1946-2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Carillon readers to take trip down memory lane

It has been 80 years since the Town of Steinbach was incorporated and the Derksen family launched the community’s first English language newspaper.

This year, readers will have the opportunity to take a weekly trip down memory lane, following The Carillon camera as it covered the events and the people who have provided “News that Matters to People” for the past eight decades.

While disastrous fires, fatal accidents, serious criminal activity, and other bad news has, of necessity, always been part of the weekly news in The Carillon, the community newspaper more often was able to share good news of the community with its readers. The weekly community newspaper has always been a unique source of news for friends and relatives living elsewhere. The subscription list included addresses across Canada and Europe, South America and Mexico as well.

More than 50 correspondents of the Carillon News, as it was called way back when, provided accolades for high school and university graduates, shared the joy of weddings, and the optimism of the establishment of a new business, or the expansion of an old one, and the pride in the accomplishments of the community’s athletes, both young and old.

Weekly correspondents included news gatherers in Mexico and Paraguay, as well as most every village and hamlet in southeastern Manitoba.

Being granted the privilege of researching and gathering the material to chronicle another Carillon “Progress Issue ” I offer no apology for concentrating on the good news stories of the past 80 years.

As time passes, people tend to reflect on the good memories of times that were very unlike the daily dose of bad news dished out by the electronic media these days.

By coincidence, in 2026, Steinbach, first a town and then a city, The Carillon, and Wes Keating will all be in their 80th year. Since 1971, with a number of timeouts to deal with health issues and a very brief career as a curling rink icemaker, I have enjoyed the rare privilege of a front row seat, or at least a chair in The Carillon newsroom.

Many of the happenings covered by the paper since joining the news staff as a rookie reporter are only distant memories, but the April 1, 1971 blizzard on my first day of the job is something I’ll never forget. And though that was a bad news day, it had a happy ending.

To this day, I still avoid Highway 23 in winter, whenever possible, for riding from Morris to Steinbach with my mentor, Peter Dyck, gave me cause to believe that my first day as a reporter, may well be my last.

Negotiating Highway 23 in a blizzard, with the passenger door open, and instructions from the senior reporter to let him know when to move to the left as the car reached the shoulder was a nerve-wracking experience that led me to believe, on more than one occasion, my friend did not know his left from his right and we were certain to end up in the ditch and freeze to death before being rescued.

Somehow, both reporters made it home in time to enjoy the sunshine that immediately followed the storm, and a day later, I had my first assignment.

To this day, I believe the tedious task of making a dozen phone calls and trying to write an interesting and informative article about the weather was a task that usually landed on the desk of Peter Dyck.

It may well have been one of the reasons he was so happy Eugene Derksen hired the newest member of the news staff, two years after Peter launched his career at the Carillon News.

By the time Abe Warkentin, the editor, arrived home from a jaunt to Russia, I was a grizzled veteran of three weeks on the job.

I thought I was being told just what he thought of my writing talent when he scrapped my article, interesting and informative, of course, about sucker dipping. But reading his column that week in 1971, I discovered there is some merit in the saying: “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.”

A.W. apologized for there not being enough room in the paper for my sucker dipping article and then included the whole thing as an item in his Here and There column, adding the Abe Warkentin touch of humour, of course.

A lesson learned. The editor always gets the last word.

There also was not room in that issue to publish a photo introducing the new staff member. The paper finally got around to publishing my photo in the Christmas issue of 1972. I guess it took that long to decide to keep me.

I hope you all enjoy joining me on another trip down memory lane.

Let’s start with an article from the man who, in February, 1946, realized his dream of producing the first issue of what was to become an award-winning English-language weekly.

After 35 years in the publisher’s chair, Eugene Derksen decided to celebrate the occasion, in 1981, by reproducing photographically the six pages that were the February 21, 1946 issue of the Carillon News.