Museum exhibit traces century of MCC work

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There’s a thrift shop at Mennonite Heritage Village, but you’ll have to resist the urge to handle the merchandise.

The meticulous replica is part of MCC 100 Years, a new exhibit that opens today in MHV’s Gerhard Ens Gallery.

The exhibit traces the multi-faceted history of Mennonite Central Committee, an organization, familiar to many here in the Southeast, that carries out relief, development, and peace work around the globe.

“A century of an organization is no small feat,” Andrea Dyck, the museum’s senior curator, said.

Some artifacts in the exhibit were drawn from the museum’s own collection. Others were contributed by MCC Manitoba and members of the public who served with MCC.

“We have some artifacts telling the MCC story in our collection, but we don’t have a ton,” Dyck explained.

The exhibit provides a chronological overview of MCC’s beginnings before diverging into themes—Water, Food, Livelihoods, Thrift Shops, Refugees, and Reconciliation— intended to convey the organization’s breadth today.

“Hopefully what people will get from this part of the exhibit is seeing how many hands MCC has in various areas,” Dyck said.

Quilt squares were employed as a visual motif to tie the exhibit together.

MCC was founded in Chicago on July 27, 1920 to provide coordinated humanitarian relief to Mennonites enduring famine and war in the Soviet Union.

The era is recalled with one of the largest items ever displayed in the gallery: a restored Fordson F tractor. MCC sent 50 such tractors to Ukraine in 1922 and 1923 to help with the cultivation of cropland. Dyck said many plough horses starved or were eaten during the famine.

By 1922, MCC was feeding 43,000 people per day.

“It was no small start to a fledgling organization,” Dyck said.

Following the Second World War, MCC helped displaced Mennonite living as refugees in Germany escape repatriation to the Soviet Union.

MCC housed and fed the Mennonites while advocating on the international stage to help them find new homes overseas. Eventually, more than 10,000 Mennonites were relocated to Paraguay, Brazil, and Canada.

“The controversial part is that…they downplayed the allegiance some Mennonites had to Germany during the war. This was done to convince the International Refugee Organization they were not enemy collaborators, but legitimate refugees in need of assistance,” Dyck said.

During this era, MCC encouraged North Americans to send “gift parcels” containing basics overseas. One of the weathered cotton sacks is included in the exhibit.

A famine in Bangladesh in 1974 prompted Canadian farmers to form the MCC Food Bank to distribute surplus grain overseas. The program was later renamed the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Canned goods and a replica of MCC’s mobile meat canning program also demonstrate the organization’s commitment to feeding the hungry.

MCC’s work to provide clean drinking water to developing countries is illustrated with a rower pump, an innovative inclined well pump designed by George Klassen of Steinbach.

Ten Thousand Villages, which supports artisans and craftspeople, are also highlighted.

The chain of stores grew to become the largest fair-trade organization in North America, but had humble beginnings: MCC worker Edna Ruth Byler began selling handicrafts out of her car in 1946.

“Somebody has one idea, and they run with it, and it changes everything,” Dyck observed.

Dyck also included quilts, baled for shipment, in the Livelihoods section.

“There’s nothing better than a quilt to signify the generational impact of the work that MCC has done.”

COVID-19 nixed a blanket-making area Dyck had planned to include.

To showcase the initiative that has become synonymous with MCC, Dyck painstakingly recreated the wood-panelled interior of an early thrift store, complete with period-specific items sourced from the vintage section of the North Kildonan MCC thrift shop.

“I got the ugliest 1970s paint colours I could find,” she joked.

Four women in Altona established the first MCC thrift shop in 1972, after MCC decided it was more efficient to send funds, rather than material aid, overseas. Steinbach’s store opened a month later. Soon there were more than 50 MCC thrift shops across North America.

“It’s an idea that just took off,” Dyck said, “and it highlights women’s’ contributions to MCC, especially at a time when they wouldn’t have been in formal leadership in organizations like this or in the church or in the community.”

But telling this part of MCC’s story proved challenging.

“Trying to come up with photographs of the first thrift shops was really difficult,” Dyck said. “Even MCC doesn’t have a good photographic record of this history.”

The exhibit also documents MCC’s pioneering work in private refugee sponsorship.

“Our model here in Canada has been seen by other countries as something to mirror,” Dyck said.

The exhibit concludes with an overview of MCC’s Native Concerns program, now called Indigenous Neighbours, established in 1974 to educate Mennonite settlers about the oppression of Indigenous groups and to build bridges between the two groups.

Dyck said this section of the exhibit is meant to help visitors “understand reconciliation is a peacemaking activity.”

“A lot of Mennonites, I don’t think, would see themselves as being part of that colonial project that the Canadian government undertook in the late 19th century, but the fact is that the territory we settle on had been cleared by Treaty 1.”

Gary Dyck, MHV’s executive director, said MCC 100 Years is a tangible way for the public to encounter a century of humanitarian work.

“It’s one thing to read it in a book, but this provides an experience where people can immerse themselves in the history.”

Dyck hopes the new addition will attract more than their regular patrons.

“There’ll be a new visitor base coming, people that have served with MCC or given to MCC that have an interest in it, not necessary in the museum,” he said.

“It’ll also be a nice touching point for the Mennonite community and non-Mennonite community to connect and say, ‘Hey, we need to keep helping vulnerable people in the world.’”

MCC 100 Years runs until April 1, 2021.

 

-with files from Nicole Buffie