The Mennonite Heritage Village is getting ready for the next exhibit and Senior Curator Andrea Klassen is hoping to get some contributions from the community.

The exhibit will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Mennonite migration from Canada to Mexico.

“We have some artifacts in our collection but we’re really looking for contributions from the community,” Klassen says. “We know those stories are out there. So, we would love to be able to help those families tell those stories.”

The exhibit will be called “Leaving Canada: The Mennonite Migration to Mexico” to recognize the event that saw around 8,000 traditionalist Mennonites move from Manitoba and Saskatchewan to Mexico and Paraguay.

Klassen says their current exhibit includes a number of items and stories from people in the community and she is hoping to see people participate in the upcoming exhibit.

We can contribute with objects and stories.

“Objects that have been made in Canada, brought to Mexico and returned with the return migration of these Mennonites called “the Kanadia”, the Canadians in German,” Klassen explains. “So, it could be anything like that. Or it could be something made in Mexico and brought back to Canada.”

She would also be interested in items that came from overseas.

“I’ve even heard of some artifacts in the community where they were brought from Russia to Canada in the 1870's, then brought to Mexico in the 1920's, and then brought back to Canada in the return migration,” she adds.

Klassen says the new exhibit to commemorate this unique part of Mennonite history will open in May and run until fall.

If you have an object with a story from this migration and would like to be considered for the exhibit, Klassen asks that you send her an email at andreak@mhv.ca .