Lögberg-Heimskringla - 10.09.2004, Side 8

8 » Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 10 September 2004
PHOTO: STEINÞÓR GUÐBJARTSSON
Susan Stephenson has been the president
of the lcelandic Canadian Club of Quebec in
Montreal for about three years. Earlier this
summer she went with her family to lceland
to see the farms her grandparents emigrated
from. Steinþór Guðbjartsson listened to
her story.
he members of the Ice-
landic Canadian Club of
Quebec (ICC-Q) are like
a reflection of a family and the
family is important to Susan
Stephenson.
Her parents were pharma-
cist Robert Louis Stephenson,
bom in Winnipeg, Manitoba in
1922 and who passed away in
1999, and Una María Peturson
Stephenson, bom in Winnipeg
in 1923 and who passed away
March 17 this year.
Susan’s paternal grandpar-
ents were Hallfríður Ólafsdót-
tir Freeman and Guðlaugur
Vigfússon, both bom in Iceland
in 1881. Hallfríður’s family
farm was Lykkja in Kjósarsýs-
la and they emigrated to Cana-
da in 1887. Guðlaugur’s family
lived in Klungurbrekka in
Hvammsfjörður and left for
Canada when he was two years
old. They adopted the family
name Stephenson in Winnipeg.
His parents were Vigfús Ste-
fánsson and E. Kristín
Guðlaugsdóttir. Vigfús and
Kristín’s foster child was Sir
William Stephenson. Susan’s
maternal grandparents were
Tilly Anna Sigurðsson Petur-
son from Ytri Galtastaðir in
Norður Múlasýsla and Hannes
Pétursson from Ytri Brekka in
Skagafjörður. Tilly Anna’s par-
ents left Iceland in 1883 and
she was born in a covered
wagon somewhere between
Roseau, North Dakota, and
Piny, Minnesota. Hannes emi-
grated in 1904.
Susan says that Helga Ber-
telsen of the Icelandic
Embassy in Ottawa helped her
to fmd information that located
the aforementioned farms.
“With Helga’s information, I
found the longitude and lati-
tude of the four farms on the
website www.traveljournals
.net/explore/iceland/map and
viewed maps of the areas at
www.lmi.is. In Icelapd I used
the information to find the sites
with a help of maps boughl
there. We did not expect to find
them, but we did, and that was
a magical discovery. There
were still farms at two of the
sites, one was a summerhouse
and at one site there were only
ruins.
“I thought that if we could
fmd the farms I would have
reached my goal, but the dis-
covery only made my family
and me more curious about Ice-
land. This was my family’s
second and my third trip, and
definitely not the last one! It is
a treasure to think of your
ammas and afis but it was so
meaningful to fmd their places.
This was a quest after a hidden
treasure.”
A needed mission
When the ICC-Q was
reestablished in 1999, Susan
became the vice-president of
the club, but when David
Franklin was appointed Hon-
orary Consul about three years
ago she replaced him as a pres-
ident. “The club was reestab-
lished around the time my
father passed away. I got
involved because I felt a grow-
ing separation between me and
my heritage and because there
was not a visible presence of
Iceland in Montreal. Myself,
Norman and our daughters had
pönnukökur for breakfast on
birthdays and made vínarterta
and rúllupylsa at Christmas,
but I thought that there must be
others doing the same and I
wanted to know who they were
and be a part of getting them
together. I wanted my daugh-
ters to know about their her-
itage. It was important to me to
teach them where my family
came from.”
When Susan was five years
old she moved with her family
from Winnipeg to Vancouver,
but she has lived in Montreal
for 17 years. She met her hus-
band Norman Richer at UBC
Architecture School and they
have two daughters, Signe (17)
and Lára (15). “As a kid, every
year when the school was fin-
ished, we would drive 1,760
miles to Gimli where we lived
all summer in a cottage in Loni
Beach — with an outhouse,
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