Anyone who has flown the Minneapolis to Winnipeg Flight on a moonlit winter night has been favoured with a fabulous view of Steinbach: the lights of the diagonal streets in the centre highlighted by orange globes around the square mile, glistening pristinely like a giant diamond on the snow driven prairie.

In 1985 the “Shunning” vaulted local poet Patrick Friesen into national renown. The popular drama also left fellow Canadians with the impression of Steinbach as a community of simpletons ruled by bigoted Bishops whose major form of entertainment on cold winter nights was to isolate, marginalize and drive to suicide any independent thinking parishioners.