Johann Doerksen was born November 19, 1924, to Abram Doerksen and Maria Loewens. They themselves were born in Oklahoma and Kansas, respectively, of two Mennonite families who had emigrated from Russia. Both families participated in the Oklahoma land rush. Abram and Maria came, along with others seeking freedom to practice their faith, to Morden, Manitoba, where they settled on a farm. John had an older sister, Katherine, and three younger sisters, Helena, Mary, and Louise. John’s mother passed on her faith to him when he was a boy and he never abandoned that faith.

John took his education in a one-room prairie schoolhouse, to which he rode a horse, and then later he went on to Bible school in Winkler, Manitoba. As a singer in a quartet, he travelled about the area, ministering in song and sermon. His farm training came in handy in certain rural communities. Legend has it that one place the quartet visited had pigs in the living room. (Now there’s a sermon I would have liked to hear!)

John told me that the tractor was the horse's best friend. He had seen many horses overworked in his day and held no romantic notions about their place on the farm. He was very compassionate about all animals and their dependence on humans. 

He pursued this calling of farming with his father. They worked hard and bought one of the first tractors in the area.

On a spring day in 1951 John went to visit his sister Helen. Helen wanted to go pick up a new immigrant woman who didn’t know anybody but Helen. When they arrived, there, waiting on the porch, hair blowing in the wind, was the most beautiful woman John had ever seen. And fortune smiled on him because this woman, Irma Rossel, was German. In church John had been preaching in German and he found now that he could be very helpful to this lonely little friend of Helen’s. In fact, over the coming weeks he found so many reasons to visit his sister!

By fall of the following year, October 5, 1952, the beautiful and tiny German refugee and the strapping Canadian Mennonite farm boy were married. Right away they got to work. The war was over but Irma’s sisters were still stuck in a refugee camp in West Germany. Over the winter John and Irma sponsored Elsa and her family, and also the younger sisters, Ruth and Hilda, who came to live with them. Ten years later, Reinhold, the young, long-lost brother, would be found and brought over by them too.

Now the house was full. Still, the work of populating Canada must continue, and the following fall, these teenage aunts got a little nephew to play with. Three other kids soon followed.

Along with his wife and family, John loved the land. He enjoyed seeing things grow, both plants and animals, enjoyed pitting his wits and courage against the prairie weather and the unpredictable realities of turning cows, pigs, chickens, wheat, barley, and hay into cold hard cash. But out in that big world beyond the chicken sheds and pigpens, the economies of farming were changing. People were leaving the land for the city, and big machines were now needed. 160 acres were not enough to make a living and nobody would rent or sell him land.

They moved to the city.

Here my story of John will stop, as it is getting long.

The above is an excerpt from John's eulogy, presented at 3:00 PM, Friday, October 4, 2002, at Horsefly Community Hall in Horsefly, British Columbia.