Steinbach, Man., still largely shuns the author whose stories of Mennonite life scandalized the devout. Now, a movie based on her novel Women Talking is a Best Picture nominee. The Globe visited the town to see what people are talking about
she said. “I just can’t do it.” Fellow Mennonite Jill Sawatzky, founder of the Winnipeg-based brand Tony Chestnut, designed a silky and elegant “slouchy suit” instead.
Then again, this is Steinbach. Ms. Toews once described the city as “a kind of no-frills bunker in which to live austerely, shun wrongdoers and kill some time, and joy, before The Rapture.” Memories here apparently run long. Even after all the film and literary awards, and global acclaim, Ms. Toews’s hometown still refuses to recognize or honour its famous daughter.
Ms. Toews is constantly returning to Steinbach in her imagination. “That’s where I started, where I grew up, where my identity was formed. I think of myself roaming the streets in the dark, wondering who I was, and where I was, and what was going on around me, she said. “Some of the best times of my life were there. But I was also despairing over it. I knew I needed to escape. I needed to get out.
'I think of myself roaming the streets in the dark, wondering who I was, and where I was, and what was going on around me,' Ms. Toews says of Steinbach. The novel’s title, a borrowed verse from the Book of Daniel, captures its conceit: that pacifism, a core tenet of the Mennonite faith, has also sown profound violence, conflict and pain. “I rarely thought of pacifism as meaning that you didn’t fight,” Steinbach-raised poet Patrick Friesen once said. “Pacifism meant that you didn’t argue or confront each other. So, you found all kinds of other subtle ways of getting around that.
Steinbachers dine out at Main Bread & Butter Co. downtown. About two-thirds of Steinbach's 18,000 inhabitants are ethnically or religiously Mennonite. By then, Mennonite farmers had turned the loamy, licorice-black soil of the surrounding Red River Valley into gold. It was an early harbinger of a work ethic and business acumen that Manitobans would come to associate with the community. Mennonite-run businesses such as Palliser Furniture, Buhler Industries, Triple E Recreational Vehicles and Loewen Windows – founded by Ms. Toews’s maternal grandfather, Cornelius Toews Loewen – remain some of Manitoba’s largest and most prosperous.
urban Canada. Getting Steinbachers on the record on these topics can be arduous work. Locals are fearful of offending the church, their neighbours and business leaders,“That is the tyranny – the climate of fear, of punishment, that has been created,” said Ms. Toews. “The reverberations of that are endless. That culture of control and of shaming – it’s in our DNA, like it exists on a cellular level.
“None of that is controversial anymore,” says Mr. Unger, the high school English teacher. “Well, except maybe having sex for fun. That’s probably still frowned upon.” “We had such clear lines – what was right, and what was wrong,” Ms. Penner explains. “It was almost legalistic. When someone stepped even an inch over, often we couldn’t find the grace to forgive.”
That day could finally be in sight. Late last year, city council enacted a policy allowing for honorary street names to recognize prominent Steinbachers. Mr. Unger and a group of local luminaries immediately filed an eight-page proposal making the case for a Miriam Toews Avenue. “Oh man – I would have been the first to deface it when I was young,” laughed Ms. Toews. She was “deeply, deeply moved,” by the idea, she added, but would not promise to refrain from defiling her mug if it goes ahead. She suggests Steinbach consider naming the “nuisance grounds” – the dump – for her instead.
He recalls seeing Ms. Toews and musician John K. Samson marching together with a banner at Steinbach’s inaugural Pride in 2016: “That image meant so much to me. The fact that they felt they needed to be there – that they were there without any shame, present and visible. It meant everything.”
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