Hutterite immigration

The Hutterites, a German-speaking Christian Anabaptist group whose origins date back to the 16th century, were victims of persecution that forced them to migrate from Europe to North America in the last quarter of the 19th century. They founded an initial colony in Manitoba in 1898. Hutterite migration to Canada took on more intensity during the First World War, when the United States stopped granting them exemption from military service. Many Hutterites left and found refuge in the prairie provinces, where they could practise their communal, pacifist, and agricultural way of life. They did not, however, escape new discriminatory measures; for example, an Alberta law, the Communal Property Act, restricted their access to land from 1942 to 1972.