A fugitive flight into Canada made Saskatchewan a part of the history behind The Simpsons
CBC
Imagine this: After war breaks out, Abe claims Mennonite exemption and flees from the military to Saskatchewan, where Homer becomes a Canadian citizen.
That's not the synopsis for an unaired episode of The Simpsons. That's what really happened to the real-life inspirations for the long-running animated show before they became big, yellow stars.
Matt Groening may or may not know about his ancestors' criminal connection to Saskatchewan. If he is aware, he has never used it on the show.
"Had I known that The Simpsons would turn into the series, I wouldn't have subjected my family to the humiliation of having some of the characters named after them," Groening told the Toronto Star in 1990 during the show's red-hot first season.
A few years earlier, he had quickly sketched the characters for a meeting with producer James L. Brooks, using his own family's real names, including the nod to his father, Homer.
"Homer originated with my goal to both amuse my real father … and just annoy him a little bit," Groening said in 2010, 14 years after Homer Groening's death in Portland, Ore.
"My father was an athletic, creative, intelligent filmmaker and writer, and the only thing he had in common with Homer was a love of donuts."
The real-world Abe was Matt Groening's (pronounced GRAY-ning) grandfather Abram Groening. He was born in 1894 in Hillsboro, Kan., to Matt's great-grandfather Abraham who, at eight years old, left Russia with his Germanic Mennonite family.
Like their Anabaptist cousins, the Hutterites and Amish, the Mennonites desired peace on the North American Prairies. Abraham farmed, preached and lectured. He married Aganetha Klaassen and they had 11 children, of which Abram was the oldest boy.
Abram followed in his father's footsteps as a Mennonite farmer and scholar based in Kansas. That all changed during the First World War, when the 24-year-old was conscripted into military service.
Draft notices were sent to Abram. None were returned. He was already more than 1,000 kilometres away in Canada.
Herbert, Sask., just east of Swift Current, was a bustling Mennonite town back in 1918. It had been incorporated as a town just six years earlier, offering the promise of freedom and farmland.
Abraham thought it was the perfect place to safeguard his fugitive family from the U.S. government.
Unlike the United States, Canada fully exempted Mennonites from the draft, at least at first.
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