Memories of a Landmark Pioneer

Mennonite Genealogy with Michael Penner

Germans who they thought to be very bad people.

We had quite a bit of trouble with water coming from the Seine River from Ste. Anne. It was very muddy at times with no roads or ditches. I know my dad used to say if we had a ditch every mile everything would be alright. Well, we have that now but it’s still quite wet. We had one road to Greenland which we called ‘shortzwag’. When we went to church in Greenland we always went with horses but in 1916 my dad bought a model T Ford, which we all thought was a big improvement, except when the ground was wet and when there was snow. In winter we left the car in the garage as the roads were all blocked and we used to go to Winnipeg with horses. Sometimes we made it in one day, at other times it took two. I guess time was not very important.

But one other thing I must say; our springs were earlier than now. I remember that one year we worked the land the first day of April. Grandfather used to say, if you can’t seed your wheat in April forget about wheat.

In 1918 we heard that we were going to have a lot of neighbours and it did not take very long when all the vacant land was bought up.

Usually if we boys wanted to go some place, we went on foot. A six to ten mile walk in the evening was quite alright, although we went on horseback many times.

My dad used to keep quite a few cattle and since there was lots of open land we just let them go where they wanted to but in the evening I had to go and get them. Sometimes it was hard to find them. We had a bell on one cow but when evening came they knew it would be time to come home.

Yes, in 1918 we bought our first tractor, it was a Mogul, one cylinder, 10-20, which pulled three furrow plow. Before this we used to plow our land with a walk plow and horses. However, when we broke up new land we used a different plow called a breaking plow which was also pulled with horses. If we broke up 20 to 30 acres in one summer we figured we had done very well.

I remember one summer it was quite stormy and one morning we looked out, the neighbours barn was gone. A cyclone had just missed our place but had struck the neighbor’s place. The pieces from this barn were scattered for two miles.

In 1919 we had a hailstorm and the hailstones were as large as baseballs. When the hailstones would hit the ground they bounced back about 7 or 8 feet. I and my brother Abe had just come from the field as we did not like the cloud that was coming and we had just put the horses into the barn when the hail started. I’m sure if we had stayed out longer our horses would have run away since some of the horses came from Alberta where they had been very wild when something like this happened. We had many runaways, especially when a gun was fired. I remember once my dad told me to come to a slough to shoot some ducks. My dad had four horses on the seed drill and when I shot at the ducks I looked around and saw the horses going at top speed toward the barn. They hit the fence on the way and they all fell down. We managed to untangle them but I don’t think we got much seeding done that day. ■

Memories of pioneering in Landmark, by my grandfather, David F. Penner (1903-1984), recorded in 1965.

I believe my parents came to Landmark in 1907, as it is now called. I was three years old from Linden, Alberta. My dad worked in the bush and made lumber for the house and barn. He had the barn built and the lumber made for the house. I guess it was a dry spring and a prairie fire came and burned the barn and the lumber for the house. I know that we boys used to go to the ashes and look for nails.

Nobody lived here when we came, except for Jacob and John Toews and the French people in the north. We went to the French school for about three winters. We usually drove to school with a cutter or buggy. The French people were quite friendly except sometimes at school, during the First World War, they called us the

Peter M. Penner farmstead of where David grew up, about 1/2 mile north of present day Landmark town limits, circa 1945.

The Peter M. and Maria Penner family, 1916, sporting their new car. The Penner homestead 1/2 mile north of present day Landmark is in the background. David F. Penner is the young man in the lower left. This is among the earliest photos taken in the Landmark area.

David F. Penner (1903-1984)

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