Hard Passage: A Mennonite Family's Long Journey from Russia to Canada

In the 1920s, 20,000 Mennonites left the newly formed Soviet Union and emigrated to Canada. Among them were Heinrich and Helena Kroeger and their five children. After living for 120 years in the comfortable surroundings of a Russian Mennonite community, the Kroeger family experienced war, revolution, a typhus epidemic, and hyper-inflation in quick succession. In 1926, they left their homeland to settle in an arid region of Western Canada. Based on Heinrich’s diaries and letters, and archival research, Hard Passage speaks to the indomitable spirit of Mennonite immigrants to the Canadian West.