COLUMN: Carillon Flashback, Feb. 23, 1964 – Steinbach’s oldest business removed from Main Street

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/04/2022 (1112 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The building housing Steinbach’s oldest business is being dismantled and moved out of town, piece by piece in what probably is the largest recycling project ever undertaken in the Southeast.

The massive HW Reimer’s store next to the post office met an inglorious end this week, when a crew from an Anola Hutterite colony began to demolish the building to make way for a new civic centre on Reimer Avenue.

The demolition marks the end of 77 years for the store which was founded by Henry W. Reimer in 1886. Since the death of their father, three of the Reimer brothers, Henry, Klaas and Ben, have operated the store in partnership.

The store had become almost an institution in Steinbach and its exit will come as a blow to the many oldtimers who spent many happy hours “shooting the breeze” while sitting on kegs and benches at the back of the store in the hardware department.

News of H.W.’s closing last year did not come as a major surprise to people in the business community, who had seen the 17,000-square-foot store in the middle of town gradually slip from the prominence it once held in the retail trade in Steinbach.

The store would do as much as $4,000 worth of business in a day, employed 14 full and part time staff, and had no equal for size in rural Manitoba. Only a few Winnipeg stores were larger or better stocked.

Its nearest rival for size in Steinbach was Penner’s Tom-Boy with 16,000 square feet, and its nearest rival for length of service was Friesen Machine Shop which was established in 1892.

First word of the impending closure of the store came in January of 1963 when the Town of Steinbach announced it had taken an option to buy the Main Street property as well as the adjacent Kornelson School property.

The sales were finalized when residents passed a referendum in May, clearing the way for construction of a new school to replace the Kornelson School, built in 1912.

Purchasing both of these properties will would allow the town to straighten out Reimer Avenue and at the same time provide for more parking behind the post office.

Once the old Reimer building has been removed, the town plans to use part of the property and part of the Kornelson School property for a new civic centre, facing Reimer Avenue.

The Main Street frontage of the former Reimer property will then be resold for business purposes.

At the time of the sale last June, Henry Reimer was overheard to say that what the town paid for the store was only half of what his business was worth.

“The goodwill in this place alone should be worth $25,000.”

For all the people who have grown up in Steinbach, Main Street without H.W. Reimer’s will not be quite the same.