The story of Hank Wiebe

Henry Wiebe was a child of war. Born into a close-knit Mennonite colony in Ukraine in 1936, he entered the world just as it was coming undone.

Ukraine was at that time part of the USSR, over which Joseph Stalin wielded ever-tightening control, instituting sweeping communist reforms and rooting out rivals and ethnic minorities in the terror that would come to be known as the Great Purge.

As the vise closed, Henry’s community was particularly vulnerable - their livelihood, their faith, and their lineage were all liabilities in Stalin’s Russia.

Henry’s ancestors had come to Ukraine in the 1700s at the behest of Catherine the Great, who promised them land if they were willing to work it and assured them that if they kept to themselves, they would be free to live out their faith as they saw fit. The Mennonites were devout pacifists, and as they were facing forced military service in their homeland of Prussia (now Germany), they took Catherine up on her offer. As promised, they kept to themselves, retaining their German language and culture over the generations, and living, for the most part, in peace.

But the rise of communism would change all of that. Collectivization of agriculture meant that suddenly their land was no longer their own, and what was already a difficult life became one of abject poverty and hunger. Then religion was outlawed. Holding religious meetings of any size - or merely owning a Bible - was punishable by internal exile to Siberian work camps from which, regardless of the length of the sentence, there was no return.

The Mennonite community, named for and defined by its faith, was watched closely, and men disappeared often. One night in 1937, Henry’s father, Peter, walked over to his brother Franz’ house to pray with him. A commissioner spotted him walking home. Peter anticipated that he would be next on the government’s list, so he went home and packed his things. He was right. Shortly thereafter, KGB officers arrived at the Wiebe family’s door, ransacking the house before forcing Henry’s father to lie down in the back of a truck and taking him away.

Henry’s oldest sister lovingly described her father as a man who gave good advice, played the violin and told wonderful stories late into the night. But for Henry, who was just a week past his first birthday when his father was taken, there would be no lasting memories. Henry would only ever know his father’s absence.

At the time his father was taken, Henry’s mother, Anna, was pregnant with her seventh child. Desperate times became harder still as older children were pulled from school to help care for the younger ones while their mother worked in the fields, running home to feed her newborn when her eldest daughter would place a flag in the window to let her know the baby was hungry.

Meanwhile, the world around them was descending into war, and in June of 1941, when Henry was four years old, Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, casting this small, German-speaking community into grave danger. Within a matter of weeks, Russian soldiers arrived at the Wiebe home, telling Henry’s mother she and her children must come with them immediately - for their protection. Perhaps she guessed that those who went with the soldiers went to their death. Or perhaps her intuition (which rarely failed her) was telling her that this was simply not the time they would be leaving for good. Whatever the reason, she argued: “Let us stay in our house. It really doesn’t matter where we die.” The soldiers disagreed, however, and Anna was compelled to pack up her children and leave, along with their entire village, gunshots ringing out behind them.

They had to stop at one point to allow a woman in their horse-drawn-wagon convoy to give birth, and in so doing, they got separated from the convoys that had gone before them. By the time they were in motion again, fighting had closed the road ahead, and they were forced to turn back. They would later learn that the groups that had made it through were sent to Siberia, and that the timing of that birth had saved them.

On the return trip, they encountered German soldiers on motorcycles and realized that Germany had taken control of their region. The Nazis escorted them back to their homes, but not before forcing the leader of their company, a Jewish man who had married into the community, to dig his own grave before they put him in it.

Henry’s family - and the German army - moved back into their village. There they would coexist for two years while the war raged around them. Those of them who were German by ancestry and culture - almost all of Henry’s community - were treated well. In a stunning twist of irony, the soldiers even helped them get Bibles. Henry’s mother stubbornly told the soldiers whom she was required to house that their persecution of the Jewish people would be their downfall. She was asked to stop saying such things, but she was not punished for it.

Their fates were tied to the undulation of the Eastern front, danger growing when it crept close. There were sometimes air raids from the Russian army, sending Henry and his siblings into a hand-dug bunker for shelter. Henry scarcely knew how to read, but he knew how to tell where a shot would land by the way it whined in the air.

In October of 1943, just as winter was setting in, the front came to their doorstep, and once again it was time to flee. This time it would be for good. Henry was seven years old now, and his family joined a transport of fourteen hundred refugees. They were loaded into open coal cars on a train that remained motionless. Covered only by blankets and pillows, they lay there helpless the first night of their journey as explosions rang out around them, sending clods of dirt and pieces of shrapnel into the coal car. A gasoline tanker sat perilously close to the tracks, but it was not hit during that night of shelling, and neither were they.

In the morning, the train began to move. Later that day, when the train stopped briefly, they exited the train cars and held a worship service, giving thanks for their lives, for the tanker that did not explode. In the face of all the evil that surrounded them, they collectively chose to look for God’s faithfulness. This bent towards gratitude, this intention to focus on how he had been cared for over what he had endured, would mark the whole of Henry’s life.

They continued on the train for a couple of weeks, stopping periodically to cook food beside the tracks alongside blown-up tanks and charred bodies. The journey was difficult, and Henry’s grandmother, who had already been ill at the start of their flight West, died on the train.

The train took them to Poland, where Henry’s older siblings went to work in kitchens and factories, or to dormitories where they attended school, and Henry stayed with his mother and the younger siblings in transitional refugee housing - hundreds of people packed into four rooms for nine months - before they were farmed out to homes in Polish villages.

On November 6, 1944, Henry’s oldest brother, Peter, was called to train for the German army. Henry’s mother became physically ill at the prospect, developing bleeding stomach ulcers as she faced down the reality that her son, like his father and namesake before him, would be taken from her. When she said goodbye to him, she shared her premonition that she would never see him again. Once again, she was right. Many years later, Peter’s family would, in fact, find him, but Anna would die before he made his way home.

As it had done for years, the war followed them. It was 1945, Henry had just turned nine years old, and again the advance of the Russians had brought the fight to them. This time the order to leave came too late for a train transport, as all of the railway stations had been badly bombed. This journey would be by horse-drawn cart - and would be more horrific than any they had taken thus far. Bombarded by low-flying planes during the day and shot at by Russian tanks at night, they repeatedly dove into ditches for cover, laying the bodies of neighbors and relatives who had been gunned down around them in these ditches before pushing forward.

They pressed on for ten days with almost no rest - once stopping in an abandoned barn to sleep only to be awakened by fleeing soldiers shouting, “If you sleep now, you sleep forever.”

At length, they approached a bridge spanning a large river. A guard stepped between Henry’s mother and the wagon before her, telling Anna to stop. Anna shouted, “We’re with them!” gesturing towards the wagon ahead, and whipped her horse aggressively, pushing past the guard and forcing her way across.

The bridge was then detonated behind them, delaying the Russian advance. From that time on, they were able to travel by day and sleep at night, which they did for several more weeks.

They settled temporarily in a German village that had fallen to the Americans, and many among them decided to stop running, feeling they were safe here. Henry’s mother, anticipating that the redrawing of national boundaries following the war could land this territory back in Russian hands, insisted on pushing Westward, securing travel permits for her family and anyone else who would come with her. She pressed on for months, skirting guard posts and evading Russian soldiers who had been permitted to round up refugees. She didn’t stop until she reached Paderborn, Germany, where she had heard there was work available, and some of her kin had landed.

It was while they were here that the war finally ended. The family got work in the fields of an agricultural estate belonging to Lord Baron von Brenken who lived in a castle on the estate. The work was physically grueling, and Henry’s sister, Tina, struggled visibly. So when the Baron came down to the fields one day asking if someone wanted to come do housework in his castle, the others told him to take her.

Not long after Tina started working in their home, the Von Brenkens invited Tina’s sister, Anna to come work in their kitchen, putting up both girls in a lovely, large bedroom with feather bedding. The rest of Henry’s family would soon join them. Henry’s family lived in the castle for two and a half years, developing a bond with the Von Brenken family.

Henry’s sister Anna described the castle as follows: “It was a very pleasant place with meadows and a variety of trees and flowers. There was a straight bridge across one stream and a round one across another. A path led up the hill and into the forest…a water mill stood near the castle.”

This was the first home where Henry had any memories that were not of war. It was the first place he was able to have anything resembling a childhood - to attend school, to play without threat of being shot or shelled. Always a dreamer, Hank would often be found just sitting quietly in his own world of imagination. The family was still desperately poor, and still in need of a forever home, but they were, for the first time, safe.

The Wiebes received assistance during this time from The Mennonite Central Committee, who helped them with some basic supplies as well as facilitated their lengthy process of immigrating to Canada. Their ticket home would ultimately come from their Aunt and Uncle, Peter and Lena Janzen, who had gotten out of Russia some time before the war, and had managed to build a life in the Okanagan. At great personal expense, selling their house and borrowing money from friends, Peter and Lena managed to sponsor thirty family members to come to Canada, Henry being among them.

On August 10th, 1948, an 11-year-old Henry set out for Canada along with his mother and five of his siblings. A trans-atlantic steamer and trans-continental train journey later, Hank was home in Kelowna, BC. They settled on a piece of land Peter and Lena had bought to accommodate all of the sponsored families, fixing sheds and chicken barns into cozy homes and planting gardens next to them.

The older siblings went straight to work, but Hank was able to attend school. He didn’t speak a word of English, but he followed along as best he could. When he wasn’t in school, he was working in onion fields for $0.45 an hour, helping his family make ends meet and pay off their passage to Canada. After Grade 10, Hank dropped out of school to work full-time, having landed a job learning carpentry where he stayed for a couple of years.

Most of his family at this point was working in a local lumber yard, but Hank decided to strike out on his own and go to Vancouver. He attended Bible School there for a year, and then found a position doing finished carpentry for high-end homes in Vancouver. He saw frivolous, whimsical things - like canopy beds - in these homes, and, ever the dreamer, tucked away ideas for things he would build in his own home for his own children someday.

It would turn out that Hank had an uncanny ability to get people to lend him money. It happened over and over in his life that he would pitch an idea to friends or to family and bring them, and their pocketbooks, completely on board. In truth, it wasn’t the ideas themselves that he sold, because, frankly, many of these ideas should never have worked. He sold people on himself. He had inherited his mother’s dogged determination and her ability to trust her gut. When he started something, he had every confidence that he would do whatever it took to see it through, and he could sell that confidence.

One of the earliest examples of this strange power was when he persuaded his older sisters, who had been working hard their whole lives and still lived frugally with their mother, to lend him a large sum of money. He took that money and bought himself a brand new Pontiac Grand Prix. He bought a damn car. And Hank drove that car like a demon. His sisters refused to ride with him at all in it. Legend has it he once outran a pursuing police officer in that thing. This purchase would hardly seem a prudent choice for a man of Hank’s prospects, but considering that it was in this car that one Hank Wiebe gave one Doreen Peters a ride home from church one Sunday morning in 1966, and on many Sundays thereafter, one might argue that the car was the best investment Hank Wiebe ever made.

Doreen Peters came from a similar background to Hank’s. Her parents had both immigrated from a Mennonite colony in Ukraine when they were children, and Doreen had also grown up quickly, working from a very early age. Hank knew she was pretty. He didn’t yet know that she had drive to match his own, and a scrappy, can-do attitude, coupled with an aptitude for business that would be the making of him. He didn’t know that she would become his partner in adventure, the facilitator of his most whimsical dreams, the mother of his children, and his faithful partner of fifty-five years. At the time, he mostly knew that she kept saying no when he asked her on dates, because the woman was (and would forever be) quite busy. Hank was nothing if not persistent, however, and on July 20th, 1967, Hank and Doreen were married.

Hank continued working in construction, and eventually opened a business with his friend, Neil Dyck. They did some work with prefabs and a duplex in Vancouver, but they heard there were opportunities to make it big up North, so they, with their wives, drove up to the far north boomtown of Fort Nelson to scout it out. They discovered the place desperately needed a hotel. They knew nothing about hotels, but Hank figured they could learn. They bought some land, begged a bank for a mortgage, and persuaded Hank’s brother Jake and sister Anna as well as Doreen’s parents to come in as partners and make up the rest.

Doreen’s parents, who were recently out of work, came up and lived with them, eventually buying Neil and his wife out and helping Hank and Doreen operate the hotel, even figuring out how to run a restaurant out of it. While they made a success of it, quarters were close, and working styles differed, and Hank found it stressful to be in business with his in-laws. (Rumor has it he asked to be buried in Kelowna because he still needs space.)

During the nearly ten years that they lived in Fort Nelson, Hank and Doreen started a family, welcoming first Colleen, then Janice, then Brian into the world. Being a father changed things for Hank, and he realized he wanted to raise his children near his own large family. Hank and Doreen sold the hotel, making enough money to move back to Kelowna, buy a house, take a vacation, and have a small nest egg for their next venture. The trouble was, Hank had no idea what that next venture would be. He got a job temporarily working on an assembly line, which he absolutely hated. He wanted to create, and he wanted to build. He just didn’t know what.

While Hank was unemployed, the family took a camper road trip down to California. On the way back home, they passed a mini golf called Scandia Fun Center on the highway. Hank had never seen mini golf before and had no idea what the place was, but the whimsical buildings reminiscent of the old country, the castles and windmills and neatly manicured gardens immediately intrigued him. Without even pulling over, he knew this was it.

That Sunday at church, he persuaded his friend Ernie Stinner to drive back down to California to visit the place with him. He took photos of all the buildings, Ernie standing in the photos for scale. Hank asked Scandia’s owners if they’d be willing to let him franchise the place, but they said he was crazy to try doing this in Canada’s climate. So he asked if he could use their name. They agreed, likely assuming the request would come to nothing. Later on, when they saw Hank was quite serious, they would eventually sell him plans for the buildings and even come up to help him lay the groundwork for the golf course, but at this point, they were not taking Hank at all seriously.

Once again, Hank asked people to invest in him, hitting up friends and relatives and getting three couples, including Ernie, the friend who had made the trip down with him, to go into business with them and buy some land in Kelowna. He didn’t have any permits yet, but he was anxious to get started, so Hank, still unemployed, started building castles in his backyard, inviting quite a few people to question his sanity.

Eventually he was able to break ground, build a golf course and an arcade (which he filled with some rented games), and open for business. As soon as he had the money to do so, he added an underground golf, making it an all-season attraction. The business was gaining momentum, but Hank, always driven and notoriously stubborn, once again found business partnership cumbersome and wanted to strike out on his own.

After ten years in Kelowna, Hank and Doreen sold Scandia. Ever the prospector, Hank bought a large swath of land far on the outskirts of Abbotsford, anticipating that the town would grow in that direction. They sold off a portion of the land to help fund their building costs, but they ran into unexpected subdivision fees and nearly lost the property. That’s when a friend of a friend named Ken Smith sat down with Hank one day to hear his vision for the place, and at the end of that conversation, he gave Hank a cheque for $100,000 without putting anything in writing, trusting Hank would make good and would one day pay him back. Hank would tell that story often, always amazed at God’s provision and Ken’s generosity.

Hank repeated what he’d done in Kelowna. But this time he was his own boss. It took a full decade for Castle Fun Park (initially named Wonderland) to start making money, but once it did, Hank had fun growing the place. He was always dreaming up some new attraction or other, and Doreen was always the one running the logistics to make it happen (or putting on the brakes, as the case may be).

As the business grew, Hank found renewed purpose in being able to pay forward the generosity that he himself had received at critical junctures in his life. Hank rarely spoke about his giving, but when he did, it was always with humility, awe, and gratitude, scarcely able to believe that he was in a position to do what he was able to do.

Over time, the young man with the fast car and the drive to take on the world slowed down. He found joy in cheering on his children, teasing his grandchildren, traveling with his wife, and spending time in the company of good friends.

Slowing didn’t mean stopping, however. Twice he thought his time was up, with cancer in 2002 and again in 2008, but he was lucky enough to have it detected early both times, and Hank kept right on going. He never did fully step away from his beloved Castle Fun Park, making his morning rounds into his eighties.

Over the years, Hank and Doreen would regularly host Hank’s brothers and sisters for massive family gatherings there. It was a sight to behold, all the Wiebe siblings chatting by the hearth while their children and grandchildren ran around the sprawling, whimsical park without a care in the world. Hank could have carried forward any number of things from his early life, but what he chose to carry forward was a castle by a stream with a water mill and curved bridges, surrounded by flowers and trees. A place where children could play and families could be together.

He has left those who loved him with much to carry forward: a legacy of faith, fun, generosity, and so much gratitude.

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Written by Liz Wiebe (Hank’s daughter-in-law), drawing heavily from written first-person accounts by Hank’s sister, Anna Wiebe, and Hank’s aunt, Anna Janzen (as documented by her daughter, Linda Unruh).