Latest news with #LowGerman-speakingMennonite
Global News
7 days ago
- Health
- Global News
Addressing fear, hesitancy in the Mennonite community amid Alberta's measles outbreak
Quelling the spread of measles involves immunization campaigns and public health protocols, but Tina Meggison says it also requires sitting down and having an open and honest conversation. That's what she's working to do within the Low German-speaking Mennonite community in Alberta. Meggison has more than a decade of professional — and a lifetime of personal — experience under her belt. Her team of community health representatives with Primary Care Alberta has seen a 25 per cent increase in demand for their services, which include accompanying patients to doctor's appointments and interpreting and answering questions in Low German, since the onset of an outbreak in March. That's about 350 calls per month on average, compared to 285 before the contagious disease spread to 1,656 people in the province. 1:57 More measles cases in Alberta than U.S. Meggison said the rise of people reaching out to the provincial health agency shows an interest to engage in the health-care system, which historically has not always been the case. Story continues below advertisement The next step is taking that outstretched hand and placing knowledge into it. 'We can invite our families to start thinking from a different lens, or see things through a different lens, and maybe start to answer those questions.' Measles in Alberta Health-care hesitancy is rooted in fear for many Low German-speaking Mennonites. Meggison would know. She remembers a public health nurse rolling into her Mexican hometown of Durango on horse-and-buggy with a cooler of vaccines. The nurse told Meggison's mother to line up her 12 children in the yard, asked for their ages, and immunized them, without explanation. 'She didn't know what had been given to her kids. She didn't have the language skills to ask the questions,' Meggison said about her mother, whose primary language was Low German. Her family moved from Durango to Ontario when she was four years old, returned to Mexico more than a decade later, and then to Alberta in 2001. She started accompanying her mother to medical appointments and interpreting for her at 16 years old. 'Unbeknownst to me at that time, I was training for this work,' Meggison said, speaking from Lethbridge, near the Canadian Rocky Mountains. When she started this line of work in an official capacity, she estimates the Low German Mennonite population in Alberta was 15,000. Story continues below advertisement That's since grown to approximately 25,000 to 30,000, based on her organization's last tally. But she says given the transient nature of the population, it's likely an underestimate. 1:59 Learning about Low German Mennonites Many came from Mexico to work the land in Canada. They migrated to Ontario and Manitoba, and from there some made their way to Alberta. Get weekly health news Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday. Sign up for weekly health newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The government had offered religious and educational autonomy in exchange for agricultural labour in the 1870s. But that freedom never materialized, leading some to mistrust and question the government's authority, said Margarita Penner, a newcomer and Low German Mennonite family liaison with Barons-Eureka-Warner Family and Community Support Services based in Taber. Penner said Mennonites settled all over Alberta – from La Crete in the north to 40 Mile County in the south, on the border of Montana. Story continues below advertisement Community health representatives dedicated to the Low German-speaking Mennonite community are currently only based in southern Alberta, with two full-timers based in Taber; Meggison in Lethbridge; and a roster of casuals. The demand has been so high that they boosted their availability from five to seven days a week. And now, Primary Care Alberta is hiring two more in the south, a third in the central health zone, and a fourth in the north. Southern Alberta has 945 measles cases while the north zone has 534, and central has 108. There, 68 per cent of kids had one dose and 56 per cent had two doses of the measles vaccine by age two in 2024, according to the province's figures for southern Alberta. Local breakdowns for the age group show 40 per cent two-dose measles vaccine coverage in Lethbridge, 29 per cent in Taber, and 71 per cent in Medicine Hat. Dr. Joan Robinson, a pediatric infectious diseases physician in Edmonton, said the rest of the province is not much better off. Alberta has an average immunization of 80 per cent with one dose, and 68 per cent with two doses for two-year-olds. Robinson says Alberta's low vaccination rates are due to myriad of factors, including a broader mistrust in the health-care system and a public shift towards misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. She says people began getting information on immunizations on social media, rather than from medical experts, and began believing that vaccines are harmful. Story continues below advertisement She also says it would be helpful if the Alberta government debunked this belief. Though Edmonton and Calgary have lower case counts than the rest of the province, she points to particular areas within the urban cities that are not much better. 'The highest immunization rate in the whole province is barely over 80 per cent in Provost. It means that every community that measles is introduced into, there's a reasonable chance of more cases,' Robinson said. 'In order to prevent measles, we really do need community immunization rates as high as 95 per cent.' Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "In order to prevent measles, we really do need community immunization rates as high as 95 per cent." Run and hide Meggison said health education starts with identifying misinformation that heightens deeply entrenched fear. She holds focus groups for Low German communities that open the door to seemingly simple, yet controversy-riddled topics, such as, what is measles? What are its long-term consequences? What is in the vaccine that prevents it? 'If you don't know what it is you're preventing … then what is the motivation to prevent it?' Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "If you don't know what it is you're preventing … then what is the motivation to prevent it?" This is all done in Low German because many members of the community don't fluently speak or understand English, and don't read or write, making it challenging to access credible information, Meggison said. Story continues below advertisement She shows them places they can source accurate facts, such as a YouTube channel where she hosts videos in Low German on health topics, with some gaining more than 1,000 views. Proudly, she recalls seeing a lightbulb go off for one woman who described an epiphany in one of her recent groups. 'She said, 'I can make decisions for my family, and it doesn't have to be public knowledge. I can make these decisions and not share it with my family members if they ask and I can just say that's my business,'' Meggison said, and described other women nodded in response to this passionate declaration, which strays far from their community's everybody-knows-everything way of life. 'You could see that there was a sense of freedom that came out of that group.' Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "You could see that there was a sense of freedom that came out of that group." Her hope is that conversation will spread within the tight-knit community. 1:47 Saskatoon Mennonite church takes renewable energy approach Needle is neutral Alberta's health-care system has translation services, but the challenge is Low German is not common outside of the community. It holds shared cultural significance, which makes interpretation hard to come by and word choice paramount. Story continues below advertisement Nely Penner, a community health representative in Taber, said the word 'vaccine' was an obvious roadblock to upping measles immunization in southern Alberta. 'When I think of the word vaccine in German, I just think of the history of immunization in Mexico,' Penner, who grew up in a Low German community in Mexico's northern Chihuahua region, said. Though Penner never personally experienced 'vaccine nurses' like Meggison did, similar stories were passed down from her parents and grandparents. 'People didn't understand what they were getting. It was fear-based. People would run and hide to not get these vaccines.' Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "People didn't understand what they were getting. It was fear-based. People would run and hide to not get these vaccines." To mitigate the negative connotation, she suggested Alberta health providers use the word needle instead. 'Needle is just more neutral,' Penner said. Little changes like this can have a big impact in facilitating a health space that feels safer, acknowledges and validates feelings of mistrust, Penner said. 'When you're getting information, especially sensitive information, you want to be able to trust that person. And so that's such a huge part of what we do.'
Winnipeg Free Press
04-08-2025
- Health
- Winnipeg Free Press
Addressing fear in Alberta's Mennonite community amid a measles outbreak
Quelling the spread of measles involves immunization campaigns and public health protocols, but Tina Meggison says it also requires sitting down and having an open and honest conversation. That's what she's working to do within the Low German-speaking Mennonite community in Alberta. Meggison has more than a decade of professional — and a lifetime of personal — experience under her belt. Her team of community health representatives with Primary Care Alberta has seen a 25 per cent increase in demand for their services, which include accompanying patients to doctor's appointments and interpreting and answering questions in Low German, since the onset of an outbreak in March. That's about 350 calls per month on average, compared to 285 before the contagious disease spread to 1,656 people in the province. Meggison said the rise of people reaching out to the provincial health agency shows an interest to engage in the health-care system, which historically has not always been the case. The next step is taking that outstretched hand and placing knowledge into it. 'We can invite our families to start thinking from a different lens, or see things through a different lens, and maybe start to answer those questions.' MEASLES IN ALBERTA Health-care hesitancy is rooted in fear for many Low German-speaking Mennonites. Meggison would know. She remembers a public health nurse rolling into her Mexican hometown of Durango on horse-and-buggy with a cooler of vaccines. The nurse told Meggison's mother to line up her 12 children in the yard, asked for their ages, and immunized them, without explanation. 'She didn't know what had been given to her kids. She didn't have the language skills to ask the questions,' Meggison said about her mother, whose primary language was Low German. Her family moved from Durango to Ontario when she was four years old, returned to Mexico more than a decade later, and then to Alberta in 2001. She started accompanying her mother to medical appointments and interpreting for her at 16 years old. 'Unbeknownst to me at that time, I was training for this work,' Meggison said, speaking from Lethbridge, near the Canadian Rocky Mountains. When she started this line of work in an official capacity, she estimates the Low German Mennonite population in Alberta was 15,000. That's since grown to approximately 25,000 to 30,000, based on her organization's last tally. But she says given the transient nature of the population, it's likely an underestimate. Many came from Mexico to work the land in Canada. They migrated to Ontario and Manitoba, and from there some made their way to Alberta. The government had offered religious and educational autonomy in exchange for agricultural labour in the 1870s. But that freedom never materialized, leading some to mistrust and question the government's authority, said Margarita Penner, a newcomer and Low German Mennonite family liaison with Barons-Eureka-Warner Family and Community Support Services based in Taber. Penner said Mennonites settled all over Alberta – from La Crete in the north to 40 Mile County in the south, on the border of Montana. Community health representatives dedicated to the Low German-speaking Mennonite community are currently only based in southern Alberta, with two full-timers based in Taber; Meggison in Lethbridge; and a roster of casuals. The demand has been so high that they boosted their availability from five to seven days a week. And now, Primary Care Alberta is hiring two more in the south, a third in the central health zone, and a fourth in the north. Southern Alberta has 945 measles cases while the north zone has 534, and central has 108. There, 68 per cent of kids had one dose and 56 per cent had two doses of the measles vaccine by age two in 2024, according to the province's figures for southern Alberta. Local breakdowns for the age group show 40 per cent two-dose measles vaccine coverage in Lethbridge, 29 per cent in Taber, and 71 per cent in Medicine Hat. Dr. Joan Robinson, a pediatric infectious diseases physician in Edmonton, said the rest of the province is not much better off. Alberta has an average immunization of 80 per cent with one dose, and 68 per cent with two doses for two-year-olds. Robinson says Alberta's low vaccination rates are due to myriad of factors, including a broader mistrust in the health-care system and a public shift towards misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. She says people began getting information on immunizations on social media, rather than from medical experts, and began believing that vaccines are harmful. She also says it would be helpful if the Alberta government debunked this belief. Though Edmonton and Calgary have lower case counts than the rest of the province, she points to particular areas within the urban cities that are not much better. 'The highest immunization rate in the whole province is barely over 80 per cent in Provost. It means that every community that measles is introduced into, there's a reasonable chance of more cases,' Robinson said. 'In order to prevent measles, we really do need community immunization rates as high as 95 per cent.' RUN AND HIDE Meggison said health education starts with identifying misinformation that heightens deeply entrenched fear. She holds focus groups for Low German communities that open the door to seemingly simple, yet controversy-riddled topics, such as, what is measles? What are its long-term consequences? What is in the vaccine that prevents it? 'If you don't know what it is you're preventing … then what is the motivation to prevent it?' This is all done in Low German because many members of the community don't fluently speak or understand English, and don't read or write, making it challenging to access credible information, Meggison said. She shows them places they can source accurate facts, such as a YouTube channel where she hosts videos in Low German on health topics, with some gaining more than 1,000 views. Proudly, she recalls seeing a lightbulb go off for one woman who described an epiphany in one of her recent groups. 'She said, 'I can make decisions for my family, and it doesn't have to be public knowledge. I can make these decisions and not share it with my family members if they ask and I can just say that's my business,'' Meggison said, and described other women nodded in response to this passionate declaration, which strays far from their community's everybody-knows-everything way of life. 'You could see that there was a sense of freedom that came out of that group.' Her hope is that conversation will spread within the tight-knit community. NEEDLE IS NEUTRAL Alberta's health-care system has translation services, but the challenge is Low German is not common outside of the community. It holds shared cultural significance, which makes interpretation hard to come by and word choice paramount. Nely Penner, a community health representative in Taber, said the word 'vaccine' was an obvious roadblock to upping measles immunization in southern Alberta. 'When I think of the word vaccine in German, I just think of the history of immunization in Mexico,' Penner, who grew up in a Low German community in Mexico's northern Chihuahua region, said. Though Penner never personally experienced 'vaccine nurses' like Meggison did, similar stories were passed down from her parents and grandparents. 'People didn't understand what they were getting. It was fear-based. People would run and hide to not get these vaccines.' To mitigate the negative connotation, she suggested Alberta health providers use the word needle instead. 'Needle is just more neutral,' Penner said. Little changes like this can have a big impact in facilitating a health space that feels safer, acknowledges and validates feelings of mistrust, Penner said. 'When you're getting information, especially sensitive information, you want to be able to trust that person. And so that's such a huge part of what we do.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 4, 2025. Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
Global News
05-06-2025
- Health
- Global News
How Mennonite women are building bridges between public health and community amid measles outbreak
Catalina Friesen got a call one night in February from one of her clients, a Low German-speaking mother in Aylmer, Ont. Her daughter had a rash that covered her body. The five-year-old had a fever and was coughing out of control. 'I said, 'just take her to emerge, especially if she's not eating or drinking,'' says Friesen, a personal support worker and liaison for a health clinic in St. Thomas, Ont., that caters to the Low German-speaking Mennonite community. But her client said she already went to the hospital, and that they turned her away. Friesen called the hospital and found out her client was told to go back to her car — standard practice for a measles patient while they prepare a negative-pressure room. 'But because they couldn't understand exactly what they were saying, they thought they told them to go home,' says Friesen, of the misunderstanding. Story continues below advertisement Friesen helps more than 700 Low German-speaking Mennonites navigate the health-care system in southwestern Ontario. She says she has guided at least 200 people through the current measles outbreak, translating test results and public health measures. Every Thursday, she drives a bus outfitted as a walk-in-clinic to a church parking lot in Aylmer, Ont., that serves Low German-speaking Mennonites in the surrounding rural areas, where the community has been based for approximately 75 years. Many of these families are from Mexico and have been migrating to the region for seasonal agricultural work since the 1950s, in some cases staying due to better economic opportunities. Some drive from as far as Leamington, two hours away, for the clinic. Friesen says some don't have health cards as they apply and wait for permanent resident status, and she estimates about half of the people she sees are vaccinated. Friesen says communication and language barriers paired with a historic distrust in authorities has set the stage for a unique set of challenges during the largest measles outbreak the province has seen in almost three decades, infecting more than 1,800 people. Many of them have been unvaccinated children in southwestern Ontario. As a result, health providers have had to reckon with why some standard approaches to managing a highly contagious virus do not work for all patient populations, and in doing so, address their own assumptions to better shape communication for the community. Story continues below advertisement Friesen innately knows how to navigate some of these roadblocks because, she says, 'They're basically my people.' She was born in a tiny Mexican town called Nuevo Ideal. She was around 10 years old when her family moved to Tillsonburg, southeast of London, Ont. 'When we moved here, it was extremely scary. I didn't know what anybody was talking about. We got made fun of a lot. Most of my childhood, most of my school life, I got made of as the Mennonite, Low German-speaking, whatever you want to call us,' she says, with a nervous laugh. At the time she says she only spoke a little English and wore hand-me-down clothes to school. Students said she had an accent, her braids were weird, she smelled bad. Get weekly health news Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday. Sign up for weekly health newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Friesen brings this past with her when she sits across from patients on the mobile clinic bus, or when she accompanies them to appointments, who tell her about similar experiences. She says she has seen doctors and nurses talk down to her patients. 'It's the stigmatism of – 'You're not from here. We don't like you,'' she says of the way her patients feel when they are treated this way. Dr. Ninh Tran, the head of the Southwestern Public Health unit, gives regular virtual updates on the region's measles outbreak, and each week he holds a briefing, he is asked about unvaccinated Mennonites. Story continues below advertisement Every time, he warns the public of a false sense of safety that can come from blaming a single group for a widespread outbreak. 'Why name any specific groups when it's not entirely representative of that group anyways?' Tran said in a recent interview on a cold and wet day in late May. Southwestern Public Health said it does not report on faith-based denomination in its measles immunization data. In March, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore sent a memo to local medical officers of health linking the rise of measles cases in the province to an exposure at a large Mennonite gathering in New Brunswick last fall, which then spread to Ontario and Manitoba. He wrote, 'Cases could spread in any unvaccinated community or population but are disproportionately affecting some Mennonite, Amish, and other Anabaptist communities due to a combination of under-immunization and exposure to measles in certain areas.' In an April interview with The Canadian Press he reasserted that the 'vast majority' of Ontario's cases are among people in those communities. When asked about Moore's memo in a subsequent media briefing, Tran again cautioned against singling out a group. 'It's always nice to finger point at someone, but it's not necessarily the reality … We're seeing cases everywhere and in different groups, and really the main thing is vaccination.' Story continues below advertisement Speaking as a vaccinated Mennonite, Amanda Sawatzky says anyone who believes all Mennonites are unvaccinated is wrong. Just like any other population, some are immunized and some are not. 'To be clear, many, many many, many, Mennonites are vaccinated. Let's not continue this narrative that this population group as a whole is not vaccinated,' says Sawatzky, who works in the social service sector and consults with health providers on best practices for working with Mennonites and newcomers in southwestern Ontario. She also has a Master of Social Work. That's not the only misconception about Mennonites, she says. 'We come from all walks of life and practice in different ways. Some of us dress traditionally and some of us don't,' she says. Sawatzky grew up in a Low German Mennonite village in Mexico's northwestern Chihuahua state where all of the houses were on one side of a dirt road and fields of fava beans and corn were harvested on the other. She didn't have indoor plumbing or hydro until she was seven. But now, she lives in a suburban house on a cul-de-sac in Leamington with a car parked in the driveway and a pool in the backyard. She sports a baby blue blazer and beige heels. She still identifies as a Mennonite. There are approximately 60,000 Low German-speaking Mennonites living in southwestern Ontario, according to a 2024 guide by the Low German Speaking Mennonite Community of Practice in Elgin, St. Thomas, Oxford, and Norfolk. Story continues below advertisement Michelle Brenneman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, says that's likely a low estimate. She also notes there are more than 30 different groups that identify as Mennonite in Ontario and hold a variety of views on how to practice their faith, dress and live. Sitting beside her, Linda Ruby, a Low German liaison adds, 'There's this assumption that Mennonites that are being talked about in the media are these horse-and-buggy-driving Mennonites. But Low German-speaking Mennonites do not drive a horse and a buggy at all, ever. They drive cars,' says Ruby. Sawatzky says historical context dating back hundreds of years is relevant to understand the current outbreak. She says governments asked members of the Low German-speaking Mennonite community to work the land in exchange for absolute autonomy to run schools and preserve their faith, language, and culture. But she says governments went back on their word in Europe, and then in Western Canada. Low German-speaking Mennonites left to Mexico and South American countries in the 1920s, but returned to Canada for better economic opportunities in the 1950s. 'Knowing what I've explained about the migration and the government taking back what they had promised, there is a lot of mistrust with the government as a whole,' she says, noting that extends to public health. 'So now, when you take any public health crisis – COVID, measles now, I'm not sure what the next thing is going to be, but there will be a next thing – there is mistrust when the government says, thou shall do A-B-C, because of what has happened in the past.' Story continues below advertisement Sawatzky says she was recently at a community gathering and overheard a parent chatting about how they had pushed back when contact tracers called, refusing to answer their questions. Sawatzky approached the person and explained the purpose of the call was to keep the community safe. 'We were able to have a good conversation, even though they were completely different points of view … And at the end, they were like, 'Oh, okay, they're supposed to call me back again. Maybe I'll give them a little bit more.'' Not long before that conversation, a local health provider reached out to Sawatzky to try to understand why some Mennonites refused or resisted to provide their whereabouts for infection control. She asked how they worded their messaging and identified the word 'investigation' could be the problem. 'That sounds really punitive when we say that word to individuals who maybe have a very limited understanding of what public health's role is … because they have tried not to engage with any system that's government-funded.' She suggested softening the language to explain that health providers are trying to understand where people have been to determine who is at risk of getting sick. For Brenneman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, the public is looking at this outbreak as a cause and effect moment – the outbreak started at a Mennonite gathering and it is therefore spreading within that community. Story continues below advertisement But the longer the outbreak lasts, she says the public narrative will have to expand to hold more nuance and become more accurate. 'It spreads because people are not vaccinated. And if it's going to spread further … it's not going to be because of the Mennonites. It is going to be because there are other groups of unvaccinated people in the population and it will spread the way science tells us these things spread.'
Winnipeg Free Press
05-06-2025
- Health
- Winnipeg Free Press
How Mennonite women are building bridges between public health and community amid measles outbreak
LEAMINGTON, ONTARIO – Catalina Friesen got a call one night in February from one of her clients, a Low German-speaking mother in Aylmer, Ont. Her daughter had a rash that covered her body. The five-year-old had a fever and was coughing out of control. 'I said, 'just take her to emerge, especially if she's not eating or drinking,'' says Friesen, a personal support worker and liaison for a health clinic in St. Thomas, Ont., that caters to the Low German-speaking Mennonite community. But her client said she already went to the hospital, and that they turned her away. Friesen called the hospital and found out her client was told to go back to her car — standard practice for a measles patient while they prepare a negative-pressure room. 'But because they couldn't understand exactly what they were saying, they thought they told them to go home,' says Friesen, of the misunderstanding. Friesen helps more than 700 Low German-speaking Mennonites navigate the health-care system in southwestern Ontario. She says she has guided at least 200 people through the current measles outbreak, translating test results and public health measures. Every Thursday, she drives a bus outfitted as a walk-in-clinic to a church parking lot in Aylmer, Ont., that serves Low German-speaking Mennonites in the surrounding rural areas, where the community has been based for approximately 75 years. Many of these families are from Mexico and have been migrating to the region for seasonal agricultural work since the 1950s, in some cases staying due to better economic opportunities. Some drive from as far as Leamington, two hours away, for the clinic. Friesen says some don't have health cards as they apply and wait for permanent resident status, and she estimates about half of the people she sees are vaccinated. Friesen says communication and language barriers paired with a historic distrust in authorities has set the stage for a unique set of challenges during the largest measles outbreak the province has seen in almost three decades, infecting more than 1,800 people. Many of them have been unvaccinated children in southwestern Ontario. As a result, health providers have had to reckon with why some standard approaches to managing a highly contagious virus do not work for all patient populations, and in doing so, address their own assumptions to better shape communication for the community. Friesen innately knows how to navigate some of these roadblocks because, she says, 'They're basically my people.' She was born in a tiny Mexican town called Nuevo Ideal. She was around 10 years old when her family moved to Tillsonburg, southeast of London, Ont. 'When we moved here, it was extremely scary. I didn't know what anybody was talking about. We got made fun of a lot. Most of my childhood, most of my school life, I got made of as the Mennonite, Low German-speaking, whatever you want to call us,' she says, with a nervous laugh. At the time she says she only spoke a little English and wore hand-me-down clothes to school. Students said she had an accent, her braids were weird, she smelled bad. Friesen brings this past with her when she sits across from patients on the mobile clinic bus, or when she accompanies them to appointments, who tell her about similar experiences. She says she has seen doctors and nurses talk down to her patients. 'It's the stigmatism of – 'You're not from here. We don't like you,'' she says of the way her patients feel when they are treated this way. Dr. Ninh Tran, the head of the Southwestern Public Health unit, gives regular virtual updates on the region's measles outbreak, and each week he holds a briefing, he is asked about unvaccinated Mennonites. Every time, he warns the public of a false sense of safety that can come from blaming a single group for a widespread outbreak. 'Why name any specific groups when it's not entirely representative of that group anyways?' Tran said in a recent interview on a cold and wet day in late May. Southwestern Public Health said it does not report on faith-based denomination in its measles immunization data. In March, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore sent a memo to local medical officers of health linking the rise of measles cases in the province to an exposure at a large Mennonite gathering in New Brunswick last fall, which then spread to Ontario and Manitoba. He wrote, 'Cases could spread in any unvaccinated community or population but are disproportionately affecting some Mennonite, Amish, and other Anabaptist communities due to a combination of under-immunization and exposure to measles in certain areas.' In an April interview with The Canadian Press he reasserted that the 'vast majority' of Ontario's cases are among people in those communities. When asked about Moore's memo in a subsequent media briefing, Tran again cautioned against singling out a group. 'It's always nice to finger point at someone, but it's not necessarily the reality … We're seeing cases everywhere and in different groups, and really the main thing is vaccination.' Speaking as a vaccinated Mennonite, Amanda Sawatzky says anyone who believes all Mennonites are unvaccinated is wrong. Just like any other population, some are immunized and some are not. 'To be clear, many, many many, many, Mennonites are vaccinated. Let's not continue this narrative that this population group as a whole is not vaccinated,' says Sawatzky, who works in the social service sector and consults with health providers on best practices for working with Mennonites and newcomers in southwestern Ontario. She also has a Master of Social Work. That's not the only misconception about Mennonites, she says. 'We come from all walks of life and practice in different ways. Some of us dress traditionally and some of us don't,' she says. Sawatzky grew up in a Low German Mennonite village in Mexico's northwestern Chihuahua state where all of the houses were on one side of a dirt road and fields of fava beans and corn were harvested on the other. She didn't have indoor plumbing or hydro until she was seven. But now, she lives in a suburban house on a cul-de-sac in Leamington with a car parked in the driveway and a pool in the backyard. She sports a baby blue blazer and beige heels. She still identifies as a Mennonite. There are approximately 60,000 Low German-speaking Mennonites living in southwestern Ontario, according to a 2024 guide by the Low German Speaking Mennonite Community of Practice in Elgin, St. Thomas, Oxford, and Norfolk. Michelle Brenneman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, says that's likely a low estimate. She also notes there are more than 30 different groups that identify as Mennonite in Ontario and hold a variety of views on how to practice their faith, dress and live. Sitting beside her, Linda Ruby, a Low German liaison adds, 'There's this assumption that Mennonites that are being talked about in the media are these horse-and-buggy-driving Mennonites. But Low German-speaking Mennonites do not drive a horse and a buggy at all, ever. They drive cars,' says Ruby. Sawatzky says historical context dating back hundreds of years is relevant to understand the current outbreak. She says governments asked members of the Low German-speaking Mennonite community to work the land in exchange for absolute autonomy to run schools and preserve their faith, language, and culture. But she says governments went back on their word in Europe, and then in Western Canada. Low German-speaking Mennonites left to Mexico and South American countries in the 1920s, but returned to Canada for better economic opportunities in the 1950s. 'Knowing what I've explained about the migration and the government taking back what they had promised, there is a lot of mistrust with the government as a whole,' she says, noting that extends to public health. 'So now, when you take any public health crisis – COVID, measles now, I'm not sure what the next thing is going to be, but there will be a next thing – there is mistrust when the government says, thou shall do A-B-C, because of what has happened in the past.' Sawatzky says she was recently at a community gathering and overheard a parent chatting about how they had pushed back when contact tracers called, refusing to answer their questions. Sawatzky approached the person and explained the purpose of the call was to keep the community safe. 'We were able to have a good conversation, even though they were completely different points of view … And at the end, they were like, 'Oh, okay, they're supposed to call me back again. Maybe I'll give them a little bit more.'' Not long before that conversation, a local health provider reached out to Sawatzky to try to understand why some Mennonites refused or resisted to provide their whereabouts for infection control. She asked how they worded their messaging and identified the word 'investigation' could be the problem. 'That sounds really punitive when we say that word to individuals who maybe have a very limited understanding of what public health's role is … because they have tried not to engage with any system that's government-funded.' She suggested softening the language to explain that health providers are trying to understand where people have been to determine who is at risk of getting sick. For Brenneman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, the public is looking at this outbreak as a cause and effect moment – the outbreak started at a Mennonite gathering and it is therefore spreading within that community. But the longer the outbreak lasts, she says the public narrative will have to expand to hold more nuance and become more accurate. 'It spreads because people are not vaccinated. And if it's going to spread further … it's not going to be because of the Mennonites. It is going to be because there are other groups of unvaccinated people in the population and it will spread the way science tells us these things spread.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 5, 2025. Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
