I’ll also note that the degree of suspicion and hesitation in the community seem actually sort of justified, in that there’s been a string of broken promises between the mennonites and the Canadian government. From Macleans:
Our ancestors came from Europe, and when they settled in Canada, they negotiated a number of promises with the Canadian government—including educational independence. When some provinces later passed laws requiring Mennonite children to attend public schools, many families, wanting to hold tight to their religious and cultural identity, emigrated to South America.
Over the course of doing my reserach, I also found a significant number of stories of under-communicated or coerced vaccinations like this, set in the mid 20th century in Canada and up to the modern day in Mexico:
She remembers a public health nurse rolling into her Mexican hometown of Durango on horse-and-buggy with a cooler of vaccines. The nurse told Meggison’s mother to line up her 12 children in the yard, asked for their ages, and immunized them, without explanation.
“She didn’t know what had been given to her kids. She didn’t have the language skills to ask the questions,” Meggison said about her mother, whose primary language was Low German.
This seems like a terrifying thing to have gone through, and I understand how it could foster mistrust and give cover to more conspiratorial thinking.
I’ll also note that the degree of suspicion and hesitation in the community seem actually sort of justified, in that there’s been a string of broken promises between the mennonites and the Canadian government. From Macleans:
Over the course of doing my reserach, I also found a significant number of stories of under-communicated or coerced vaccinations like this, set in the mid 20th century in Canada and up to the modern day in Mexico:
This seems like a terrifying thing to have gone through, and I understand how it could foster mistrust and give cover to more conspiratorial thinking.