Most of us associate the city of Chortitza with the ‘great oak.’ Once a massive tree in the center of the village, it is often depicted sheltering children on its lower branches with young mothers and baby carriages resting in its shade, or lovers circling it for good luck. Surrounded by grass and flowers in a park-like setting, it evokes stories from the past.

The first scouts to the region from Prussia are said to have wintered beneath it. Later, it became the meeting place, the focal point of village life as population grew, and has become mythic in proportion.

According to N. J. Kroeker’s First Mennonite Villages in Russia, it shaded two acres with its mighty branches in full leaf, and a sense of “reverence and peace could be found beneath this tree, which cast a spell like the biggest cathedrals in Europe.” (Kroeker, p. 194) The tree sheltered wedding receptions, family celebrations and numerous large gatherings.

Formerly on land owned by the Gerhard Braun family, the tree and its surrounding acreage became part of a public park after the 1930’s.

Although the tree is called ‘The Hundred Year Old Oak’, Soviet scientists estimate it to be 700 years old. In Henry Pauls’ A Sunday Afternoon, the artist entitles his painting of the tree, “The 700 Year Old Oak, Chortitza.”

The tree so captured the imagination of the villagers at one point, that Kornelius Hildebrandt constructed a wooden collar which he fashioned around the oak’s trunk, with coil springs and a sliding pointer and scale which measured its yearly expansion.

Over the last decades, visitors to the Chortitza homeland have brought back many pictures of this monumental tree. They have also quietly brought back acorns and seedlings kept alive in the farthest corners of overstuffed suitcases, wrapped securely in moistened handkerchiefs.

Some of these have survived and are being enjoyed in the flowerbeds and backyards of Mennonite travelers living in the Fraser Valley. Three healthy trees grow in one yard on Sumas Prairie alone, and ‘grand-parented’ seedlings are being grown by another local historian.

In 1971, Mennonite Life states “The big oak tree is a living specimen of an exciting past….having withstood drought, flood, malicious caterpillars and the axe of that enemy of nature, man.” Unfortunately, those of us who have visited this tree recently have witnessed its destruction. One green branch remains on a bare broken skeleton. A former Vernon orchardist believes that its death can be attributed to the fact that the trunk was covered up to the depth of several feet with earth during the park’s renovation.

Perhaps the demise of the magnificent oak parallels the demise of our people on the rolling steppes of distant memory. Perhaps the flourishing younger trees on the Sumas Flats represent the fruition of hope of our forebears who came to this country.