Lögberg-Heimskringla - 19.11.2004, Blaðsíða 2

2 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 19 November 2004
Enough family
for a haseball team
PHOTO: DAVID JÓN FULLER
Elin McKitrick’s positive outlook has allowed her to overcome many obstacles. “I love people and I love Iife,” she says.
David Jón Fuller
WlNNIPEG, MB
The view from the seven-
teenth floor of Lions Place in
Winnipeg, Manitoba is spec-
tacular. From that height, the
streets of the prairie city are
almost hidden by the urban for-
est, except for Portage Avenue,
leading straight into the heart
of downtown.
It’s a view that Elin Inge-
bjorg McKitrick enjoys every
day — though her current
apartment, where she lives
alone, is a far cry from her fam-
ily home near Lundar, Manito-
ba, where she grew up the tenth
of sixteen children.
Elin, who celebrated her
ninety-fifth birthday this year,
has many interesting stories to
tell. Some of them centre on
the area near Lundar, Manito-
ba where she grew up, others
on the many places she has
since called home. Currently
Elin lives in Winnipeg, though
she spends six months a year
in a cottage at Twin Beaches,
on Lake Manitoba.
Elin’s father, Jon or “John”
Lindal, was bom in Iceland in
1873. He emigrated with his
parents to Gardar, North Dako-
ta in 1880, and to the area
which would become Lundar
in 1888. Her mother, Soffia,
was born in Iceland in 1877.
She grew up there, emigrating
to Canada in the early 1890s.
Though vivacious well
into her nineties, Elin nearly
didn’t survive childhood.
When four years old, she suf-
fered an accident — a severe
laceration.
Fortunately, her paternal
grandmother Ingibjorg (née
Tómasdóttir), was a nurse and
a midwife. She was able to
treat the injury and saved Elin’s
life. Sadly, this early memory
of her grandmother is one of
few; Ingibjorg passed away a
year later. But, Elin says, her
amma has always given her
courage. “That’s why I was
never afraid,” she says. “I
always had my grandmother
and God looking out for me, so
I was never afraid of anything.”
From birth, Elin was sur-
rounded by her siblings, ten
brothers and five sisters. “It
was wonderful, really. No dull
moments — there was always
something going on. Dad had a
store. That was before Lundar
was built.”
Of her youth, she says,
“I’ve always been a book-
worm, and was accused of
being a tomboy.” She gave as
good as she got, though, and
loved reading and singing.
“That’s how I got back at my
brothers,” she says with a
laugh. “I sang hymns to them.”
She leamed her letters from a
schoolteacher who boarded
with the family, and singing
was one of the reasons she
enjoyed attending church.
As for the tomboy label,
she says, that may have just
resulted from being active.
She was one of the “country
kids” who didn’t live in the
town of Lundar. She enjoyed
horseback riding, skating,
hockey, dancing and swim-
ming, among other activities.
“With our neighbours, we had
enough people for a baseball
game,” she says.
Elin’s pluck helped land
her writing on the front page of
the Winnipeg Free Press in
1928, when she was only 17.
“I was sending articles to the
Free Press and the [Winnipeg]
Tribune until somebody found
out,” she says with a laugh. “I
only wrote for the Free Press
after that.” Her front-page
story was about the Lundar
Fair, an event that is still put on
every year.
Though she didn’t pursue
a career in journalism, she still
has the writing bug. After hav-
ing lived in Gillam, Manitoba;
Calgary, Alberta; Vancouver,
British Columbia; _and Win-
nipeg, she has many stories to
tell. A longtime dream of hers
is to collect them in book form.
Elin has been married
twice, first to William Freder-
ick Woodcock in 1930. Until
then, she had planned to use
what she’d leamed in stenogra-
phy at Business Success Col-
lege to work in Chicago, where
her sister and two brothers had
moved.
But her husband’s work
with the Canadian National
Railways (CNR) took them to
Gillam, a small town of Cau-
casian and First Nations peo-
ple. She says of the mixed pop-
ulation: “We were sort of like
the League of Nations — a
happy, scrappy family.”
Together they had three
children in Gillam: William
Lindal, Elinor Frances and
Patricia Diane. After 17 years
William’s work took them to
Winnipeg in 1947. While
there, Elin was actively
involved at the First Lutheran
Church, joining the Dorces
Ladies Aid.
William died in 1953 in a
an accident on Lynn Lake
Railway, while supervising the
building of that line.
Faced with raising her
family alone, Elin was hired as
a bookkeepr and accountant at
Manitoba Technical Institute
(later called Red River Com-
munity College). During this
ten-year period, she took
evening courses at the college
to continue her education. Elin
was presented with an alumni
pin for the time she spent at the
college.
In 1963 Elin married Earle
McKitrick, who owned Perdue
Motors in Taber, Alberta. In
1965 they moved to Leth-
bridge, Alberta where they
stayed three years, before set-
tling in Calgary for 13 years.
There she joined the Icelandic
Club and was again active in
the church.
Sadness touched Elin’s life
again when her daughter Eli-
nor passed away. “The worst
tragedy a mother can suffer is
to lose a child,” she says.
Sadly, Elin was to outlive her
second husband as well, when
he died in 1981.
After that, Elin moved to
Winnipeg to live for three
years, but “after a winter of
inclement weather, I moved to
Vancouver.” She fell in love
with the giant trees, particular-
ly in Stanley Park, as well as
the mountains and ocean. It’s
a place she’d love to revisit —
though for now, she’s happy to
stay in Winnipeg, close to her
family.
Even at 95, Elin still seems
to have a long life ahead of her
— probably thanks to her
upbeat attitude.
“I love people and I love
life — I always have,” she says.
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