Canadian Mennonite
Volume 13, No. 8
Apr. 13, 2009
Fringe settlement leads to fringe theatre production
Reesor, the play, transcends Mennonite particularity
Toronto
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In 1925 Thomas Reesor, a Mennonite pastor from Markham, Ont., assisted a group of Russian Mennonite refugees from Ukraine to settle in Northern Ontario. While the latitude was similar to that of Winnipeg and Regina, grain-producing areas to the west, the muskeg soil of the Canadian Shield was too acidic to grow crops. After the forest was cleared in preparation for farming, there was no income to be derived and by 1948 so many of the settlers had left, many for Harrow, Ont, that the Mennonite congregation dissolved.
But Reesor lives on in annual picnics, once held at the site of the settlement, and in a play by Erin Brandenburg, a former Harrow resident, and Lauren Taylor. Reesor was first performed at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2007, and then in Markham and Leamington, Ont. It was resurrected at the Factory Studio during The Next Stage Festival earlier this year.
Brandenburg also starred as Anna, 12 years old when she, her father and brother arrived in Reesor at Mile 103 of the CNR track between Cochrane and Hearst, in the dark, to find no settlement awaiting them. All they find is an abandoned attempt to settle with the sign “Given up, help yourself.” Much of the play happens as Anna recites letters she is writing to her sister, who has not accompanied them to Canada from Ukraine, but who, according to her father, will soon follow with their mother. In the course of the play we find that Anna, her father and brother had fled Ukraine after an attack by bandits. Anna managed to hide, but her last sight of her sister was of her standing in the middle of the yard in her night gown. No one will follow.
This realization dawns on Anna as the family comes to the conclusion that they need to abandon Reesor. While the place has not worked out, Canada has become home. The human longing for security in the present has been realized as the past finds closure and a future opens.
Although the proverb “in silence is grace” guides Anna’s father, she gains grace through the pain of assisting at noisy childbirths, both in the Mennonite and Finnish communities, and gains a sense of self through participating in a sauna after assisting a delivery. Anna grows up through the course of the play, through both the drudgery of being the only woman in the household and through interactions with Ivan, one of the Finnish youths in the community.
Reesor is not a straightforward play or story. Besides Brandenburg, three musicians on stage—Andrew Penner, Dave McEathron and Gord Bolan—play a variety of instruments to create mood and sound effects, and act out roles, both hilariously and devastatingly as the women’s group who let slip Anna’s mother’s fate. Reesor tugs at our own longings for closure and an open future.
Of mice, men and Menno
Rockway Mennonite Collegiate Grade 9 class learns social justice from Steinbeck novella
Kitchener, Ont.
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With the notoriety of being on both lists of books that should be banned from high schools and books high school students must read, John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella, Of Mice and Men, still raises interest whenever it is studied.
Melanie Cameron of Rockway Mennonite Collegiate in Kitchener had her Grade 9 class study the book this year. She had her students select themes that are significant in the novel: unemployment, poverty, homelessness, mental disability, physical disability, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, sexual exploitation, animal cruelty and life without a family. Students then researched their theme in the context of 1930s California, where the novel is set, and also in the current Canadian context.
“Our current recession provided many interesting comparisons with the Great Depression era,” Cameron wrote in an e-mail.
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Based on what they learned, students then designed and executed a “creative community response” action. The actions were far reaching.
Shoukia van Beck created a T-shirt to make people think about sexual exploitation. Her “Little Miss Child Prostitute” T-shirt directed people to the stopsexualexploitation.com website. Her hope was to break through the secrecy and lack of education around sexual exploitation.
Shelby Steckly looked into the subject of violence as it is portrayed in the media. She sent her essay to various federal, provincial and local politicians. She wrote in her reflection that “the greatest reward in designing and accomplishing my plan was being able to know how incredibly simply one can make their voice heard.” Personal responses from the local mayor and MP made this amply clear.
Homelessness was the theme that Matt Gerber picked up on. The two main characters of Steinbeck’s novella are on a search for “a place of their own.” With the present economic downturn, Matt thought it was important to educate himself both through reading materials on homelessness in Kitchener-Waterloo, and to rub shoulders with people who have been homeless by working in a rooming house where formerly homeless people live. Although he had been nervous going to the home, he wrote that he realized afterward that this was largely due to stereotypes he had learned about homeless people, noting that “homelessness affects smart, nice, normal, and even rich people,” and “when homeless, you feel stuck, and it’s very hard to get out of it.”
“Dough fights for the homeless” was Chloe Russell’s project. She organized a bake sale (dough) to raise funds to buy items needed by a women’s shelter near where she lives. “After all my research, I realize more about George and Lennie (Steinbeck’s characters),” she wrote in her report. “They lived through all those awful statistics,” she noted, citing the fact that in the Great Depression up to 28 percent of California workers were unemployed and that up to 25,000 families lost their homes. “They had nothing to do other than work whenever possible and dream of a better place for them,” she concluded. “But it could only be a dream. . . . I have more sympathy for them (the homeless) now than before. Above all, I learned that I can make a difference in this world.”