Lögberg-Heimskringla - 19.04.1991, Page 4

4 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 19. apríl 1991
Gimli women set the pace
lcelandic Suffragettes were right in the frent lines
by Roger Newman
While they are less famous than
Nellie McClung, four Gimli residents
laid the groundwork for Manitoba
women to obtain the right to vote, a
landmark event whose 75th anniver-
sary is being celebrated across the
province this year.
The names of Margaret Benedicts-
son, Kristjana Thordarson, Thorbjorg
Sigurdson and Steina Stefanson will be
prominently mentioned May 12 when
the provincial government marks
Manitoba Day with a tribute to the
suffragettes who won the parliamentry
franchise for Manitoba women.
During celebrations atThe Forks in
Winnipeg, govemment officials will re-
call that Manitoba was the fírst Cana-
dian province to grant women the right
to vote and hold office. The historic bill
was passedjanuary28,1916, butmore
than 25 years before that Gimli women
of Icelandic descent had begun the
fight for suffrage which is defined by
Webster as “one’s voice given the right
to vote”.
The most prominent of the Gimli
four was Margaret Benedictsson who
was born in Iceland in 1866andorgan-
ized the fírst women’s suffrage associa-
tion in Manitoba in the 1890s. She was
also the editor and principal writer for
Freyja, the only women’s suffrage
magazine in Canada, which appeared
monthly in Manitoba from 1898 to
1910.
Benedictsson and her printer hus-
band Sigfus lived at various times at
Hecla Island, Gimli, Selkirk and Win-
nipeg, all places where the erstwhile
editor organized groups of Icelandic
women to lobby for the right to vote.
One of these groups — Sigurvon —
was founded in 1910 in Gimli where
Benedictsson teamed up with
Thorbjorg Sigurdson whose husband
Johannes was the town’s first mayor.
Benedictsson ultimately moved to
Blaine, Washington, and out of Mani-
toba history, but Sigurdson only went
as far as Winnipeg where she died at 99
in 1971. HerdaughterStefania“Bunny”
Sigurdson, 89, is still a Winnipeg resi-
dent and vividly recalls her mother’s
battle for women’s equality.
“The Icelandic women were in the
forefront of the suffrage movement be-
cause they were very independent by
nature,” Bunny Sigurdson said in an
interview. “They were the first into the
fray and I think they inspired others
who later won the vote for Manitoba
women.”
Attitudes toward women at the turn
of the century were far different than
theyare today. As late as 1914, Manito-
ba’s Conservative Premier Sir Rodmond
Roblin was saying that he did not be-
lieve women should dirty themselves
in the political arena. Men of the time
thought this view was chivalrous. They
argued that female suffrage would be a
waste of time because most women
would vote the same as their husbands.
And they worried that if an independ-
ent-minded woman voted differently,
it would be a cause of dissension in the
home.
Warped logic of this kind did not
appeal to Kristjana Thordarson and
Steina Stefanson who are featured
along with Benedictsson and Sigurdson
on a current Manitoba Govemment
poster marking the 75th anniversary of
women obtaining the vote.
Stefanson was co-sponsor of a 1910
petition for women’s suffrage which
was widely circulated in Manitoba’s
Icelandic communities. Later, she
moved from Gimli to Winnipeg where
she married Dr. N. J. Sommerville and
enjoyed a successful career as a re-
porter for the Winnipeg Free Press.
Kristjana Thordarson fought her
battle for equality by being the first
woman elected to the Gimli School
Board and one of the first female trus-
tees in Manitoba. She was married to
Bergthor Thordarson, Gimli’s mayor
from 1916 to 1919, andthefamilylived
at 83 First Avenue in a home that is still
occupied today.
Her grand-daughter Kristjana
Stefanson, 68, of Gimli retains many
happy memories of childhood visits to
the Thordarson home. “My grand-
mother was a very decided lady whose
beliefs and thinking were much ahead
of her time, ” Stefanson said in an inter-
view. “Realizing that women should
have as much right to vote as men, she
worked hard toward that goal. But
whatever she might have pursued if she
had lived at a later time, I know that her
home and family would have always
come first.”
Stefanson says that as children, she
and her sister Lara were frequently on
the doorstep of their “loving and un-
derstanding” grandmother. “It was a
happy home where games were played
and sweets were enjoyed,” she says. “I
relive those times whenever I pass the
house on First Avenue.”
Kristjana Thordarson has a legacy
in Gimli in the form of Stefanson and
her two children, Gordon Stefanson
and Sharon Tenbrinke, and six great-
great grandchildren. Bunny Sigurdson
still has a cottage on Third Avenue and
nephew Johannes Sigurdson, who
works for Air Canada in Winnipeg, has
a summer home at Loni Beach. But
most of the other descendents of the
Gimli suffragettes seem to have severed
their ties with their roots.
Still, they must be proud of the four
Gimli women who paved the way for
the 1912 founding of the Manitoba
Political Equality League which made
the final push to obtain the vote for
women. “Icelandic women played an
active and, for a time, a prominent role
in the fight for equal voting rights,”
says an offícial Manitoba history.
The political equality league was led
by such prominent Winnipeg women
as Agnes Munro, author Nellie
McClung and joumalists Cora Hind
and Lillian Beynon Thomas. With
McClung at the head, a delegation of
60 men and women from the league