COLUMN: Carillon Flashback – Library reading garden memorial for teacher

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This article was published 06/02/2022 (1584 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A long-time Steinbach teacher and library board member, who died in 1998, will be remembered in a reading garden built in his name at the Jake Epp Library in Steinbach.

Melvin C. Toews spent most of his teaching career at Elmdale School, but also taught at Woodlawn and Southwood. Mary Lou Driedger, the member of Friends of the Library, who initiated the reading garden project, was one of hundreds who passed through Toews’ grade six class.

“He was my teacher, my son’s teacher and my teaching colleague,” Driedger told The Carillon reporter Doris Penner at the garden project launch.

Toews was a member of the original Friends of the Library, as well as a member of the library board for 25 years, serving the last few years before he died as an honorary member.

Toews, together with his wife Elvira, was instrumental in seeing the library established in the first place, collecting petitions and appearing before town council to make presentations a number of times.

Toews meticulously filed minutes of all the meetings that were held, produced an annual report and saved every newspaper clipping pertaining to the library.

The committee struck to work with the project considered various options to honor Toews’ memory at the library. One was the donation of a set of Canadian encyclopedia, since Toews was keenly interested in Canadian history. Consultation with the family through Melvin’s daughter Marge, who sits on the committee, decided the reading garden was most appropriate.

Melvin Toews loved to read and loved to walk outdoors, and a reading garden would combine both of these interests.

The garden has taken shape under the hands of landscaper Bill Dyck, at the southwest corner of the library. Plans call for stone paths leading to park benches and the planting of trees, shrubs and flowers. The grade six class at Elmdale is planning to plant red and white petunias (in the design of the Canadian flag) at the site in future years.

About half of the $10,000 cost of the project has been taken care of through donations by businesses, including Barkman Concrete and Diamond Ready Mix. Dwayne Friesen of Oakridge Nursery drew up the landscape design.

There is a possibility that in future, a granite sculpture may be placed in the garden, created by Winnipeg artisans, who will donate their time as friends of the Toews family.

In spite of a lifelong battle with depression, Melvin Toews was an active and well-respected elementary school teacher. After his death May 13, 1998, his daughter Miriam Toews wrote a memoir in her father’s voice.

“Swing Low: A Life”, published in 2000, was greeted as an instant classic in modern literature on mental illness.