As a young Mennonite man during the First World War, Aaron Weber was wary of walking through downtown Kitchener. “One time,” his son Norm recalls, “he walked right close to the barracks, and the soldiers around there were watching him and he just hot-footed it....and got out of there in time because they used to grab young Mennonite Men....and take them in thereand make them sign up, force them to do it.” The site of the barracks is now a nondescript parking lot on Courtland Avenue; the evidence of Weber’s experience is long gone.
In May 2017, the Mennonite Archives of Ontario, housed at Grebel, will open an exhibit called Sites of Nonresistance: Ontario Mennonites and the First World War. Through archival materials, this exhibit will illustrate Ontario Mennonite responses to the war. Rather than focus on battles and support from the “home front,” this exhibit will highlight dissenting perspectives and present an alternative memorial landscape of sites of
nonresistance.
Finding Mennonite voices to populate the exhibit was a challenge. The most well-known story is the creation of the Nonresistant Relief Organization in response to the conscription crisis of 1917. (This organization eventually merged with others to become Mennonite Central Committee Ontario.) Another enduring story is that of E.J. “Ernie” Swalm, a Brethren in Christ youth who faced a court martial, as described in his influential book Nonresistance Under Test.
Other experiences are less well known. Mary Wismer, studying at Macdonald Institute in Guelph, wonders if she, as a Mennonite, should consider practicing her dietary profession in a military hospital. A Mennonite congregation wonders if it should take the name of a “warlord” when their city’s name is changed from Berlin to Kitchener. A group of Mennonites in Markham become involved in the pre-war arbitration movement, an unusual alliance with non-Mennonite peace groups. Daniel Brenneman is “apprehended” by the military from a neighbour’s farm in East Zorra Township, and held in a military camp in London, Ontario for six weeks where he resists coercion to “put on the uniform.”
Border issues encountered by Mennonites have a particular resonance a century later. American preacher E.L. Frey is stopped from entering Canada when he declares that he will be preaching against the war. Between 1919 and 1922, Mennonites, Hutterites and Doukhobors are banned from immigration to Canada for their peace stance.
Visit Grebel to experience this exhibit and explore its underlying questions: Which stories rise to the level of public memory? How do we choose events and places to commemorate? Can war narratives be expanded to encompass, and be altered by, stories of nonresistance?
