“We got the house and we never really looked back" - Gloria Penner, Habitat’s first Canadian homeowner

In 1985, Ernie and Gloria Penner were living in an apartment in the small agricultural town of Winkler, Manitoba, close to the U.S. border. For the couple raising a young family, the average home prices of the time — about $60,000 in Manitoba — seemed completely out of reach.

That would soon change.

That year, a group of local businessmen was travelling from Winkler to another small community 3,000 km away — Americus, Georgia — to learn about a new organization that was building homes for families in need. Habitat for Humanity International had been established a decade earlier with a unique vision of “partnership housing” — a model where people in need of adequate shelter would work side by side with volunteers to build simple, decent houses. New homeowners’ house payments would be combined with no-interest loans to create “The Fund for Humanity,” which would then be used to build more homes.

Bringing a “common sense” solution to Canada

At the same time, Dave Penner (no relation to Ernie and Gloria) had also discovered Habitat through Manitoba’s close-knit Mennonite community. In 1985, he’d travelled from Winkler to help build a Habitat home in Florida after being inspired to take a winter trip where he could also be of service. “I was running five businesses at the time,” Dave remembers. “I wanted a break, but I didn't want to just go lie on the beach. I wanted to be useful."

Upon return to Winkler, Dave shared his experiences with the local business group who’d travelled to Georgia. In a town of less than 10,000 people, they all saw value in Habitat’s “common sense” approach as a way to support the town’s many residents who held well-paying jobs but still didn’t qualify for a conventional mortgage.

They invited Habitat’s founder, Millard Fuller, north of the border, and in meetings in a local church and a local restaurant, Fuller shared the inspiring origins of Habitat’s work bringing together interracial communities in the American South to support neighbours and build communities.

Canada’s first chapter of Habitat for Humanity was born.

“It's not a handout, it's a hand up, and that makes so much sense.” - Dave Penner

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The group rallied local business owners and volunteers to raise $35,000 and construct Canada’s first Habitat for Humanity home. Following a six-month application process, Ernie and Gloria Penner and their children moved in.

It was a transformational time for the family, Gloria remembers. “We got the house and we never really looked back,” she says. For Ernie, a home offered his family stability: “We didn’t have a lot of things other people had growing up, but we had a home and our own backyard.” Proud ambassadors for Habitat, Ernie and Gloria would go on to donate over 1,000 hours of labour into building other Habitat homes.

For Dave, his contributions in Winkler were only the beginning of his commitment to Habitat. He would take part in several of Habitat’s work projects named after former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, starting in Mexico in 1990, where he helped build 100 homes in five days. “We got up at 4:30 in the morning,” he remembers. "We worked all day, and we worked super hard.” In 1993, alongside his wife and teenage daughters, he devoted another five days to a Jimmy Carter work project closer to home in Winnipeg.

In total Dave Penner has helped build a remarkable 171 Habitat homes.

Ernie and Gloria Penner’s son, Tim, went on to raise a family of his own in the Habitat house that he grew up in.

One of thousands of families whose lives have been changed through a partnership with Habitat. As for Winkler – the chapter has expanded to nearby Morden, and is now one of X chapters in Habitat for Humanity Manitoba. Forty years on, a group of local residents continues to rally community volunteers and donors to provide another working family with the opportunity to build their dreams on the foundation of their own home.