Once home to roaming Buffalo herds, the area around Gretna attracted European settlers as far back as the early 19th century.
In 1889, Mennonite Collegiate Institute, a private high school, opened in Gretna. In 1897, Gretna and area was visited by Russian prince and anarchist Peter Kropotkin who praised the local Mennonites for their industriousness and communal lifestyle.[2]
On June 4, 2021, Gretna reached a temperature of 41.3 °C (106.3 °F), the highest recorded temperature in Manitoba since the 1980s and the earliest in the year occurrence of above 40 °C (104 °F) temperatures in Canada.[3]
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Gretna had a population of 511 living in 197 of its 210 total private dwellings, a change of -5.5% from its 2016 population of 541. With a land area of 2.71 km2 (1.05 sq mi), it had a population density of 188.6/km2 (488.4/sq mi) in 2021.[4]
