TourMagination

Memories of migration

Ingrid Moehlmann is the instigator of the Memories of Migration: The Russlaender 100 Tour, a weeks-long train trip across Canada, coming in 2023. (Photo by Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe)

The tour will commemorate the work of David Toews, Moehlmann’s great-grandfather, who organized the migration of Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada beginning in 1923. (Photo by Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe)

David Riesen, Moehlmann’s father, requested on his deathbed that the Russlaender migration be remembered. (Photo by Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe)

It’s been almost 100 years since 1923, when thousands of Mennonites from the Soviet Union began migrating to Canada. A train tour commemorating their journey will wind across Canada in the summer of 2023 to mark the anniversary.

‘We want to tell the story’

The original diaries of Johannes D. Dyck (1826-1898) tell, among other things, the stories of his adventures in America, including an escape from an ambush during the California Gold Rush. (Photo by Conrad Stoesz)

In the doll that Johannes J. Dyck (1885-1948) gave his daughter he hid money and smuggled it past guards as he and his family escaped Russia by train in 1927. (Photo by Conrad Stoesz)

A Mennonite man escapes an ambush during the California Gold Rush because he had a fast horse. We know his story because he left behind a set of diaries. 

Encounters with the church in Cuba

Bishop Luis Hernandez baptizes a member of a Brethren in Christ house church in El Cafetal, Cuba. (Photo by Jack Suderman)

Irene Suderman, centre with the blue scarf, a co-leader of the learning tour with her husband Jack, is pictured with tour members at a Brethren in Christ house church in Cuba. (Photo by Jack Suderman)

Sixteen Anabaptist Christians from Canada and the United States came to Cuba from Jan. 12 to 16 to learn about the church there. I was one of them.

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