Do we need a visa because of a previous US visa waiver overstay

Hello,

my question is regarding a previous visa waiver overstay in the US.

My wife and I are planning to visit Canada (BC) mid of September.
We are both from a country where we would normally not require a visitors visa.

Trouble is, my wife overstayed her US visa waiver by 3 months. This was roughly 11 years ago and she was 19 years by that time. She was staying with a host family and they wanted her to stay longer than the allowed 90 days. The host family supposedly took some legal action via an immigration lawyer to change my wife's status, but seemingly they did nothing. My wife though was assured that everything is fine and when she left the US after 6 months time, US border officers must have filed her as out of status - but did not tell her a thing. Needless to say she only found about it last year when she was denied entry to the US on exactly these grounds. This is very devastating as she never intended to violate any immigration laws or disrespect the hospitality of the US.

I've read some other posts where people expressed concern that an immigration officer might deny entry to persons who violated the visa waiver terms in the US. I reckon, that an immigration officer might deem that one will repeat the overstay. I cannot imagine that an immigration officer is so single minded as to not consider the circumstances - but then I do not want to take any risks.

As far as I understand, a visa waiver overstay is NOT a criminal offence in the US, but a civil offence. Hence, such a violation should not be viewed as a serious or summary crime in Canada - or am I mistaken? In that case, we would also require my wife to be "deemed rehabilitated" on the discretion of the immigration officer at border control?

I have contacted the visa department of the Canadian embassy in our country, but no response so far. Funny thing is, you cannot talk to them on the phone (only e-mail). That is they assume that every question is answered on the embassy's pages or on CIC's.

So my question is, whether we should get a temporary entry visa?
Anyone having experience to acquire such a visa because of (similar) reasons I described?

Thanks everyone.