dbd33

No, just an onlooker.

DandNHill

It's so fascinating!

I wonder whether my kids could go spend a year with them to learn some hard facts of life?

Oakvillian

A friend of mine is a former Mennonite - he went off for his Rumspringa and decided not to return to his home community, although he is still closely connected to his extended family and acts, in effect, as the Toronto sales agent for their furniture business. He is fascinating to talk to on the subject of Mennonite culture, work ethic, the apprenticeship to craft skills, and so on. He lives with his (non-Mennonite) wife and family in deepest suburbia, and drives a grey Honda.

It's just occurred to me that I have no idea if he can also drive a buggy. I'll have to ask next time we meet...

scilly

There are a lot of Mennonites in Manitoba, another lot in Saskatchewan, and quite a few in BC.

The Amish in Ontario seem to be the only ones in Canada, apart form the ones now said to be moving to PEI


FWIW .... the famous tenor Ben Heppner grew up in a Mennonite family in Dawson Creek, BC. I don't know whether he is still Mennonite

BristolUK

Hey, I listen to a bit of him on Sunday nights at bedtime. The music doesn't interest me at all but he is a really good story teller.

dbd33

I was startled to discover that someone I know from work, a computer person by day and a roller derby Queen by night, is an urban Mennonite. She went to a Mennonite school but one that educates both sexes and does so according to the Ontario curriculum. She has one sister who lives in a traditional Mennonite fashion while the rest of the family lives in a mainstream manner; convertible car, tats, funky house in a gentrifying area. There seems to be as wide a range of devotion within the Mennonite church as there is in the Islamic world.

scilly

I agree re the Sunday night programme, although I also like operas.

He put out a CD in 1999 called My Secret Heart; Songs of the parlour, stage and silver screen; and described it as "songs my mother wished I sang". Most of the songs are the ones his parents listened to in the 1920s and 30s, and that they used to sing at home.

A very different Heppner!

bats

Ive x-rayed a few Amish people in the past. There's a small community north of Bellevile and there are usually a few at the cattle auction. The men have fun and take part in getting the sale animals in and out of the ring. The women sit alone selling eggs.

HGerchikov

But they also advertise on the internet, carry cellphones and shop in Walmart.

dbd33

Some do, yes. I used to see them in the No Frills in Shelburne loading up on ice cream.

Recently I was standing in the shop here:

https://www.brubachersharness.ca/

and there was a man speaking into the telephone and you know how they have that slow manner of speaking as if they've arrived from Switzerland yesterday and English is foreign to them and their conversation is discursive? Well he was wearing the kind of uniform they have in the shop, braces and no buttons, and he was explaining "it'll be your spam filter, so it will, the document will be in your junk folder, you'll want to exclude our address from the spam list" and the contrast between the slow moving man in big boots and a bad haircut and the accuracy of his technical grasp just made me smile.

dbd33

Mennonites, of course, have defined gender roles. Men are strong and work in the fields, women are not as strong and so don't do that work. That's why, traditionally, the Mennonite women are educated and the men are not.
Perhaps it's the same with the Amish, maybe only the women can count and so make sales.

bats

No that's not the case as the men also sell chickens, ducks, puppies. I think they buy animals there too as they are sitting around the sales ring. I think it's a women are inferior thing based on my other dealings with them.

dbd33

As someone who sells eggs, I rather resent the suggestion that the activity is inferior. I see myself as being differently empowered.

HGerchikov

As someone who would like to sell eggs but can't because the bloody ducks won't lay any, I am not sure how I see myself.

DandNHill

The ducks have heard about people like dbd selling their kids from underneath them!!