Mennonites and Nationalism...it's complicated...

 Mennonites and Nationalism: The Twin Towers

The Welland Ship Canal joins Lake Erie and Lake Ontario allowing ships to avoid the discomfort of tumbling over Niagara Falls.  Pre-European native populations, as rumour has it, did not always by-pass the Big-Thunder of Niagara Falls and reveled in a purely spiritual way as they sent virgins to their death over the Falls to please any number of Gods. Mennonites on the other hand are monotheistic.

Oddly enough a few short centuries later people would almost line up to challenge the spirit of the Falls in barrels, both wooden and metal, one now deceased young man tried going over the lip of the Falls on a Sea-Do with a parachute that never opened, others fell over by mistake, while some used what almost seemed a more conventional route and walked a tight rope between the American and Canadian sides of the gorge.  Niagara Falls was and still is a Mecca for suicidal stunts.  As kids growing up in St Catharines we made our haj to the Niagara River area on bike several times in a summer.  

Depending on the season, the day, the time of day and our mood, we had several destinations between home and Niagara-on-the-Lake from which to choose. One, we went to the “Diving Board” near lock one on the Welland Canal.  Two, we crossed the bridge over lock one and proceeded to McNab School where we often would camp, hunt and live off the fat of the land, or, on ambitious days we would exercise option three and get all the way to Brock Monument and Fort George on the banks of the Niagara River.

It was along this river where American forces once crossed to engage British troops during the War of 1812 (for the record that war was a tie). In a brave attempt to recapture the Redan Battery taken earlier in the day by the American invaders. Brock led his fateful and historic charge and in the process took a fatal wound to his chest. Near death he still had the presence of mind to rally his troops who went on to win the day.  His Canadian aide de camp Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell was also killed when his horse was shot from under him and fell on the Lieutenant killing him. 

Today Brock and Macdonell are interred at the base of the Brock’s monument.  I didn’t learn any of this until taking grade 8 social studies at Lincoln Heights school in Waterloo several years later, so to me at the time I did not have a clue about any of the history, or that there had been two monuments. This is really the story of Canada’s “Twin Towers.”  The first had been partially destroyed by an anti British malcontent, Benjamin Lett, a left over from the Rebellions of 1837, by a bomb on April 17, 1840.  Nineteen years later, in 1859, the second Brock’s monument was inaugurated, placing Brock’s statue 56 m over the battlefield where he died. 

Brock’s monument represents more than just a limestone edifice to honour a war hero, it is a symbol on the Canadian/American border representing our Canadian sovereignty and British legacy.  The builders were sending a very dramatic and visible message to America that we would not be undone by military intervention, a process that would take about 2.3 minutes if done today.  This of course was all lost on me as I climbed the monument, and looked out the port hole like windows over the peaceful Niagara region while counting the 236 spiral steps to the top of the monument.  The Niagara Parks Commission maintains their claim that there are actually 235 steps to the top of Brock’s monument, but that is an issue between the Parks Commission and myself yet to be resolved using peaceful mediation tools.

Today, at hockey games other sports events and in my classrooms over the years I have sung “God Save the Queen” along with a reading of “The Lord’s Prayer.”  Later, it was “Oh Canada” with no “Lord’s Prayer.”  Somehow the nationalistic portion of our opening exercises prevailed and the religious component was dropped with some controversy. I lip sync, because I am tonally challenged, while students often sing with lethargy because they still don’t know the words and probably, like me at their age, didn’t know or care to know our history.  Many Mennonites choose not to sing the national anthem and it has nothing to do with lethargy or singing ability.

Mennonites take issue with nationalism, patriotism and its close association with war and the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us all about while the Cold War was still in its infancy.  Looks like he was right.  

Russian Mennonites were excommunicated from the church because they chose to fight in the Russian military against the Turks whose land both Russians and Mennonites occupied.  Mennonites always walk a fine line of hypocrisy between distancing themselves from the benefits they reap from militarism and remaining true to their pacifistic and non-violent nature.

At Goshen College, a Mennonite institution in Indiana, the American national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” until recently (Spring 2010) was not played, and now only an instrumental version at the discretion of the physical education department may be played before sports events.  

I’m sure Mennonites at Goshen are patriotic, but they also maintain that the American government has no right to grant them, or anyone, religious freedom.  Perhaps a naive position to take, but one that is safe in times of relative peace without a draft, but not so during the Vietnam War and World War II. 

Keith Graber-Miller, a professor at Goshen college, wrote that we (Mennonites) are, “First and foremost disciples of Christ and citizens of God’s reign, then citizens of the world, and finally citizens of a given country.”  

Graber-Miller’s perspective follows a continuum of decreasing allegiance and therefore puts Mennonites at odds with the mainstream society when it comes to both patriotism and nationalism.  In Canada the distinction is not as urgent as many Canadians are incapable of defining national identity to begin with, so in terms of being a Mennonite it is easier to do so in Canada.

My own father was a machinist in various factories.  He lived in a German community, Kitchener, Ontario, once called Berlin, spoke German and believed in non-violence.  There was much pressure and often ridicule directed against my father and people like him during the war with Germany.  As a machinist my Dad made components for the war effort.  It’s complicated.

General Brock, barring any further lightening storms, stands as an icon, gracefully and peacefully over the passing of millions of tourists who have no more of an idea of who he was and what he represented than I did as a child biking to the foot of his monument on a summer day in 1962.