Lögberg-Heimskringla - 28.07.2000, Page 9

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Sérútgáfa • Föstudagur 28. júlí 2000 • 9
History
Sigtryggur Jónasson
“Father of New Iceland”
Nelson Gerrard
Historian, lceiandic National League
Arborg, MB
Without question the single
most important player in the
great drama that began with
the founding of New Iceland on the
shores of Lake Winnipeg in 1875,
Sigtryggur Jónasson—visionary leader,
entrepreneur, statesman, and “Father of
New Iceland”—deserves acknowledg-
ment on the 125th anniversary of this
first Icelandic settlement in the
Canadian West.
From humble beginnings as a farm
boy in Northern Iceland, Sigtryggur
rose by sheer initiative and ability to
positions of power and distinction in
this, his chosen land—Canadian Federal
Agent, transport and lumber magnate,
ship’s captain, editor and publisher, and
Member of the Legislative Assembly of
Manitoba. Perhaps the most unique of
his honours, though, and the one closest
to his heart in later years, was his com-
munity’s bestowal on him of the title
“Father of New Iceland.”
Though not the scion of a privileged
aristocratic family in his homeland,
Sigtryggur Jónasson was of stalwart and
gifted farm folk whose ancestors num-
bered many outstanding individuals. One
of his best-known cousins was Iceland’s
poet laureate Jónas Hallgrímsson, who
penned the famous words “Hvað er svo
glatt, sem góðra vina fundur...” Bom on
the farm of Bakki in Öxnadalur in 1852,
Sigtryggur was provided with a good
upbringing and home education by his
parents, Jónas Sigurðsson and Helga
Egilsdóttir, and as a lad he entered the
service of Governor Havstein at
Moðruvellir near Akureyri, where he
gained some formal training and much
valuable experience as the Governor’s
clerk. Iceland’s narrow valleys and the
economic and political climate of the day
became too confining for young
Sigtryggur’s widening horizons, howev-
er, and in 1872 he left his homeland at
age twenty, travelling via Scotland to
Canada—the first Icelander to settle per-
manently in this country.
Within two ýears, while working in
Ontario, Sigtryggur had mastered the
English language and the ways of this
country, and through a successful log-
ging venture he also gained consider-
able experience as an entrepreneur. The
flow of immigration to Canada from
Iceland had begun in 1873, and through
unselfish efforts to assist his countrymen
in Ontario, Sigtryggur found himself
cast in the role of interpreter and gov-
emment agent. In 1875 he was elected
to a delegation entrusted with the chal-
lenge of selecting a site for Icelandic
settlement in Canada’s West, and later
that same year he played a major role in
having the tract of wildemess on the
west shore of Lake Winnipeg formally
designated “New Iceland.”
As this area was then part of the
Northwest Territories, beyond the
boundaries of “The Postage Stamp
Province” of Manitoba, “New Iceland”
fell directly under the jurisdiction of
Ottawa and required its own local gov-
ernment. A constitution for “New
Iceland” was thus drafted, four adminis-
trative districts were created, elections
were held, and a full-fledged council
called the Vatnsþing (Lake Assembly)
was formed, with Sigtryggur Jónasson
as Governor. This honour, indicative of
the leadership he showed and the
respect he earned through out these
events, was his for the most part as long
as New Iceland s government endured,
and it was a position he filled unofficial-
ly for years afterward, both as the eco-
nomic benefactor of the settlement dur-
ing its darkest hours and as its political
advocate in Manitoba’s Legislative
Assembly until well after the turn of the
century.
During those eventful first years,
Sigtryggur was instrumental in estab-
lishing the region’s first lcelandic news-
paper, Framfari (Progress), published in
a log building on the east bank of the
Icelandic River in what is now Riverton.
Besides financing this venture to a large
extent and editing Framfari for a time,
he founded a lumber and transportation
empire on Lake Winnipeg in partnership
with Friðjón Friðriksson in 1880, thus
providing both the critical employment
and positive vision needed to sustain
“New Iceland” during and after the
painful bloodletting of the “Great
Exodus.”
Subsequently a ship’s captain, one
of the founders and editors of the
Icelandic weekly Lögberg, a benefactor
of the First Lutheran Church, an immi-
gration agent for the Province of
Manitoba, an advocate for improved
transportation in Iceland (whose efforts
led to the eventual founding of the
Eimskipafélag), a homestead inspector,
and a Member of the Legislature for two
terms, Sigtryggur rnoved in elite circles
as easily as he did among people at the
grassroots level, exercising considerable
influence and seeing fortunes corne and
go. He became the grand old statesman
of “New Iceland”—articulate, dignified,
and well-versed in politics—and largely
through his ongoing efforts, the settle-
ment he was so instrumental in estab-
lishing finally took root and flourished.
One of the clearest examples of
Sigtryggur’s contributions was his suc-
cess in lobbying Federal Govemment
and Canadian Pacific Railway officials
to extend the railroad to Gimli and
accept plans for future extensions to
Arborg and Riverton. In acknowledg-
ment of this accomplishment, so cmcial
to the area’s economic development, he
was given a standing ovation when the
announcement was made at Gimli on
the thirtieth anniversary of “New
Iceland” in 1905.
There is irony in the fact that this
great man spent his last years humbly,
his achievements increasingly forgotten
or unknown. Though he was honoured
by his contemporaries on more than one
occasion over the years, Sigtryggur out-
lived most of those who had been the
direct beneficiaries of his personal acts
of kindness and charity, and at the time
of his death at age 90 in 1942, his mod-
est funeral provided scant evidence that
here was being borne to the grave one of
the most noble and accomplished
Icelandic Canadians of all time.
Today, on the east bank of the
Icelandic River near Riverton, among
the resting places of his kinfolk, stands
only a modest monument to a true local
hero—Captain Sigtryggur Jónasson,
“Father of New Iceland.”
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