(Rumspringa being the time in an Amish young person’s life when they are given time to experience certain freedoms in life, part of the idea being to ensure that their choice to embrace adulthood as an Amish is really a choice.)

Well, I learned yesterday (in reading a periodical – the Sunday supplement to one of the Canadian papers, the name of which I do not remember, therefore can’t link), that there is an enormous drug-running problem among a rather surprising number of Old Colony Mennonites in Ontario.

The roots of it go back to the 1920’s when thousands of Mennonites emigrated from Manitoba to Mexico, driven out, in their mind, by the Canadian government’s reneging on various promises regarding education of their children and conscription. Dual citizenship was maintained, and beginning in the 1980’s various Mexican-Mennonite families became deeply involved in the drug trade, first marijuana, then cocaine, connecting with their confreres up in Ontario. The law enforcement around Leamington, a big Mennonite center, are totally absorbed with the problem and regularly have their lives threatened by Mennonite Drug Kingpins.

Eh?