Authorized Heritage by Robert Coutts

Author:Robert Coutts [Coutts, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Canada, Post-Confederation (1867-), Social History, Historiography
ISBN: 9780887559303
Google: 4UwgEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
Published: 2021-03-19T01:03:43+00:00

Figure 31. Neubergthal, Manitoba, 2009. The village, founded in 1876, was declared a national historic site in 1989 as an example of the distinctive form of group settlement known as the Mennonite street village. Remnants of the original narrow lots that fronted the main road can still be seen. Credit: Parks Canada.

Neubergthal continues to project a strong sense of place today. Although the communal system of farming has long been replaced by individual cultivation, the central village street remains the prominent orientation, as do the long narrow yards, the traditionally placed gardens, fence lines, and rows of trees.55 The local community takes a strong interest in the preservation of its cultural heritage. Incorporated in 1997, the Neubergthal Heritage Foundation works in partnership with Parks Canada to “preserve aspects of this heritage and find ways to share this heritage.”56 An important component of that mission is to restore and maintain buildings that were originally built and moved to Neubergthal during the time of settlement, especially the housebarns that were so idiomatic of early Mennonite architecture in Manitoba. New structures are integrated as much as possible into the overall historic character of the landscape. The “language of place” remains strong in Neubergthal; one can savour it as genuine and real. People live there. The village is a historic place that is not frozen in time, and neither does it attempt to represent itself as an open-air museum. However, in a larger sense the narrative of the Neubergthal community, like so many early settler cultures across the West, especially ethnoreligious settlements, celebrates the tradition of attachment to soil and place, the “shared pioneering credentials” that have helped establish the archetypal commemorative traditions and mythologies around survival and prosperity.

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