Taber swear law targets Mennonite ‘bunchers’
‘If I were to swear right now, I wouldn’t get a fine?” I ask.
I’m sitting in the squat brown police station in the Alberta town of Taber with Police Chief Alf Rudd.
We’re in his office, its walls decorated with framed prints and tapestries — mementos of his 45 years as an officer, most spent in violent and dysfunctional parts of the province, places far, far tougher than Taber.
“Please help me,” he says. “Please help me. Let’s be a shining example of that not happening in Taber. Cuss me.”
“S---,” I say. “Damn. And there you have it.”
Chief Rudd does not issue a fine — of course, we are inside, not outside. But he promises to give me a pass if I need to belt out a few in the parking lot.
“Someone who swears, they’re not going to get charged and they’re not going to get a ticket for swearing.” he explains. “It’s the person who is swearing at everybody, standing on the street corner and having a swearing fit, an obscene language fit, a blasphemous fit — whatever you want to call it — and, again, causing a disturbance. That’s when we would go down.”
The no-swearing edict is one of the eminently reasonable pillars of Taber’s new bylaw, he says. Among other things, it forbids residents in the town of 8,000 from spitting, defecating in public, swearing and gathering in groups of three or greater when there is a high likelihood of causing a ruckus.
And, even though the police chief says most of the new community standards have been “copy and pasted” from similar codes in other small Alberta towns, the changes have been denounced by lawyers and civil rights experts.
They claim the prohibitions will not survive a court challenge. Social media are in full revolt, with one Edmonton clique trying to raise money for a party.
Despite that, many townsfolk said they trust the police to uphold the law reasonably: they hope it will help curb Taber’s reputation as a Sunday hub for rowdy Mennonite teenagers.
“These are standard, common decency regulations you’ll find in other communities,” the chief says. “The real news story here would be if you and your family went down to the park to picnic and the family next-door to the table to you were a bunch of teenagers with their dogs and their skateboards, and using very bad language, and you call here because that’s disturbing your family. And we say, ‘Oh, this is Taber and that’s OK here.’ That’s a news story.”
Under the bylaw, passed by council last month, fines range from $75 to $250.
But resident Brenda Pyne says the firestorm of controversy and attention is over the top. “If you don’t live here, you do not have enough information to comment on it,” she says.
“Maybe (the bylaw) needs a little tweaking, but it comes from a good place. I don’t know anything about it being aimed at any group of people or anything.”
However several residents said one group had earned a bad rap. On Wednesdays and Sundays after church, young Mennonites gather in the parking lots of the skating rink and the Walmart. They are easily identifiable by their long skirts, formal pants and head coverings
Most are polite and respectful. But some bring alcohol and like any other group of teenagers with a bottle, sometimes things get out of hand.
Mennonites are a group of Anabaptists similar to Amish and Hutterites. They escaped centuries of religious persecution in Prussia and many settled in the Prairies. At the turn of the century, many relocated to Mexico to evade forced schooling.
Over the past 20 years, they have returned to Canada in droves, largely re-settling on the Prairies. For the most part, the influx of Mexican Mennonites has been a boon for Taber, Chief Rudd says.
“They bring a work ethic that’s second to none,” he says. “Farm and processing couldn’t survive without them. But they have a tradition in their culture of youth gathering. They call it ‘bunching.’”