Winnipegger’s bond with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter helped raise roofs in Manitoba

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This article was published 09/01/2025 (271 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Winnipegger Paul Hiebert found himself sitting across from former U.S. president Jimmy Carter on a bus in Chicago more than 30 years ago, both on their way to a baseball game after a few hard days of work with Habitat for Humanity, he knew he had to ask.

“I just hemmed and hawed and said, ‘Hey, would you ever consider coming to Winnipeg in Canada and building a house?’” Hiebert, now 74, told the Free Press this week.

“And he said, ‘Well, if you take me fishing.’”

Carter kept his word and made it to Winnipeg — twice. Hiebert, a designer and builder by trade and a Mennonite by faith, was one of the people who got him here, took him fishing and kept in touch for more than 30 years after.

Carter, president from 1977 to 1981, died peacefully at his home in Plains, Ga., on Dec. 29. He was 100 years old. His state funeral is being held today in the Washington National Cathedral, before a final private service in Plains. He will be buried next to his wife, Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023, at their family’s peanut farm.

Like many across the world, Hiebert has spent time mourning the loss.

He was 36 years old when a friend signed him up for a Habitat “building blitz” and was quickly moved by founder Millard Fuller’s dream of housing every person in need. He made several trips throughout the U.S., including that visit to Chicago, to help build homes. After their first time on a site together, Carter asked Hiebert to join his team in North Carolina in 1987.

They built 14 houses together on that weeklong trip — Hiebert, in the photos he kept from the time, often sporting a hat or T-shirt emblazoned with Winnipeg logos — and he remembers Carter in many lights: a lover of folk music, a stern proponent of hard work, an “artsy-fartsy” fly fisher.

“His expectations were high. He was a measure twice, cut once kind of guy. He didn’t like to waste time. He was very competitive, really,” Hiebert said with a laugh.

“His house had to be ahead, so we had to work into the evening if required, to make sure that our roof was shingled, that we visibly were leading the job site.”

Hiebert helped found Manitoba’s chapter of the non-profit that same year, through meetings out of his father’s basement that began with seven volunteers, mostly Mennonites who were familiar with traditions around barn raising.

That number quickly grew and two homes were built on Flora Avenue in 1988.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, landed in Winnipeg in 1993, a year after Hiebert and a small group from Habitat Manitoba went to Washington as part of the Carter Work Project to repeat their invitation.

Once again, Hiebert said, Carter emphasized that he wanted to go fishing before anything, and when he touched down in Manitoba they took off to Big Sand Lake, 900 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

Their time together wasn’t exactly intimate. The Carters brought along several major donors and a security team — “We’d always go fishing, and there’d always be another boat, two guys with guns,” Hiebert joked — but Carter was thoughtful and down-to-earth.

“I’m a carpenter, handyman, draftsman, guy from North Kildonan, having conversations with the guy who changed the world,” Hiebert said.

“He didn’t expect me to know how he changed it, for good or bad. We didn’t have political discussions about (how) ‘You could have been this,’ or ‘You should have done that,’ or ‘You did this, and you were so amazing.’ We were just two workers who happened to have the same idea of what we should be doing that day.”

After three days and two nights of fishing, Carter, Hiebert, and Winnipeg’s growing number of Habitat volunteers got to work, building 18 homes in a week. The two never worked together again, but began sending letters back and forth.

Hiebert, picking through a short stack of letters from Carter he kept through the years, noted that many of his notes to the former president were packaged with CDs from artists and genres they had discussed enjoying. He’d passed along Canadian icons like Bruce Cockburn and Leonard Cohen, and always received short but heartfelt thank-you notes from Carter and his wife.

The last time he heard from Carter was in 2017, around the time when he and his wife visited the city for the second and final time in for the 34th Carter Work Project, tasked with building 150 homes across the country, including 20 in Winnipeg. The former president, who was 92 at the time, was hospitalized as a precaution for dehydration hours after construction began, but Hiebert and other volunteers continued the work until Carter returned the following day.

With his last letter, Hiebert sent along Cohen’s final album, 2016’s You Want it Darker. He joked it felt ironic compared with Carter’s sunny demeanour.

Hiebert describes today’s Habitat Manitoba as vast, diverse and powerful. The non-profit provided homes to 22 families across Manitoba last year and plans to do the same for 26 families in 2025.

“This story is riddled with people just stepping out into something that’s beyond normal,” he said. “Together, we can build a house for someone. Let’s go do it. It’s not just talk, it’s not just theology.”

Finding out Carter had died, Hiebert said, filled him with sorrow — not just losing a man who changed the world but also losing someone who had become a longtime friend.

It’s hard not to draw parallels between Hiebert and Carter’s lives, even if the Winnipegger doesn’t agree. Hiebert humbly, and constantly, downplayed his role in bringing Carter to Winnipeg and his many years of service to Habitat for Humanity. Hiebert hasn’t worked on a Habitat housing site since 2017 but now he hopes to return — much like Carter, who worked on projects well into his senior years.

Hiebert plans to follow Thursday’s funeral online. He carries Carter’s ethos with him: there’s still work to be done and people to help.

“I still have a lot to learn from this man,” he said. “He may be gone, but I still have more to learn from him about how to finish my life.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca