COLUMN: Carillon Flashback May 20, 1960 – Last minute effort fails to save historic house

The G.G. Kornelsen home, for many years a landmark and historical site in Steinbach, crumpled into splinters before the onslaught of a giant Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. Destruction of the historical house came after last-minute efforts by members of the Mennonite Historical Society to save it, ended in failure.

As the last fully preserved original Mennonite pioneer building in the area, and one of only a few in Manitoba, Mennonite historians considered the building should be saved and made into a Mennonite museum. Right up until a few minutes before the bulldozer blade crunched into the rotting timbers of the old barn at the rear of the house, Provincial Archivist Hart Bowsfield and local members of the Society were in the office of the property’s owner, attempting to obtain a “stay of execution.”

A.D. Penner pointed out that he had given any interested historical group, wishing to purchase the property, a full 16 months to do so at cost price. No one came forward with the necessary cash and it was now necessary to clean up the lot. The demolition needed to be carried out while the Penner Construction equipment was available for the job, Penner told the group.

At 1:45 p.m., Penner gave the signal and a powerful big yellow diesel machine, the largest of its kind on the market, and driven by Johnny Barkman of Penner Construction, levelled its blade against the aging structure and let out the clutch. The old barn section at the rear of the building crumpled as if the bulldozer might have been driving through a wet paper bag, for all the resistance the barn offered to the big machine.

When the bulldozer had ripped along the side of the barn section to reach the main house section of the dual house-barn structure, it ran into a few stouter timbers.

The whole house moved a full foot and lasted a good 15 seconds before it, too, collapsed. Despite a few delays while the bulldozer stopped to allow a number of local photographers to snap pictures, within an hour the former Kornelsen building lay crumpled, waiting for someone to haul away the rubble, or light a match to complete its destruction.

Probably no one was more deeply affected by the destruction than local historian John C. Reimer, who has been working since 1934 collecting items for a Mennonite museum in Steinbach. He had long cherished the hope of being able to transform the building into a museum, in which to place some of these items.

However, Reimer said that in spite of the loss of this valuable landmark, the Mennonite Historical Society will continue its efforts to establish a museum here in the near future.