Part of the reason why it is so intringing to read up on the history of the Russian Mennonites is because they were largely agricultural and the Anabaptist influences can be found almost everywhere in Canada. To the East, the Swiss-German settled down, which we now know them as Amish, Old Order, Old German. On the Prairies, the Mennonites of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union immigrated alongside the Hutterites; and to the West, the Dutch of the lowlands took up residence in the valleys. Most of them took up Canadian citizenship during the land rush from mid- to late-1800s.
On the Prairies, there is a joke going around about how everyone has a Russian grandmother due to the widely-accepted practice of pairing pierogi [trans. "dumplings"] and kelbassa [trans. "sausages"] for dinner. However the jab is a bit of a misnomer as most of the settlement blocks are either Swedish, Norwegian, Ukrainian or Polish at the very base of their foundation. The Russian exodus didn’t come until after the Second World War; and the bulk of it stems from the fall of the Soviet Union. So, most people are of mixed ancestry of German, Polish, Ukrainian and several others.
When people move, they tend to bring their dogs with them. For this reason, it is not unusual to find Jindos in the classifieds with the onset of Koreans immigrating to Vancouver. Whether or not the imported dogs have any staying power remains to be seen.
One of such effect is the German Shepherd Dog. They are fairly popular among chicken farmers as yard-dogs. However it is not plausible the early immigrants brought the dogs with them since the German Shepherd is a recently contrived breed at the turn of the 20th century. It is more reasonable to assume the dogs were imported sometimes in the late ’20s, early ’30s; and later caught on among the German farmers simply out of ethnic pride.
On the other hand, if one goes through the archives at Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, they will see numerous photos of collie-types from the late 1800s and early 1900s predating the formalization of the Border Collies as a trial breed. What these photographs have to tell us have vast implications.
Click to view date and information attributed to the photographs.
If there were any dogs from central and eastern Europe, they were absorbed by collies and farm shepherds as those are the only ones left standing today. For practicality, we can refer to these dogs as American Collies or American Farm Shepherds as many strains were not recognized as individual breed until about the 1940s-1950s and afterward. It is from this genetic admixture stewed since the 16th century onward with gradual infusion of dogs from all corners of the world, came fore the English Shepherd, the Scotch Collie, the McNab and the Australian Shepherds in the mid-20th century. Since it was not uncommon for dogs to free-roam and to be unfixed, we can then infer this admixture as a new landrace as the morphology and personality of the dog were maintained through selection by their owners.
In fact, if one talks to the elders, the collies were the mainstay for hunting cougars and bears in British Columbia in 19th and early 20th century. The farm dogs were also expected to retrieve ducks and grouses or run rabbits, as well as guard the homestead, hold the hog and herd livestock. They were the go-to dogs prior to the rise of materialist culture and strong sense of individualism. The Labrador Retrievers were newly imported at the turn of the century, and the Canadian kennels did not procure a litter until around 1930s-1940s. Similarly, Coonhounds weren’t imported into the western provinces until about 1920s. Since farm shepherds persist as gundogs into the 1950s, it is clear what is now popular in dog sports of this decade were once strains only the affluent kept and bred. The strong emphasis on the value of pedigree papers from both trial and show breeders threw these working dogs into obscurity; but the Farm Shepherds are all but extinct as an all-purpose dog as one can still find the occasional rare Treeing Shepherds in the Appalachias. So it is best to be wary of claims a particular breed is best for a particular function.
If there were any dogs kept by the immigrants to the New World, it would had been collie-like in appearance with the working quality of a shepherd. Likewise, if there were any brought along with them from the heartland of Prussian and Russian Empires, they were cannibalized. Resistance is futile.
This is where the journey ends. If one wishes to learn more about the farm shepherds of North America and their faucets, there is a resourceful blog maintained by Andy Ward at Old-Time Farm Shepherd weblog. There are also oodles of resources added by owners and associations with a focus on Australian and English Shepherds.
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