'No land for love or money': how gentrification hit the Mennonites
Greg Mercer in Dorking, Ontario
Thu 26 Jul 2018 07.32 EDT
Aaron Bowman is an Old Order Mennonite. He drives a horse-drawn buggy and lives in a modest farmhouse without electricity or running water. The dirt roads and rolling farmland of rural southern Ontario have always been home to Bowman and his family, but they no longer see a future here. The nearby city of Waterloo is expanding into the countryside – and encroaching on their traditional homesteads.
“There’s no land here for love or for money,” said Bowman, who farms and works as a bookkeeper for his church, and who has agreed to give a rare interview to a journalist. “We need new communities if we’re going to continue to raise our families on the farm.”
Later this year, Bowman’s brother will uproot his family and move eastward to tiny Prince Edward Island (PEI), away from the pull of the city that is now just a few kilometres away, but remains several centuries apart. His other younger brother is expected to join him later. Dozens of other families from his church have similarly been scattering.
Bowman isn’t happy to see them go, but he understands why they’re leaving. The survival of Mennonite culture depends on it, he said.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/26/no-land-for-love-or-money-how-gentrification-hit-the-mennonites