Lögberg-Heimskringla - 14.01.2005, Side 2

2 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 14 January 2005
Never a dull moment
with the Sigfussons
About 60 years ago,
brothers Arthur Franklin and
Sigurdur Jon (Siggi) Sig-
fusson boughttheirfirst road
equipment. Now Sigfusson
Northern is probably the big-
gest road construction com-
pany in Manitoba. Steinþór
Guðbjartsson met Siggi at
the headquarters just west
of Lundar.
Siggi will be 89 years old
July 17, and he is still go-
ing strong after about 60
years in road construction and
many years of farming and fish-
ing. “There is no way that I can
spend my time at home doing
nothing, I have to come here
and do something,” he says, as
he looks over the premises of
the company.
Jon Sigfusson was the first
homesteader in the Lundar dis-
trict; he settled there in 1887.
His brother Skuli farmed in
the area and became the sec-
ond lcelander to be elected as a
member ofthe Manitoba legis-
lature in 1915. He was a mem-
ber of the Liberal Party and
represented the constituency
of St. George for 25 of the next
30 years. Skuli and his wife
Gudrun had seven children,
five boys and two girls. Their
son Svein was a natural athlete
and won nine Canadian cham-
pionships and eight Manitoba
championships in the hammer
and discus throws. He set a
Canadian record in the discus
in the preparation for the 1940
Olympic Games but because
of WWII the Games that year
were never held. Svein won the
bronze medal in discus throw
at the British Empire Games
in Auckland, New Zealand, in
1950 and was inducted into the
Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame
ARGYLE
Transfer Ltd.
Specializing
in livestock transportation
Sf f f
Wally & Linda Finnbogason
Stonewall, MB
Wally 467-8822 Mobile 981-1666
Daryl 322-5743 Mobile 981-5460
PHOTO: STEtNÞÓR GUÐBJARTSSON
Siggi Sigfusson was born in 1916 and still goes every day to the company he founded in 1946.
in 1982.
Svein and his brothers ac-
complished a lot at other ven-
ues. When Tom, the youngest
one, was two, they bought back
their parents’ farm and started
farming. Soon they also took
up commercial fishing in the
winter. “My oldest sister Loa
and I looked after the farm the
first year while the others went
to school,” Siggi recalls.
“As it turned out, only the
oldest and youngest of the Sig-
fusson offspring received high-
er education,” Svein Sigfusson
writes in his book Sigfusson’s
Roads. “Loa, Skuli, Siggi and I
— the ones in the middle, com-
ing of age at the wrong time
— had to end our formal edu-
cation in high school.” Fishing
brought them to Reindeer Lake,
and Svein suggested that fish-
ing and freighting there would
be a good business. “The fami-
ly enterprises were diversified,”
he writes in his book. “Skuli
and I would go north to Rein-
deer Lake and start the fishing
and freighting company to be
known as Sigfusson Brothers.
Arthur would run the farm. Sig-
gi would run the fishing opera-
tion on Lake Manitoba. Tom,
who was now 14 and showing
promise of being as enterpris-
ing and hard-working as any
of us, would become an active
partner as he came of age.”
Fishing and freighting be-
came a big business but when
the Saskatchewan govemment
took over the fishing in 1947
they went into road construction
in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and
Ontario. Among other projects
Sigfusson Transportation Com-
pany built about 3,560 miles of
winter roads in the wildemess
starting in 1941 and continu-
ing for about 30 years, until the
company was put out of busi-
ness.
“Rather than have Sigfus-
son Transportation Company
gain a hard-eamed profit by
building and operating a win-
ter-road freighting system an-
nually at no cost to society
and the taxpayer, the govem-
ments of the day in Saskatch-
ewan, Manitoba and Ontario
each were successful in putting
the company out of business,”
writes Kenneth M. Adams, an
expert on winter roads, in the
aforementioned book.
Siggi fished on Lake Man-
itoba for about 20 years and he
worked for his brothers Svein
and Skuli as a foreman in the
road construction for about 10
years. “In 1945 I had collected
enough money from fishing to
buy my first tractor, and I start-
ed my road construction com-
pany in 1946,” Siggi recalls. “I
was alone when I started, but
business has been pretty good
and now we have about 140 to
150 employees.”
His sons Brian and David,
along with his four grandsons,
have taken over the business,
but Siggi is around every day.
“I have a few cows to look af-
ter,” he says as he walks by a
2004 award of excellence from
Manitoba Transportation and
Government Services. “This
annual award recognizes excel-
lence in construction of Mani-
toba’s heighways.”
The Sigfusson Transporta-
tion Company employed several
hundred people and many men
of Icelandic descent worked for
the company.
“Building the winter roads
half a century ago was a lot
different from what it is now,”
Siggi says. “We did not have
radios or telephones and had
to bring everything needed for
a long time. But we had good
men and that made the differ-
ence.”
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