2024 and 2025 marked the 150th anniversaries of Mennonite communities in Manitoba and in this season of Still Speaking, host Conrad Stoesz from the Mennonite Heritage Archives is sharing true historical stories around this theme.
"Teams of four men were created to work in shifts, two men dug, shoveling the dirt into buckets, the other two men stood on top and hauled the full bucket out of the hole with a rope. The earth in this area had alternating strata of silt, sand and clay, not the same kind of stability as what they had back in imperial Russia, but they dug on. They dug on for days... 3 meters, 6 meters, 10 meters... they were down 12 meters, that's over 30 feet deep. The two men digging down in the bottom of the hole. Once in a while, some dirt would fall into the hole, which annoyed the men digging. Not only did it hit them, they had to dig it back out again! But one day it was more than just a little dirt..."
Listen to the rest of the story on Episode 5 of Sill Speaking, season three:
Still Speaking airs every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:15am during the Morning Show, and every Saturday afternoon at 12:15pm.
