Canada’s Mennonites
There are about 100,000 Mennonites in Canada today, almost all descendants of those who joined a Protestant sect in the Netherlands in the early 16th century under the leadership of Menno Symons. The movement eventually divided into two broad factions: one group refused to have anything to do with the secular state and sustained a hostile attitude to private property; the more liberal clans were inclined to compromise on both issues.
Many of the former – the Ammanites – moved to the US and then Ontario, settling in and around Kitchener-Waterloo, while the more liberal population migrated to Russia and then Manitoba in the 1870s. The Steinbach area today remains a Mennonite stronghold, and though few adherents wear the traditional black and white clothes or live on communal farms, most maintain the strong pacifist tradition.