File 176 - Gerhard Schellenberg biography

Delbert F. Plett QC was a lawyer, historian, and land developer in Steinbach. He was born to Jacob R. Plett (1908 – 1969) and Gertruda P. Friesen (1913 – 1994) in Steinbach on March 6, 1948. He graduated with a law degree from the University of Manitoba in 1972. In 1975 he married Doreen Muriel Thompson. They had no children and were divorced in 1998. In 1975, Delbert Plett co-founded the law firm “Plett, Goossen & Associates”. In 1992, he was named Queen’s Counsel (Q.C).
Despite his occupation in the law business, Plett was a dedicated historian and spent a considerable amount of energy and resources in the research and writing of the history of the Kleine Gemeinde and the Old Colony Mennonites. From 1981 to 2003 he wrote 14 books about the Mennonites, most of them about the Kleine Gemeinde. In 1988, he helped found the Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, which later was named the Flemish Mennonite Historical Society. Plett further founded the D. F. Plett Historical Research Foundation Inc. in 1996 to foster research and write the history of Russian Mennonites. After his death on November 4, 2004, the main part of his considerable estate went to the D. F. Plett Foundation.

Editor, pastor, and archivist