Quiet in the Land: Peter Fast, 1932-2010

My father Peter Fast passed away in January 2010. The years have given me many opportunities to reflect on his life and impact.

He was a gentle and good person--and could work like horse. He was born into poverty in 1932 in Paraguay. His parents were pioneers, first in Fernheim and then (1937) in Friesland.

He liked to tell me that he ate manioc root for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was never sure if that was true, and it didn’t help to convince me to eat things I didn’t like. His mother died when he was fourteen; the basic medical aid she needed was out of reach. His new step-mother was a complex person who made life difficult for him and others.

Dad only finished the 6th grade in Friesland. He was more than happy to get off the school bench and onto a horse. I don’t think I ever saw him write a complete sentence in my life, whether in English or in German.

He had no interest in history, let alone reading—though over time he read the local city paper. Nothing I’ve written on these historical posts would have been of any real interest to him. Yet when the Prime Minister came to town, he and I were the ones to go out together to shake the PM's hand,

My first major “history” project was at Canadian Mennonite Bible College: “Fast Family History” in 1983 (note 1). Because he had no real stories to share, it forced me to write his oldest sibling (who recalled being in Moscow, 1929; note 2) and his older aunts, who were still able to tell me stories of their childhood in the 1890s! That was gold.

He did not understand why I would want to put so much effort into schooling, let alone do graduate and doctoral work. But he knew each kid is different, and gave every encouragement for us to follow our dream. I certainly knew I was not built to work on the construction site in the sweltering humidity of Niagara or the Canadian winter. But he loved that.

He immigrated to Canada in 1956, age 24. He always said that in Canada money grew on trees; you just had to go out and pick it. For the next four decades or so he framed houses in St. Catharines.

He was a person of integrity, good spirited, trustworthy and amazingly productive. He was frugal but not stingy; made sure we had every opportunity to earn money. It took him many years to understand the concept of leisure.

He enjoyed to drink yerba-maté on Saturdays and Sunday morning, and when I lived at home I was his “maté partner.”

He came to faith later in life—I remember his baptism and know that the time was right for him. It left an impression on me. When he and my mother married, the Elder of the Vineland United Mennonite Church recommended against the marriage because my dad was a smoker and was not baptized!

He reminds me of that longer “Quiet in the Land” Mennonite tradition, when no one really stood out in the Mennonite community. He brought stability, loved his children and grandchildren. He was happy to volunteer. There is much he didn’t understand, but he was not naïve. He was humble and wise enough not to be extreme, hot-headed, annoyingly opinionated, or unforgiving.

There is so much of him in me—though we were also very different. The older I get the more I understand and appreciate that influence.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “A History of the Fast Family” (1984), https://neu.chortitza.org/2022/03/a-history-of-the-fast-family/. This was an undergraduate paper for a Mennonite history course at Canadian Mennonite University.

Note 2: See previous post including: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/christmas-with-refugees-1929.html.

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Quiet in the Land: Peter Fast, 1932-2010,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 10, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/quiet-in-land-peter-fast-1932-2010.html.

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