FLASHBACK September 20, 1963: ‘Aunt Anna’ ready for retirement at 80

A kindergarten teacher, known simply as Tante Anna to several thousand children and grownups alike, just celebrated her 80th birthday, and has decided it is time to retire.

At the birthday celebration in Steinbach, attended by relatives and friends, Anna Vogt disclosed she will retire after Christmas following the pupils’ Christmas program, a feature which has always been the highlight of the year’s kindergarten activities.

The woman, who introduced kindergarten classes to Steinbach in 1923, still teaches a class of 86 kindergarten children in North Kildonan today.

Teaching has been a lifetime career for Tanta Anna. She took a special course in teaching kindergarten classes in Berlin between 1910-13, then returned to the Mennonite settlement in Russia where she had grown up, to organize her first kindergarten. With the exception of the Russian Revolution, she’s been teaching kindergarten-aged children ever since.

Her kindergarten classes have always been as a private school, with the exception of a few years after the Communists organized the Russian schools. During that time, she worked for the State.

“I still regard it as interesting,” she remarked on Sunday, “that the inspector who visited my class never asked me whether I taught religion.”

Religion, of course, was forbidden under the Communists, but Tante Anna always started her classes with prayer and short Bible stories.

Miss Vogt came to Canada in 1923, along with the thousands of Mennonites who were fortunate enough to escape the ‘Red Paradise’ of Russia.

Anna settled in Steinbach with other members of the Vogt family and in the fall of 1923 introduced kindergarten classes to Steinbach. To her little charges she was affectionately known as Tanta Anna. Now, 40 years later, her former students still refer to the kindergarten teacher as Aunt Anna. Vogt told guests at her birthday party, she still remembers that first kindergarten class.

“It was in a small room in the Loewen Garage building, and there were between 30 and 40 children in the class the first year.”

Later, Miss Vogt built her own school under the large oaks on what is now Elmdale Drive, where she continued to teach until 1938. She then moved to North Kildonan, where she still lives and teaches a total of 86 kindergarten children, including those in morning and afternoon classes. The only concession she has granted to age, is to hire an assistant teacher.

Miss Vogt still has a remarkable memory and still recalls vividly the mannerisms of children she taught 40 or 50 years ago. After Christmas, she hopes to have a bit more time to reflect on her long and interesting career.