Miriam Toews honoured in Steinbach

Internationally renowned author Miriam Toews is finally being honoured in Steinbach, the community she grew up in.

This acclaim did not come from city officials however, but is due to the efforts of local teacher, author and creator of The Unger Review, a satirical website poking fun at Mennonite customs and traditions, Andrew Unger.

Unger led a group of about 50 Miriam Toews fans to the site of her teenage home on Brandt Street to dedicate a plaque in her honour on Sept. 13.

In a June interview with The Carillon, Unger said he had used Go Fund Me to raise the $1,600 necessary for the plaque within 24 hours.

“I thought there had to be some way we could honour Miriam Toews here in Steinbach,” he said. “So far nothing has been done.”

Unger said that Toews is an inspiration for many and should be honoured.

“I just thought this writer who’s the most famous writer to ever come out of Steinbach and the most famous person probably to ever live in Steinbach, there should be some place where people can go and see and recognize her right in town.”

That place is at 58 Brandt Street, in front of Toews’ teenage home. It was also the home of her character Nomi in A Complicated Kindness. It was also described in her book All My Puny Sorrows. Excerpts of both those books were read during the dedication.

Toews is the author of nine books including the 2018 Women Talking.

She’s a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and two-time winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Toews calls Toronto home and is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto.

The home is now owned by Jeremy and Kara Hawbaker. Kara spoke about their delight in buying the house that once was lived in by the famous author.

“I do often think of Elvira Toews (Miriam’s mother) when I’m in the kitchen,” she said. “I wonder if she chose that wonderful gas oven and stove that’s still there.”

“I think about our kids in those bedrooms,” she added. “Were those mirrors that are stuck on the wall, are they from Miriam and Marge?”

Kara read a prayer adapted from A Liturgy to Begin the Day’s Creative Labours by Ned Bustard and Douglas McKelvey.

“May we hope with a quiet hope that those who consider her handiwork might sense in it some rippling echo of the symmetry which you imbued your creation, some small reflection of the beauty that whispers and shouts and sings of you,” she read.

The wording of the plaque itself was approved by Toews.

Titled The Miriam Toews House, it states: “Novelist Miriam Toews (born 1964) lived with her father Melvin, mother Elvira, and sister Marjorie in a house not too far from here on First Street, before moving to this ‘low brick bungalow out on highway number twelve’ where she spent her teenage years. Several of her most notable works drew inspiration from this house and neighbourhood, including All My Puny Sorrows, Swing Low: A Life, and A Complicated Kindness, which won the 2005 Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction. A major figure in 21st-century Canadian literature, Toews is also well known for her 2018 novel Women Talking.

A group of writers also followed up the Brandt Street ceremony by taking part in readings at The Public Brewhouse and Gallery.