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George Daniel Klassen
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Engineer, inventor.
Born at Blumenort South on 25 August 1948, son of Gerhard J. Klassen (1914-1950) and Mary D. Peters (1929-2007), his family moved to a farm near Steinbach when he was young. He attended Friedensfeld School and Steinbach Collegiate. In 1966, he enrolled at the University of Manitoba and, after receiving a BSc degree, he taught science and mathematics for three years in Nigeria with the Mennonite Central Committee. He returned to the University of Manitoba to study agricultural engineering.
On 25 October 1975, he married Charlotte “Sherri” Klassen and they subsequently had two daughters. They lived in Alberta until 1977 when they moved to Bangladesh. While there, he conceived a hand-powered rower pump that enabled farmers to irrigate their crops more easily. His invention ultimately benefits more than 2.5 million people. It was recognized with a Guinness Award for Scientific Achievement in the Service of the Community (1981) and, in 2002, the Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa put a rower pump on display in its Canadian inventor's gallery.
After returning to Canada, he worked for the Manitoba Department of Agriculture until 1984 when they returned to Bangladesh for two years to help in marketing the rower pump. He then returned to Manitoba Agriculture. In 1991, when the Soils and Crops Branch was relocated to Carman, he and his family moved to an acreage near town. He served as Secretary-Treasurerer for a local Canadian Foodgrains Bank growing project for more than 10 years. He also started a small business making art from upcycled glass.
In 2018, he and his wife moved to Steinbach where he became involved with the Mennonite Heritage Village and sang in Mennonite church choirs. He volunteered five times with Mennonite Disaster Service in rebuilding communities in the southern United States that had experienced the destructive force of tropical hurricanes.
His curiosity extended to family history and he researched the life of his father, who died when he was a year-and-a-half-old, and write a book about him. The book gave his family and other descendants an accounting of his father they would otherwise not have had, and in the process, also provided insights into Mennonite life in a small, southern Manitoba village in the early 20th century.
He died at Steinbach on 15 April 2025.
“Change we need to make,” Canadian Mennonite, 3 March 2014, page 26.
Obituary, MySteinbach.
“Local engineer was a real game changer,” Winnipeg Free Press, 13 September 2025.
This page was prepared by Dave Loewen and Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 27 September 2025
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