A Tribute to My Mother

 Many years ago, in a snowstorm, the dearly beloved woman holding me a year later in this photo, gave birth to me in a Manitoba snowstorm, although we were safe and warm in Winkler’s quite new Bethel Hospital.

After recently writing a tribute about my maternal grandparents, my wife encouraged me to write one about my mother. One of my initial reactions to this was, how does one write a tribute to someone that has been gone from your life for 60 years. On second thought, my grandparents have been gone for 35 years already, and I managed to write something about them. I gather I can write something about my mother. When we talk about my mother in this case, I need to be clear. My father remarried 10 months after my mother's passing, so we have a stepmother, but this is about my real, biological mother. She lives in our memories still, this woman who nursed me, mentored me and loved me till she was gone so suddenly in Dec. 1963.

I certainly have memories of my mother that could fuel such a piece of writing. There are also things I have heard about her from friends and relatives. Four years ago I came into possession of a five-year diary of hers from the ages of 14 to 19, as well as some other journals. This certainly shed a different light, or should I say additional light, on who my mother was.

And that will be my starting point. I want to say something about who my mother was before I go on to write about how she influenced my life. Again, these are my memories; my siblings are entitled to theirs.

My mother, Margaret Enns, was born in 1920 as the second child of Franz (Frank) and Maria (Marie, nee Loewen) Enns in a small farming community northeast of the town of Winkler, named Greenfarm. She came from ancestors who immigrated to Canada in 1876 from what was known as New or South Russia, referring to its having recently been taken from the Turks and Tatars by the Russians. Some 110 years earlier the same ancestor lines had move from Prussia, previously Poland, to this area of Russia. In fact, maternally, Jacob Hoeppner, who was one of two delegates who left Prussia to spy out the land of Russia as it were, is an ancestor of hers. Earlier in this century, a cousin of mine who did some travelling in these countries, and also some archival research, managed to trace her line indirectly back to the 16th century in the Netherlands. In fact, the information we have pinpoints what is now the province of Zeeland and quite likely the town of Veer. The family name at the time was DeVeere. From here, family members had moved to Schiedam, which is a suburb of present-day Rotterdam. They had also moved on to Amsterdam, and from there, still in the 16th century, to Poland.

More importantly than simply tracing genealogies, when it comes to the influences that shaped her life, the geological line consisted of individuals who had left the Roman Catholic Church in the so-called Protestant Reformation, to become Anabaptist, later known as Mennonites.

Even though many Mennonites, even then, were quite well off and found in a variety of businesses and professions, such as lace and braid making an, brandy distilling, or grain traders as in the case of the DeVeeres, they tended to live frugal and humble lives. This revived faith of theirs also caused them to do more to look after one another in many areas than others in the society around them might have done. Taking care of the poor and orphans was a duty. Helping out when there were fires and floods led early in the 17th century already to mutual aid organizations under such circumstances.

Although, as mentioned, they had conducted business in a variety of trades in the 16th and 17th centuries, the constant pressures of the king, the local councils and even trade guilds in Poland, led some of them to abandon these things and turn to farming in the Vistula Delta. To be sure, there were skills that the Dutch already held, such as knowing how to drain farmland and unproductive swampy land into productive agricultural areas. This led them to be quite prosperous in these ways to the point that some local councils and even local nobles and church officials who owned land were quite happy to have them as owners or leaseholders on their estates. For well over 100 years, they developed these skills further during their sojourn in Poland. However, when it became Prussia and ever more militaristic, this clashed with one of the tenets of their faith, which was not to take up arms. This was what led them to leave Prussia for Russia where they were given freedom not to have to do so, at least initially.

This last was one of the same factors that led my mother's grandparents and great grandparents generation to leave Russia for Canada when the state there began encroaching on the originally granted freedoms. Again, they arranged these same terms with respect to religious freedom with the Canadian authorities.

My maternal grandparents with their two youngest children and one on the way moved in 1923 from Greenfarm to an area somewhat more distant from Winkler to the northwest, known as Burwalde. Grandfather did well with farming here. By and large then, mother grew up in a home where they were never really in need of anything.

Mother went to the local country school until about Grade 9. By that time she had done things like join 4-H and Sewing Clubs and around that time she also went with some friends to Canadian Sunday School Mission Camp on lake Winnipeg at Gimli. Thus, she was not entirely shielded from the world as some more conservative Mennonites were. Indeed, it was around the time of her birth that many Mennonites left Canada for Mexico because, again, the government, of Canada this time, was beginning to require them to attend public schools, learn English, and be exposed to some nationalistic and patriotic learning, versus the simpler Bible – oriented education they had been allowed to do when the had the privilege of running their own schools according to the agreements negotiated when they immigrated to Canada. 

However, my mother's family was obviously not that conservative. Some of that conservatism did show up though when mother really wanted to go on to complete her high school. It took her some time to convince her father of this and she actually missed a year of school in the process. However, she had her eyes on teaching as a profession and so she actually completed high school in the private residential Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna, nearly forty miles from home. She then went on to enrol in the provincial teacher training program in Winnipeg at what was called the Normal School on William Avenue. 

Again, mother had some friends that we're doing the same thing. They stayed in rooming houses in the vicinity of their school and sometimes spent time studying together as one can see from one of her pictures. From mother’s letters and diaries one also learns how adventurous she was. She attended concerts, went to see special displays, such s one of tropical butterflies in the T. Eaton Department Store, attended some public speaking events by prominent personalities, such as the gentleman who had founded the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Nor did she limit her attendance to church to those of Mennonite persuasion. She visited several different kinds of churches. She tried singing in some choirs too.

She was also though still very family oriented and, I would say, emotionally tied to the land where she grew up. She often writes of missing her family and not exactly looking forward to returning to the city after a weekend or holiday at home. She got to do her teaching practicum in Burwalde and really did not want to return to Winnipeg after that. She shared a number for experiences and opinions with her older brother Frank, including when he had to spend some months in a building camp in what became riding mountain national Park, which was his alternative service in World War II, instead of having to go into the military.

At the same time, mother seems to have been troubled by some lack of motivation and, should I say, self-discipline. She often seemed to leave her preparation and homework till rather close to deadlines. Then she would castigate herself for not starting things earlier and getting done more promptly. This often led her to question her decision to go into teaching and she often wondered whether she was moving in the right direction. These sentiments come out in her diaries and include failure to make entries on a number of dates.

However, now that this was the path she had chosen, her father, who had experience as a school trustee, used his ability and connections in this regard to make sure she got a teaching job upon graduation from Teachers College. Her first job was in fact in the area that had been the village where her ancestors had settled just southwest of Winkler, Hoffnungsfeld. However, she then moved on from there to another rural area which was still Mennonite, Clear Springs, near Steinbach.

Mother was not even through teaching her first year at this school when my father entered her life. They both discovered they shared a mutual interest in Christian missions and father was at that time set on returning to Northern Manitoba to continue a work pastorally that he had begun there as a teacher fulfilling his conscientious objector alternative service status. However, his prospective employer, the United Church, really wanted married staff in those positions. Within six weeks of their meeting, they were married and less than two months later, they were on their way north.

Mother was by this time 24 years of age and I think she was relieved to be married, as many people in that period of time got married younger than that. At the same time, given what I have read in her diaries and what I know of her life with our father, I know that whirlwind romance was really built on love. This was demonstrated so well as far as I can recall, all through the 17 years of their married life of which I was privileged to be a part of. One example of this that I often cite is that only once do I recall her and father getting into an argument. It was over whether we should take a family photo when we were in our Sunday best before lunch, interfering with its being ready and warm, which I think was Dad’s inclination, or after, which I think was mother’s preference. I don’t remember though which way the decision went. 

Whatever problems plagued our mother as referred to above in terms of those years of high school and later study, did not seem to rear themselves in our years as a family as far as I can recall. She worked very hard. Within 11 years of marriage, she had five children, four sons and one daughter.

Mother had learned to cook and bake and she provided for us better than well in that regard. I would have to say we were spoiled, especially when it comes to how much dessert was part of our life. It is a wonder we aren't all diabetics. In spite of all the hard work mother had to do to satisfy the appetites of five growing children, I really don't remember her ever limiting what we ate. There always seem to be enough food.

Living up north, meant all of this baking was done in the wood stove. Father, later aided by us children, helped supply that stove with wood to keep the house warm as well as to do all the food preparation. We also had to go to the river, later the lake, to bring in water. Carrying out buckets of slop to a designated area was another task we were at times entrusted with. Mother and father also put their hand to gardening from the beginning. When we got older, mother also canned some of the fruit we picked, particularly Saskatoons. We were often given fish by our neighbours and she would can some of that. When we went south to visit our grandparents, which was more or less for the better part of a month almost every year, she, grandmother and my aunts would pick and can fruits and vegetables from the grandparent’s garden to help us through our winters up north.

We did not have electricity to begin with either, so all of this work was done by the light of gas or coal oil/kerosene lamps. Mother also was very active helping father in the mission work, teaching children, playing the organ and piano, which she had taken lessons of when she was young, which again shows that her parents were not that conservative. She and father would sometimes sing duets for the worship services. She did sometimes get local girls to help with housework.

Part of the work was having Bible studies and she and father would trek to the different homes where these were sometimes held in rotation, which meant bundling up the children in winter to be pulled along by sleds until we were old enough to walk the distance.

There is some evidence that mother had a degree of anxiety. One notable story that reflects this is that when she first was being given the opportunity to learn to drive, which again is a progressive thing for those days, she was going too fast to make a corner and either did or nearly went into the ditch. She walked away from that and never learned to drive. We didn't hear much about it where were children, but I know she was often anxious when we lived in Loon Straits and father made many boat trips back-and-forth across the 8 miles stretch of open lake to where the road ended to go to pick up supplies or take people for medical care. Sometimes those crossings meant encountering very high and dangerous waves. I am sure she was praying regularly.

Besides going to Bible studies, mother and father did a lot of home visitation. Sometimes mother did this on her own, including taking us children along. When we were older we enjoyed this because it gave us a chance to visit and play with our friends while mother or sometimes both parents would visit with their parents.

One thing about our parents, and I am not sure who would be the one to point to most here, but I know for myself, if I seemed to show an interest in something that was positive, they greatly encouraged it. When I was barely starting school, I became interested in the birds that populated our neighborhood. The next thing I knew had a set of bird books and then even a year’s subscription to the Canadian Children's Audubon magazine. When I showed a penchant for drawing, I have a notebook or two where mother has written interesting comments about my drawing, which she certainly obviously encouraged. Some of it in my preschool years looks more like what we might call abstract or modern art but mother tried to find something in that as well. I remember in Grade 6, when it became known, that in our Social Studies, we were going to do a lot of work that involved including illustrations in our homework, we got a prescription to the MacLeans magazine and were allowed to cut pictures from it to use for our homework. Given my artistic leaning, when paint-by-number sets became a fad, I was given one of those for Christmas when I was, I believe, perhaps 13.

When I was about six years old, our mission chapel or tabernacle as father had named it, was provided with a piano ,which was really given to us as a family, as we kept it even as we moved. Mother then took it upon herself to try to teach us children piano and when we moved to Winnipeg when I was already in grade 11, she and father arranged for us children to continue to take piano lessons, which I did, probably until the end of grade 12. At that point I was probably approaching a Grade 6 level in music.

Father had been interested in music as well and had wanted to play the violin, so mother's wedding gift to him was a violin. Somehow, in his busy life, he never got into it. When one of the teachers in the community when I was in Grade 6 turned out to be a fairly good violinist, I ended up taking lessons, but only for a year, as he left the community after that. Year later, when our daughter was studying violin, we bought Dad’s old violin so Anika has that memory of her grandmother.

In spite of not having grown up around water, mother went with us on picnics that involves boat trips. When we were younger, in Grand Rapids, this involved leaving the security of the river and heading out on to the lake to what we called a beach, but which was really mostly gravel. When we moved to Loon Straits, we often packed things up and went and had wiener and marshmallow roasts, accompanied by other foods and desserts, on the large granite rock points that framed our own private sandy bay. She also went with us when we would take boat rides across the 2 mile bay to what we called the river and travel up it to The Rapids, which was the end of how far a boat could go. 

We boys love to go out exploring from our home. In spring, it was always exciting, and there was some competition between us and our school mates in this regard, to see who could see which birds had returned first from their annual migrations. We always wanted our mother to come with us and on one of our Saturday morning excursions we were so glad when she actually did join us one spring morning. We tramped through the sometimes still deep melting snow to see what we could see. We boys didn't really sense it at the time, although I think I already knew that she had some back and foot troubles and problems with varicose veins, which probably did not make such hikes easier. But she was game to go with us. We were thankful.

I think we were also spoiled when it came to play. We seemed to have a lot of time to play as a child. I don’t know that we were expected to help much until we were attending school. Then we did things like wash and dry dishes, sweep the floor and sometimes help with baking or other food preparation, not to mention carrying wood and water. 

I must comment on discipline. We kids did get into arguments and fights. However, I don’t remember mother being hard on us. If we had really crossed the line, it was father she turned to for the dreaded spankings, which were not frequent in any case.

By the time mother had come to her second year of teaching, before getting married,  it seems she had begun to enjoy it. Her pupils had obviously enjoyed her, as they were really quite sad to see her go when she left six weeks before the end of the year to get married. Thus, it was not surprising that when we moved to Winnipeg and were all in school after a year there, she managed to get herself a substitute teaching job. I remember how happy and excited she was to dress up in her white blouse and grey flannel skirt and go and do this. Her first teaching job was actually at the school our second youngest brother Lloyd was attending, Princess Margaret in North Kildonan. Then she did some substituting teaching further north at McIvor School. Unfortunately, that ended prematurely, as did our having our mother, as she passed away some two weeks before school would've closed for the Christmas season, in 1963.

One’s mother might have passed away, but mother is never out of our lives. Especially when Anne and I began raising our own family, there are so many junctures in the lives of a family and those who were her grandchildren, that she would've loved attending, but she was never there. Indeed, when our daughter was born, our neighbour in the next block, a very kind and hospitable church lady who was raised in Winkler MB, came to visit us and brought a gift for us. She was so surprised, "She looks just like her grandmother!”

“How do you know?" Anne asked.

"I babysat for your grandmother." Mrs. Mary (Abe) Wiebe knew who my grandparents were since we told her of our connection to the Mennonites in southern MB when we moved to Gladstone to practice medicine in the summer of 1978. Every Sunday she told church people how much Anika looked like her grandmother. We have two pictures displayed side by side on our mantel, of both Mother and Anika at a very similar age. They indeed belong to the very same family, the Enns family of Winkler, my mother's roots. Even in later life photos, we saw when we came into possession of some of mother’s photo albums, it was uncanny how our daughter sometimes took poses just like her grandmother! 

In terms of what a mother can offer, who knows how much advice I might have gotten in terms of work, career, marriage and parenting, had she been alive when I really needed it. I know my father did his best as well. However, that all changed when he married a year later and soon began to raise our step siblings. But that is another story. Mother had done most of her upbringing for me by that time, as I was 17 when she passed away, and I know she left me a very good legacy in so many ways. There was her faith, her family devotion, her adventurousness, open-mindedness, gentleness and her creativity. All of those have been influential in my life as well. Someday I hope to be able to thank her for all of this when we meet in the promised new earth.

With help from my wife, Anne.