Lögberg-Heimskringla - 10.09.1999, Blaðsíða 3

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 10. september 1999 • 3
President Grímsson, about to enjoy his jifst ride on a high clearance sprayer on.Bob Eyolfson’s farm near Leslie, SK.
Phoío: Nathan Anderson

Presidential visit to the farm
Joan Eyolfson Cadham
Foam Lake, SK
HOW DO YOU PREPARE YOUR FARM
for the visit of a foreign head of
state? “Well,” said Bob
Eyolfson, “I seldom scrub the wheels of
the RoGator.” Bob had the best reason
in the world to get out the scrub brush.
On July 29, he used the sprayer to treat
the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar
Grímsson, to a crop tour.
The President, accompanied by his
daughter, Dalla Ólafsdóttir, the Consul
General of Iceland in Canada and his
wife, the Honourary Consul of Iceland
in Saskatchewan, two aides, Canadian
and Saskatchewan protocol officers and
security, and local and provincial
media, spent a day in the Vatnabyggd
area, on a visit planned to reconnect
Iceland with the large Icelandic
Canadian community in the region and
to look at trade, cultural, and tourism
connections between Iceland and the
Vatnabyggd area. The visit was
arranged by Jón Örn Jónsson, the
Honourary Consul.
Once the historic visit was con-
firmed, executive of the Vatnabyggd
Icelandic Club of Saskatchewan imme-
diately decided that the agenda would
include a visit to a farm owned by a
descendant of one of the Icelandic pio-
neers. The farm was chosen by the
Vatnabyggd Club because of the
Icelandic connection, because of the
location in the heart of the Vatnabyggd
area, and because of accessibility to
Highway 16.
It was Bob who suggested the
sprayer ride. “I knew he’d never have
had a ride on one,” Bob said. Besides,
the sprayer can do 30 mph on gravel
and, Bob figured, they could cover a lot
of territory in the allotted 15 minutes.
While cousin Kris Eyolfson gave
the yard a Presidential once-over, Bob
spent about three hours with a pressure
washer and scrub brush, working over
his RoGator 854. Daughter Amanda
took on the inside windows and the cab.
Meanwhile, Wendy organized a for-
mal garden party with ribbon and pin-
wheel sandwiches, assorted dainties,
punch, and coffee, all served on bone
china. Jennifer, Kim, and Amanda
helped. “They now know how to make
fancy sandwiches,” Wendy said. Bob’s
mom, Margie, made the vinarterta and
Wendy’s mom, Edna, stripped her
flower beds to provide bunches of
cream and burgundy lilies to match
Wendy’s colour scheme.
During the “advance,” when an
Icelandic delegation, security, protocol,
and Vatnabyggd Club executive toured
the entire route two weeks before the
President’s arrival, Bob and Wendy
were asked to keep down the guest list
so that the President would have time to
properly meet and talk to everyone.
Bob and Wendy looked for people
with an Icelandic background, “people
who really wanted to be here, people
who would feel comfortable talking to a
head of state, and a broad age range,”
they said. With protocol officials, offi-
cial drivers, security, and media, they
figure they had seventy-five people.
It was a very unusual moment when
a foreign head of state, accompanied
only by a Saskatchewan farmer, headed
down the driveway and onto gravel in
the cab of a sprayer. “Oh, well,” said
Chuck, the chief security officer, “if we
have to find it, it’s probably the only
sprayer out there with an Icelandic
flag.”
Visitors took bets while they waited
for President Ólafur and Bob to come
back. Most of them guessed right. The
sprayer rolled into the yard with
President Ólafur driving.
“He said there was nothing in
Iceland that came close to this,” said
Bob, who had taken him around a quar-
ter and showed him various crops
including adjacent fields of flax and
canola in bloom.
Over coffee, President Ólafur
talked to the local farmers. “He’s.
impressed at our respect for the land,
the way we have cultivated the land,
and he is impressed with the way the
Canadian Icelanders have preserved the
culture,” Bob said.
Icelandic farms centre on dairy and
sheep, Bob said. The population of
Iceland is about 260,000 and they are
self-sufficient in dairy. “If we could re-
open Hudson Bay and ship feed grain
for their livestock we might be in busi-
ness,” Bob speculated. “To ship through
Hudson Bay to Iceland is a fairly short
trip.” Iceland has excess generating
capacity created by tapping the energy
of the geysers. “They grow their own
vegetables in greenhouses heated with
steam,” Bob said.
Although security was present dur-
ing the entire visit, they were entirely
unobtrusive. “They did drop in unan-
nounced Wednesday night, before the
visit,” Bob said. However, when they
took off with the sprayer, Bob said, “I
didn’t see anyone. They (Chuck, Andy
and Kathy) were fun to have around—
they finally realized this wasn’t a terror-
ist society, just a bunch of good old
Saskatchewan people.”
Please see Farm on page 6
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