Fleeting Moment – Hutterites at the Playground
The playground in our Cabin Community. Children playing. Mothers nearby – watching, talking. Can you spot what makes this Fleeting Moment so unique?
The women are all wearing long dresses and head scarves. The women belong to one of the many Hutterite Colonies found in our province.
We are extremely fortunate to have several Colonies near our Cabin. Once a week in the summer they bring vegetables and baking to sell to the cabin owners. Our family is particularly happy when the peas arrive – we buy several bags each time, then spend the rest of the afternoon shelling and eating the little green morsels inside the pods.
Once a year, on Canada Day, the Hutterite families take part in our little Canada Day Parade. They ride on the fire trucks, and throw candy to the crowds. For just a few hours our very different lives intertwine.
Ah, the intersection of past and present…fleeting and repeating.
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Well said, Lorna. It has been very interesting to watch which technology the Hutterites have chosen to embrace, and which ones they have ignored. (The men sure do like their pick-up trucks! I wonder if the women get fancy new sewing machines.)
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Something tells me that they don’t… 😐
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Loved this post! You take very amazing pictures ! =)
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Thanks for visiting my blog. Glad you enjoyed my photos. I am merely an amateur with lots of time to play around with a camera!
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I have been enjoying popping in to look at your photos very much. I knew a tiny bit about the Hutterites because one of their communities was portrayed in a film I helped restore called 49th Parallel (1941). In the film they are shown in a favorable light. (They help expose Nazis on the run across Canada.)
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It would be interesting to watch that film to see how Canadians and Germans were portrayed – many stereotypes, I would expect, considering what the world was like in 1941 and what the purpose of the movie was.
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That is so neat! I was going to say it looked like one of the women wasn’t in a head scarf and the others were. Making them mingle for a moment. Growing up, we had Amish that came near the town my grandparents lived in. It was always a joy to see them and be part of their interesting world for a bit.
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I’ve never seen the Amish except in photographs, but from what I understand they are much more conservative than the Hutterites. I can certainly understand how wonderful it was for you to observe them.
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They are really incredible and their stores have the most delicious homemade goods in them. When we visit home, we still see the horse and buggies on the road. 🙂
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I got to know many of the Hutterites in a colony in eastern Montana years ago and have the greatest respect for them.
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I’ve never been so fortunate to know any of them, though I’ve had lots of opportunities over the years to buy their produce, or watch their buying habits when they are in town. We used to have a fabric shop nearby, and quite often I would be the only non-Hutterite in the store checking out the yard goods!
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Children playing happily is a treasured moment to capture for sure. 🙂
Thanks for telling about the Hutterites. I’ve seen quite a few folks in the city next to ours that I couldn’t figure out what group they were from, I knew it wasn’t Amish or Mennonite because of the colors & patterns of the clothing, but I couldn’t figure it out. I’ll bet they’re Hutterites. I’m going to read up on them. Thanks for the link.
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I used to see the Hutterites in the Fabric Store – mostly in the cotton section. Their colour and pattern choices were modest, but certainly not as rigid as I might have expected.
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I thought they were Muslim Canadians.
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No, they are strictly Cotton gals… you were talking about fabric, right?
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No, but good one… except I thought muslin was a kind of cotton…
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You are quite right, but it is usually unbleached and very loosely woven – not at all what a prim Hutterite woman would wear!
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My bad joke has turned into a very interesting conversation.
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It is great and fleeting when 2 cultures engage….I wonder what it is about your “modern” culture that they enjoy and perhaps even savor.
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I suppose none of us can truly appreciate what we have without understanding and perhaps rejecting what we don’t have.
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Always encouraging to hear about people just getting along, without the usual reflexive ridicule and condemnation for somehow being “incorrect.”
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Our cabin community is on First Nations Land – getting along with people from many cultures is just part of the culture of the community.
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