Treaty 1 and the East Reserve After the
Assiniboine and
Cree First Nations left the region in the 1820s, the
Anishinabe hunted in and moved seasonally through the area on their way to the burial grounds in the
Whiteshell. A bison trail ran alongside the Steinbach Creek on the far eastern edge of the Canadian prairies, a trail that was used by First Nations people for a number of years after settlement. In 1873, the Mennonites sent delegates to North America to investigate and negotiate terms of immigration. After touring a number of locations in North America, many of the delegates decided to move their people to
Kansas, however, the more conservative groups were persuaded to settle in the new Canadian province of Manitoba, because the Canadian government was more generous in their guarantees of religious freedom. In 1873, a
Privilegium was signed between the Mennonite delegates and the Canadian government, and a year later Mennonites started to arrive in the region. The document guaranteed, among other things, military exemption, freedom of religion, private schools, and land, known as the
East Reserve. In the year following the signing of the Privilegium, Mennonites from the
Bergthaler and
Kleine Gemeinde groups immigrated to Manitoba, aided by Ontario Mennonite
Jacob Yost Shantz, and founded dozens of villages in the East Reserve.
Early history (1874–1909) Steinbach's original 18 Mennonite settler families were almost entirely of the new Kleine Gemeinde sect of Mennonites, a small conservative minority known for being gifted farmers. They left the Borosenko colony (a newly-formed offshoot of the larger
Molotschna (or Milk River) colony) in Ukraine and arrived in Canada late in the summer of 1874. This left the community without religious leadership for some time. After a plague of
grasshoppers destroyed the crops in 1876, residents of Steinbach met in Blumenort to discuss the possibility of migrating to
Minnesota or
Nebraska. However, 60-year-old matriarch Elizabeth Rempel Reimer persuaded the group to stay in Steinbach, a stirring and historically significant speech which signified the important role of women in the community and resulted in Steinbach's continued survival as a community, unlike dozens of other East Reserve villages which have since disappeared. The death of Rev. Barkman left Steinbach without religious leadership for a number of years, creating a vacuum that made the villagers receptive to
John Holdeman when he visited in 1881. After Holdeman's visit, many locals from the Kleine Gemeinde joined his new church,
Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. This was the first of many
schisms and revivals in Steinbach and eventually the town would be known for having dozens of churches, many of them different variations of Mennonite, a dynamic that has shaped the city's character. In 1911, the Kleine Gemeinde church, who had met in the village school up until this point, constructed a building on the south end of the village. Entrepreneurs took advantage of the business opportunities at the time and several small businesses sprang up. Many other important and large businesses developed as well, helping to establish Steinbach as a regional service centre for the area. By 1915, Steinbach had grown to a population of 463 and continued to attract immigrants from Europe. After the First World War, Borden banned Mennonites and other pacifists from immigrating to Canada. Moscow Road, which had been pejoratively named to refer to the Russlander Mennonites who lived there, was later renamed McKenzie Avenue after the Prime Minister who had allowed them to come to Canada as refugees. In 1931, local man Abraham Loewen founded the Loewen Funeral Chapel, the first funeral home in southeastern Manitoba, which decades later was taken over by his son
Ray Loewen, who built the company into the Loewen Funeral Group, before its eventual downfall as depicted in the 2023 film
The Burial. In 1941, the
Steinbach Credit Union opened, partially in response to the difficulty in obtaining loans from the larger banks. In 1958,
Leonard Barkman was elected mayor and served until 1970. In 1960, the Kleine Gemeinde church building, which by then was called the
Evangelical Mennonite Conference, burned to the ground. The same year, the last traditional Mennonite
housebarn in Steinbach was torn down by A.D. Penner. In 1970, the year of Manitoba's centennial, Steinbach was visited by Queen
Elizabeth II and
Prince Charles. In May 1980, Steinbach's first shopping mall, Clearspring Centre, opened on the north end of the community. The mall was named after the historic English and Scottish settlement in the area. In fall of 1982, Steinbach drew considerable attention after the school board cancelled a scheduled rock concert in the local high school by
Queen City Kids. Hundreds of students staged a protest as a result of the cancellation. The incident was alluded to years later in the work of novelist
Miriam Toews. After the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989, Aussiedler Mennonites, who had remained in the Soviet Union (particularly
Siberia and
Kazakhstan) throughout much of the 20th century, or who had resettled in Germany during the 1970s, began to immigrate to the area and continued to do so through the 1990s and early 2000s. Some of these people had converted to the Baptist church during the decades in the Soviet Union. Over all, Steinbach's growth slowed somewhat during the 1980s and early 1990s in comparison to the rate of growth in decades before or since. In 1996, Les Magnusson was elected mayor of Steinbach, the first non-
ethnic Mennonite to hold that position. Magnusson was a vocal opponent of attempts in Steinbach to allow liquor sales.
Contemporary era (1997–present) With Les Magnusson as mayor, Steinbach was incorporated as a city on 10 October 1997. It was rebuilt less than a year later with the assistance of Dutch millwrights. Steinbach attracted prominent attention in 2004 when Mennonite author
Miriam Toews, who was born and grew up in Steinbach, published her novel
A Complicated Kindness. The book became a bestseller, exploring a fictionalized town modelled after Steinbach. It won the 2004
Governor General's Award for Fiction, and was selected as the 2006 book for
Canada Reads, the first book by a female writer to be chosen. Steinbach continued to grow during Magnusson's tenure and, after the election of Chris Goertzen as mayor in 2006, became one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada. Steinbach gained national recognition from such newspapers as
The Globe and Mail, which described the city as an immigration "hotbed" of Canada and a model for immigrant integration. parade in 2016 During March 2013, the city gained national attention when several community members, such as the Southland Community Church and
Steinbach Christian High School expressed opposition to provincial Bill 18, an anti-bullying bill that would require the accommodation of
gay-straight alliance groups in schools, including faith-based private schools. On 13 September 2013, Bill 18 passed without amendments. Partially in response to this issue, the city's first
Steinbach Pride parade was held in 2016. While initially expecting about 200 people, approximately 3,000 people attended the event. This was brought about in part by the fact that not a single elected official from the area attended or endorsed the event. In September 2025, the Pride march in Steinbach was cancelled because of threats of violence posted online and a lack of security budget from the local Pride organization. In October 2025, a smaller event was held without promotion to ensure its safety. Ongoing rapid growth meant that the city needed more land and space in order to sustain itself. This led the city to negotiate an annexation of from the Rural Municipality of Hanover in 2015, the first major annexation for the city since 1979. Steinbach was affected by the
COVID-19 pandemic beginning in August 2020, with the virus affecting community members, several businesses, and eventually an outbreak at Bethesda Place, the personal care home at
Bethesda Regional Health Centre. By November 2020, Steinbach briefly had the highest per capita rate of Covid infections in Canada. The Bethesda Regional Health Centre was reportedly overwhelmed and out of beds on November 13, 2020, with patients having to be triaged in their cars. Beginning in the 2020s, Steinbach became significantly more multicultural with 21% of the population being immigrants, many from
The Philippines,
India,
Ukraine, and
Nigeria.
Liquor and cannabis licence referendums Despite being prohibited by local churches, Steinbach had alcohol sales, including beverage rooms, throughout the early 20th century. In 1950, however, Steinbach citizens voted to prohibit all liquor sales in the community, although a drinking establishment on Main Street called The Tourist Hotel was allowed to remain, until it closed in 1973. In February 2008, Steinbach Council voted in favour of opening a liquor store in the city. Eventually, the first Liquor Mart in Steinbach opened in March 2009, on
PTH 12 North, operated by the
Manitoba Liquor Control Commission. The most recent public vote was held in October 2011. In this referendum, voters agreed to accept, by a large margin, the following three licences: beverage rooms, cocktail lounges, and private club licences. In 2018, after the Canadian government legalized
cannabis, Steinbach residents voted to deny the licensing of retail cannabis stores in the city. ==Geography==