In the Cree tongue kisiskāciwani-sīpiy means swift flowing river. It was the name they gave to the largest river system of our province. Newcomers to the region struggled with the eight syllable tag and eventually reduced them to four: Saskatchewan.

The North and South Saskatchewan Rivers are 350 km apart when they enter the province of Saskatchewan at its western border. After several loops and turns, they come together between Prince Albert and Nipawin, 150 km from the eastern border. The Cree word kisiskāciwani-sīpiy has been translated into French as L’Eau vive (lively water), which is the name of the weekly newspaper serving the francophone people of Saskatchewan (who are known as fransaskois). In English, it has been translated as Swift Current, which is the name of the small city in south-western Saskatchewan where we spent the past weekend.

We were not there to study geography or linguistics, but to renew connections with other descendents of Henry and Helen Letkeman. They were my grandparents and they raised seven sons and seven daughters. Not nearly all were represented at the reunion. We were around eighty people and you would have had to multiply tht number by at least ten if all had come.

Our grandparents were members of the Sommerfelder Mennonite Church, a group which held to the German language even after they knew that most of the younger generation could not understand that language. My mother memorized the catechism in order to join the church. This was a catechism first published at Elbing, Prussia in 1788. I have read an English translation and consider it to be quite evangelically sound. I wonder how many of those who read it in German really understood it? My mother remembered that she was the only one in her baptismal group who had actually memorized it.

My mother left that church. Young people who didn’t know German never joined. I wonder, if the church leaders of a century ago could have seen the present day results of clinging to the German language, would they have ditched the language and made serious efforts to rediscover and propagate the faith described in the catechism? The river of life flows too swiftly to waste time trying to preserve something that has nothing to do with saving faith.