennonites and Doukhobors. This was not rescinded until 1922 by a new
government.
The Post-World War I Era
Russia's German-speaking people--suffering under severe trials and sufferings during the war and civil war periods-- were
eager to emigrate. About 30,000 managed to leave Russia for Canada from 1923 to 1928. The Canadian Mennonite
Board of Colonization brought in 20,000 Mennonites, while Lutheran, Catholic and Baptists organization brought in 10,000
of their own.
While thousands of German Russians were coming into Canada, several thousand older Canadian Mennonite settlers of
the same background left Canada. Many of these conscientious objectors to military service became increasingly
uncomfortable in Canada due to negative public opinion among English-speaking populations. As well, their control over
the education of their children was taken from them. The majority of Mennonites in western Canada eventually accepted
the use of the public school system, but a conservative minority of about 6,000 people, mainly belonging to the
Fuerstenland group, resettled in Mexico during 1920-1927. Other conservative groups resettled in Paraguay.
From the early 1930s, the Soviet government blocked emigration, ending the stream of German refugees to the west
which as so characteristic of the 1920s. However, with World War II, about 100,000 Russian Germans succeeded in
escaping western Russia during Nazi army withdrawals in 1943-1944; 30,000 eventually found new homes in the Americas
after languishing in refugee camps in Germany. In 1950, Canada relaxed its immigration regulations to permit entry of
ethnic Germans, including refugees from Russia. Receiving and finding them homes was effectively coordinated by the
Canadian Christian Council for the Resettlement of Refugees, organized by Lutheran, Catholic, Mennonite and Baptist
churches. Germans from Russia probably totalled about a quarter of the 104,000 displaced Germans who came to
Canada during 1951-1954.
The movement of Germans from Russia to the Americas from 1870 to after World War II totalled about 300,000 people.
Their descendants now total at least 1.5 million--including about 350,000 in Canada.
Where did the Germans from Russia settle in Canada?
In Manitoba
The first German-speaking people from Russia who settled in Western Canada were Mennonites who arrived in the
1870s. More than 1,300 families, with 6,900 members, came to Manitoba from the Bergstal, Borsenko and Fuerstenland
colonies in Russia. Most of them settled in two land "reserves" set aside for them by the Canadian government, south of
Winnipeg. Outside the reserves, a small group founded the twin villages of Rosenhof and Rosenort. By 1881, 7,776
Mennonites lived in Manitoba.
These Mennonite newcomers prospered quickly, demonstrating that the treeless prairies of western Canada could be
successfully farmed. This proved to be an effective form of advertising that drew thousands of industrious peasants from
the steppes of southern Russia. The first non-Mennonites to be attracted to Canada were Black Sea Germans who had
been the Mennonites' neighbors in the old country. Small groups of them started to arrive in the 1880s; most of them
stayed in Mennonite areas to become acclimatized, then continued on to settle further west.
Volhynian Germans from Russia emigrated to Manitoba (to Brokenhead, Whitemouth, Morris, Rosenfeld and Gretna in the
Winnipeg area). Considerable numbers came between 1897 and 1901 to settle in the Beausejour, Whitemouth districts, at
Tupper and Waldersee and near the Mennonite West Reserve at Emerson, Gretna, Morris, Rosenfeld, Brown and
Morden. When the Hutterites moved en masse from the U.S. during wartime persecution in 1918, six of their former South
Dakota colonies were established near Elie. Their population grew rapidly (to 39 colonies in Manitoba by 1964). Numerous
new colonies were founded in succeeding years (including 13 in Saskatchewan by 1964).
In Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan received its first Russian-German immigrants in 1885. They were Germans from four colonies near the city
of Tulcea in the Dobruja, who had first emigrated to North Dakota. Near Regina they founded New Tulcea, eventually
renamed Edenwold by later arrivals from Bukovina. In 1886, pioneers arrived from the Catholic colony of Josephstal, near
Oddesa--the first of thousands of Black Sea Catholics who came to Saskatchewan between 1886-1914. Their
descendants form the largest single group of Catholics in the province. Thirty families more from Josephstal arrived at
Balgonie, east of Regina, between 1886-1889, and eventually decided to organize a dorf in Russian style. Disliking the
homestead system in Canada, they bought land for a village site upon which to build their homes, thus founding St.
Joseph's Colony near Balgonie. Its remnants still exist.
In the Vibank district, Catholics from the Odessa colonies founded homesteads, where they became neighbors to
Protestants from the Bukovina. By 1896 a majority of the 200 German families east and southeast of Regina were
immigrants from Russia. This spread south and southeastward to Sedley, Francis, Odessa, and Kendal.
Another part of Saskatchewan to which Russian Germans came relatively early was the Yorkton District. These included
hundreds of German Baptists, Black Sea Catholic and Bessarabian Germans between 1885 and 1891. Mennonites came
to the Rosthern district in northern Saskatchewan in the 1890s, encouraged by the federal government due to a growing
land shortage in the Manitoba reserves. These were joined by Mennonites from the U.S. in 1899 to 1904. The 1901
census showed 3,683 Mennonites in the Rosthern region; 8,000 by 1911. Volhynian Germans came to scattered parts of
Saskatchewan as early as 1896, at Yellow Grass, Yorkton and Rosthern.
The early years of the 20th Century brought large numbers of German Protestants to western Canada from central
Europe and southern Russia, particularly to Saskatchewan, where they settled in many different areas. Mennonites also
founded new settlements in Saskatchewan. In 1903-1905, Mennonites from Manitoba, Russia and the U.S. founded
settlements at Herbert and Swift Current, where the population reached 4,600 by 1911. Some Germans from Russia came
from the U.S., where they had first settled in the late 1880s. One such group who came in 1905-1908 were Catholic Black
Sea Germans who had lived for some years in the Dakotas. They settled over an area of 77 townships--stretching from
Landis, west of Saskatoon to the Alberta border--called St. Joseph's Colony.
In Alberta
Germans from Russian arrived in Alberta in the 1890s. The earliest ones were from Volhynia, where Germans, living
through difficult anti-German times, left in large numbers to emigrate overseas. The first group arrived in 1889 with
Galacian Germans who had chosen to settle at Dunmore near Medicine Hat. When continuing drought caused
abandonment of this settlement, the Volhynian Germans went to the Edmonton district, Wetaskiwin, Ellerslie and Leduc in
1891-92. From 1895-1905, they spread through the entire Wetaskiwin-Camrose- Edmonton triangle, as well as west to
Stony Plain and northeast to Josephsburg. These German newcomers were almost all Protestants--the majority
Lutherans, but also Baptists and Reformed. Moravian Brethren arrived in 1894 to found Bruederheim and Bruederfeld.
Volga Germans came to Alberta at this time, settling at Calgary and west of Edmonton in the mid-1890s. Both areas
attracted additional immigrants from the Volga in the following years.
In 1903-1905 people from old Mennonite settlements in Manitoba and the U.S. went to the Didsbury district, where there
had been Ontario Mennonites since 1893. Their population stood at 1,100 by 1911 in the Calgary-Didsbury area. Also
after the turn of the century, a sizable number of German-Russian homesteaders, mostly Bessarabians, settled southeast
of Medicine Hat in farmland stretching towards the Cypress Hills.
When the Hutterites moved en masse in 1918 to Canada from the U.S. due to wartime persecution, 10 of their former
South Dakota colonies were established in southwestern Alberta. By 1964, there were 56 communal colonies in Alberta.
Source: From Catherine to Khrushchev: the Story of Russia's Germans, by Adam Giesinger.
As conditions deteriorated for Germans in Russia at the end of the 19th century, North America became the new promised
land. Canada and America were publishing their own invitations and manifestoes for settlers. Just as the Russian
government had attracted Germans with free land and special rights, the governments of this New World made similar
offers less than a century later. About 300,000 Germans left Russia to seek land and freedom in the Americas.
According to Canada's Dominion Lands Act of 1872, every immigrant could obtain for $10 a 160-acre homestead in the
West, which became his property after three years if certain conditions were met. Through the efforts of Canada's land
agents and intensive recruitment advertising, the German people in Russia heard about these offers. The Prairies, like
those in the Dakotas, resembling as they did the steppes of southern Russia, were to prove very attractive to many
German Russians, especially Black Sea Germans. Thousands of them took up the invitation to come to Canada,
especially between 1900-1913 when expanding railway branch lines made the Prairies readily accessible to new settlers.
Some originally migrated to the U.S., before continuing on to the Canadian West.
The emigrating Germans from Russia travelled by train across Europe to northern shipping ports. There they boarded
huge ships as third-class passengers for trips across the Atlantic lasting nearly two weeks. Crammed below deck, they
fought sea sickness and sometimes life-threatening disease. Many landed at Canadian ports of entry at Halifax or Quebec
City before taking further long train rides aboard "colonist cars" to the Canadian West. There they begin life's struggles all
over again under harsh, Prairie conditions.
The Pre-World War I Era
About half of the Germans who settled in Western Canada in the pre-1914 era were from the German colonies in Russia--
from Volhynia, Bessarabia, the Odessa region, the Crimea, the shores of the Sea of Azov and the banks of the Volga.
One of the heaviest migration movements to Canada in that period was that of Americans steaming northward across the
border, including Germans from Russia who had first settled in the U.S.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, immigration of Germans from Russia came to a stop and did not resume again until the
early 1920s. Before that, however, there was one movement worth noting from the United States to Canada--a mass
migration of Hutterites from South Dakota to Alberta and Manitoba in 1918. They were descended from the 100 Hutterite
families who had chosen to settle in theYankton, South Dakota, region by 1879. When anti-German war hysteria led to
persecution and harassment of the Hutterites after the U.S. entered the war in 1917, they received permission to enter
Canada.
The relatively smooth admission of Hutterites to Canada in 1918 came to public notice later, arousing a storm of wartime
suspicion and protest against these German-speaking pacifists. Under public pressure, the federal government in 1919
prohibited the entry to Canada of Hutterites, Mennonites and Doukhobors. This was not rescinded until 1922 by a new
government.
The Post-World War I Era
Russia's German-speaking people--suffering under severe trials and sufferings during the war and civil war periods-- were
eager to emigrate. About 30,000 managed to leave Russia for Canada from 1923 to 1928. The Canadian Mennonite
Board of Colonization brought in 20,000 Mennonites, while Lutheran, Catholic and Baptists organization brought in 10,000
of their own.
While thousands of German Russians were coming into Canada, several thousand older Canadian Mennonite settlers of
the same background left Canada. Many of these conscientious objectors to military service became increasingly
uncomfortable in Canada due to negative public opinion among English-speaking populations. As well, their control over
the education of their children was taken from them. The majority of Mennonites in western Canada eventually accepted
the use of the public school system, but a conservative minority of about 6,000 people, mainly belonging to the
Fuerstenland group, resettled in Mexico during 1920-1927. Other conservative groups resettled in Paraguay.
From the early 1930s, the Soviet government blocked emigration, ending the stream of German refugees to the west
which as so characteristic of the 1920s. However, with World War II, about 100,000 Russian Germans succeeded in
escaping western Russia during Nazi army withdrawals in 1943-1944; 30,000 eventually found new homes in the Americas
after languishing in refugee camps in Germany. In 1950, Canada relaxed its immigration regulations to permit entry of
ethnic Germans, including refugees from Russia. Receiving and finding them homes was effectively coordinated by the
Canadian Christian Council for the Resettlement of Refugees, organized by Lutheran, Catholic, Mennonite and Baptist
churches. Germans from Russia probably totalled about a quarter of the 104,000 displaced Germans who came to
Canada during 1951-1954.
The movement of Germans from Russia to the Americas from 1870 to after World War II totalled about 300,000 people.
Their descendants now total at least 1.5 million--including about 350,000 in Canada.
Where did the Germans from Russia settle in Canada?
In Manitoba
The first German-speaking people from Russia who settled in Western Canada were Mennonites who arrived in the
1870s. More than 1,300 families, with 6,900 members, came to Manitoba from the Bergstal, Borsenko and Fuerstenland
colonies in Russia. Most of them settled in two land "reserves" set aside for them by the Canadian government, south of
Winnipeg. Outside the reserves, a small group founded the twin villages of Rosenhof and Rosenort. By 1881, 7,776
Mennonites lived in Manitoba.
These Mennonite newcomers prospered quickly, demonstrating that the treeless prairies of western Canada could be
successfully farmed. This proved to be an effective form of advertising that drew thousands of industrious peasants from
the steppes of southern Russia. The first non-Mennonites to be attracted to Canada were Black Sea Germans who had
been the Mennonites' neighbors in the old country. Small groups of them started to arrive in the 1880s; most of them
stayed in Mennonite areas to become acclimatized, then continued on to settle further west.
Volhynian Germans from Russia emigrated to Manitoba (to Brokenhead, Whitemouth, Morris, Rosenfeld and Gretna in the
Winnipeg area). Considerable numbers came between 1897 and 1901 to settle in the Beausejour, Whitemouth districts, at
Tupper and Waldersee and near the Mennonite West Reserve at Emerson, Gretna, Morris, Rosenfeld, Brown and
Morden. When the Hutterites moved en masse from the U.S. during wartime persecution in 1918, six of their former South
Dakota colonies were established near Elie. Their population grew rapidly (to 39 colonies in Manitoba by 1964). Numerous
new colonies were founded in succeeding years (including 13 in Saskatchewan by 1964).
In Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan received its first Russian-German immigrants in 1885. They were Germans from four colonies near the city
of Tulcea in the Dobruja, who had first emigrated to North Dakota. Near Regina they founded New Tulcea, eventually
renamed Edenwold by later arrivals from Bukovina. In 1886, pioneers arrived from the Catholic colony of Josephstal, near
Oddesa--the first of thousands of Black Sea Catholics who came to Saskatchewan between 1886-1914. Their
descendants form the largest single group of Catholics in the province. Thirty families more from Josephstal arrived at
Balgonie, east of Regina, between 1886-1889, and eventually decided to organize a dorf in Russian style. Disliking the
homestead system in Canada, they bought land for a village site upon which to build their homes, thus founding St.
Joseph's Colony near Balgonie. Its remnants still exist.
In the Vibank district, Catholics from the Odessa colonies founded homesteads, where they became neighbors to
Protestants from the Bukovina. By 1896 a majority of the 200 German families east and southeast of Regina were
immigrants from Russia. This spread south and southeastward to Sedley, Francis, Odessa, and Kendal.
Another part of Saskatchewan to which Russian Germans came relatively early was the Yorkton District. These included
hundreds of German Baptists, Black Sea Catholic and Bessarabian Germans between 1885 and 1891. Mennonites came
to the Rosthern district in northern Saskatchewan in the 1890s, encouraged by the federal government due to a growing
land shortage in the Manitoba reserves. These were joined by Mennonites from the U.S. in 1899 to 1904. The 1901
census showed 3,683 Mennonites in the Rosthern region; 8,000 by 1911. Volhynian Germans came to scattered parts of
Saskatchewan as early as 1896, at Yellow Grass, Yorkton and Rosthern.
The early years of the 20th Century brought large numbers of German Protestants to western Canada from central
Europe and southern Russia, particularly to Saskatchewan, where they settled in many different areas. Mennonites also
founded new settlements in Saskatchewan. In 1903-1905, Mennonites from Manitoba, Russia and the U.S. founded
settlements at Herbert and Swift Current, where the population reached 4,600 by 1911. Some Germans from Russia came
from the U.S., where they had first settled in the late 1880s. One such group who came in 1905-1908 were Catholic Black
Sea Germans who had lived for some years in the Dakotas. They settled over an area of 77 townships--stretching from
Landis, west of Saskatoon to the Alberta border--called St. Joseph's Colony.
In Alberta
Germans from Russian arrived in Alberta in the 1890s. The earliest ones were from Volhynia, where Germans, living
through difficult anti-German times, left in large numbers to emigrate overseas. The first group arrived in 1889 with
Galacian Germans who had chosen to settle at Dunmore near Medicine Hat. When continuing drought caused
abandonment of this settlement, the Volhynian Germans went to the Edmonton district, Wetaskiwin, Ellerslie and Leduc in
1891-92. From 1895-1905, they spread through the entire Wetaskiwin-Camrose- Edmonton triangle, as well as west to
Stony Plain and northeast to Josephsburg. These German newcomers were almost all Protestants--the majority
Lutherans, but also Baptists and Reformed. Moravian Brethren arrived in 1894 to found Bruederheim and Bruederfeld.
Volga Germans came to Alberta at this time, settling at Calgary and west of Edmonton in the mid-1890s. Both areas
attracted additional immigrants from the Volga in the following years.
In 1903-1905 people from old Mennonite settlements in Manitoba and the U.S. went to the Didsbury district, where there
had been Ontario Mennonites since 1893. Their population stood at 1,100 by 1911 in the Calgary-Didsbury area. Also
after the turn of the century, a sizable number of German-Russian homesteaders, mostly Bessarabians, settled southeast
of Medicine Hat in farmland stretching towards the Cypress Hills.
When the Hutterites moved en masse in 1918 to Canada from the U.S. due to wartime persecution, 10 of their former
South Dakota colonies were established in southwestern Alberta. By 1964, there were 56 communal colonies in Alberta.
Source: From Catherine to Khrushchev: the Story of Russia's Germans, by Adam Giesinger.
| The Germans from Russia ...In (Western) Canada |