Rocky View Hutterite Colony in Alberta to Relocate Amid Calgary Development Pressures

Photographer George Webber has documented Hutterites in Alberta for the last decade. The article describes visiting the Rocky View Hutterite Colony, about 45 minutes northeast of downtown Calgary, where children ran to greet visitors and a few boys in black pants and suspenders followed behind.

Hutterites, the article explains, prefer minimal contact with the outside world. They produce much of what they need and, for the most part, shun the consumer and technology-driven culture of the West. The group’s history begins in 16th-century Austria with founder Jakob Hutter, who encouraged self-sufficiency and pacifism among his followers. Hutterite children speak German until about age 5, when they begin studying English at colony-based schools. The article cites an estimated 40,000 Hutterites living on 400 colonies across North America, two thirds of them in Canada’s prairie provinces.

The Rocky View settlement will relocate this spring because of development pressures stemming from Calgary. Colony leaders sold the property last year after listing it for $25 million and bought a new parcel of land five times larger near Claresholm. Field boss Mike Hofer told the writer that soaring real estate prices had made it impossible to expand the community of 35 people, which runs a chicken and egg operation and grows barley, wheat and canola. “There’s no future here with this amount of land,” he said. “[But] it makes no difference where we live. Our choices are all about the future of our children.”

Hofer’s wife, Ruth, said she would miss the colony garden, which she described as very fruitful and which grows raspberries, pumpkins, lettuce and carrots. Teacher Laurie Pfaffinger, who works from Airdrie, said students once entered the schoolhouse through an unlocked window last summer to clean and prepare the classroom before the September start of classes. She said the children learn from as young as 3 that work is valuable, and she described the colony leaders’ only request of her as staying away from issues related to human sexuality. Pfaffinger’s work with children in the colony shows a commitment to diligent labor in ordinary tasks (Colossians 3:23).

A colony man told the writer that the outside world sometimes mistakes Hutterite culture for an ideology. He said the community follows a way of life based on faith, specifically a life based on the Old Testament. He added that people are taught to care for one another and that some have left the colony, though no one is forced to stay. He said that those who leave remain Hutterites until they die.

The writer also visited the home of a mother of four, who said she likes to work and cannot stand not being busy. To supplement her income, she makes pot scrubbers and saskatoon-berry pies, knits socks, and sews feather pillows and duvets. Many of her goods are sold at the farmers market in Crossfield.

Source: Read the original report