Born into a Mennonite family in an old farm house near Hague, Saskatchewan, during difficult economic times, Tena (Neudorf) Friesen spent a happy and carefree childhood on the prairies of Saskatchewan. At the age of 12, she moved together with her family of 15, to northern Alberta where she lived in challenging primitive conditions. Despite the harsh demands of pioneer life, this once isolated community of La Crete became home for more than 50 years. She married Carl Friesen and together they raised three children.
In Pushing Through Invisible Barriers, Tena Friesen takes the reader on a personal journey that captures the experiences of a vanished era – pioneering in Canada’s last agricultural frontier alongside a group of Old Colony Mennonites. Searching for meaning and purpose in a land that offered little was a test of the human spirit. By clinging to faith and hope she eventually became a part in the development of the now thriving community. The story follows the dispersion of the Mennonite people who immigrated from Russian Ukraine to Canada in the late 1800s – to Mexico, Paraguay, Belize, Bolivia, the United States and other remote areas of Canada in an endeavor to maintain their traditions and culture.