Peter Henry Neumann was born on November 20, 1929, the 10^th child in a family of thirteen, in Bredenbury, Saskatchewan. In his words, ‘We grew up in shifts.’ Peter was the first son of the third shift.

     Peter was three years old when the family moved to Gem, Alberta, where his childhood was spent. His memories of that time are vivid. He recalls being punished for not ‘dotting his eyes’ in grade one. This confused him because he had no problem with his eyes. He says that he finally figured this out when he became a teacher. He never walloped a kid for forgetting to dot his ‘i’s.’  In grade three he learned that he must not eat the building materials of the health house—made of biscuits, raisins and prunes—due to the glue.

     Peter’s life took a more serious turn when he was ten years old and he broke his leg. Because he was naturally bow legged, he says, he was designated as the family cowboy. His job was to bring in Joe and Baldy from a quarter section of prairie that his father leased. He mounted Ring (‘ten year old boys don’t mount a horse; they climb onto’) and ‘set off flying with both heels hurting’. His next memory is waking up in the hospital with a broken leg and his mother’s worried face in the doorway. Peter remembers his mother, Sarah, as being in no way subtle about what she wanted for her children: to accept Jesus as their personal savior. She then proceeded to tell him a story he never forgot, and which tweaked his conscience until the day he fulfilled his mother’s wish, six years later.

     And then the war came and Peter learned what it was like to be called a Nazi. School became, he says, a place where he learned about bullies, fighting, fear and hatred. Because his family spoke German, they became the enemy. He was 12 years old and his dedication to pacifism was about to be tested.

      “Johnny Fladhammer was a small kid with a freckled face and a big mouth who took it upon himself to make my life miserable.” Johnny had repeatedly challenged Peter to a fight but Peter knew that fighting was not what Pacifists did. It was not the Mennonite way.  Also, he suspected, he was afraid. But one day he gave in and agreed to fight Johnny  at recess. Peter’s friends fled and Johnny’s remained. What to do? He acted from some primal instinct and popped his tormenter square on his nose. Seeing the blood trickling away among the freckles, he says, showed him that pacifism sometimes meant that you fought when you were desperate or really mad.

     In 1945, the family moved to Sardis. He considers this move to be the best thing to ever happen to him. At 16, he realized that there were decisions that determined one’s life. God was the first. And so he was baptized. For once, he says, he could talk about it. The second decision was to return to school. He had quit school earlier to become a trapper (a couple of skunks, a weasel and a badger) and now he returned, determined to become a teacher. The third decision was Martha, the love of his life.

     Peter and Martha met when they were fifteen years old, at the youth group in Greendale church. Peter wrote Martha a love letter declaring his feelings and when Martha’s sister, Lena, read it she said: “You’re going to marry that boy.”

     Upon marrying, Peter and Martha took on a teacherage on Hardwick Island—50 miles north of Campbell River. It was a year full of adventure: a cougar hunt, a pod of whales wherein Peter bobbed in the midst in a rowboat while the locals looked on, askance, and a one-room school with more students than Peter’s training (one year of Normal School) had prepared him for. Martha gamely became his assistant and together they took on the task.

     When Martha became pregnant with their first child, Barbara Lynn, they returned to the mainland, and a new task began – the family. Peter became the father of one and then two and then three and then four daughters. (He tells of the pity he received that he was not the father of sons.) 

     A house on Portage Street became a house on Carleton Street as his career and family grew. He taught in many schools and –after returning to University to get his B.A. and then a Masters degree—became a principal. For the next 34 years, Peter was active in the Chilliwack School District as a teacher, a principal and then later, an elected school trustee. He also taught Sunday School for many years at Broadway Mennonite Brethren Church.

     Upon retiring at the age of 55, Peter and Martha set about to see the world. They traveled widely, spending time in Europe, Australia and Africa and various tropical locations. One of their favorite trips was a cruise down the Dnieper River to the Black Sea. It gave them a chance to visit the villages, in Ukraine, where their parents had lived, and to understand, in a visceral way, the magnitude of the choice their parents had made. That choice that afforded them boundless opportunities, Peter says, for which he is truly grateful.  

     Peter and Martha’s direct descendants number 13 (2023).