The Bergthal Colony was a Mennonite

Mennonite

The Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after the Frisian Menno Simons , who, through his writings, articulated and thereby formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders...

 settlement in the southern part of the former Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, now Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 that emigrated to Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

The colony consisted of five villages: Schoenfeld, Heuboden, Bergthal, Schoenthal, and Friedrichsthal. The villages were settled during the years 1836 to 1852 by 149 landless families from the Chortitza

Chortitza

Chortitza Colony was a Russian Mennonite settlement northwest of Khortytsia Island and is now part of Zaporizhia, Ukraine. Chortitza was founded in 1789 by...

 Colony. The settlement was located on the Bodni, a small tributary of the Berda River about 200 km southeast of Zaporizhia

Zaporizhia

Zaporizhia or Zaporozhye [formerly Alexandrovsk ] is a city in southeastern Ukraine, situated on the banks of the Dnieper River. It is the administrative center of the Zaporizhia Oblast...

. During the 1870s, bishop Gerhard Wiebe persuaded the entire colony consisting of about 500 families, to emigrate to Manitoba.