Wiebe was born at Speedwell, near Fairholme, Saskatchewan in what would later become his family’s chicken barn. For thirteen years he lived in an isolated community of about 250 people, as part of the last generation of homesteaders to settle the Canadian west. He did not speak English until age six since Mennonites customarily speak Low German (Plautdietsch) at home and High German at Church. He attended the small school three miles from his farm and the Speedwell Mennonite Brethren Church.
He received his B.A. in 1956 and then studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tuebingen in West Germany, near Stuttgart. In 1958 he married Tena Isaak; they now have three children. In Germany, he studied literature and theology and traveled to England, Austria, Switzerland and Italy.
Wiebe taught at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana from 1963 to 1967. He has been a world traveler and uses his experiences in his novels.
RudyWiebe constructed his novel in such a way to make up for the limitations in the two areas he drew upon in creating this story: art and history.
Wiebe allowed us a glimpse of the other side of the rich tapestry of history, the side with suspicious red stains on it that polite society would prefer face the wall.
Wiebe admitted that he “[was] trying to unbury a story that [he saw was] there” (Cameron, 154) from the “giant slag heap left by the heroic white history” (Keith, Voice, 134).
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