Lögberg-Heimskringla - 11.02.2005, Síða 7

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 11. febrúar 2005 • 7
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Uoberts
tr» Hmrs:
rnuiu: b i tiiMPUH tíUOBJAHTSSON
There are about 60 peopie of Icelandic descent iiving in Point Roberts in Washington state.
Pauline Iwersen DeHaan has lived all but seven of her roughly 60 years in Point Roberts.
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Steinþór Guðbjartsson
Point Roberts, WA
Pauline Iwersen DeHaan
has lived all but seven of her
roughly 60 years in Point Rob-
erts. “This is my home, and we
moved back in 1973 because I
wanted to come back home and
live by the water and the beach.
I also wanted to make sure that
my husband Fred would be
comfortable with that, and he
has become a part of the com-
munity too.”
Her mother was the post-
master in Point Roberts for 30
years, her father worked there
as well, among other things, and
Pauline followed in their food-
steps. “It must be in the blood,”
she says, and adds that roots
are the most important thing in
Point Roberts.
Her paternal grandpar-
ents Gustav Iwersen and
Sigurbjörg Malmquist emi-
grated from Djúpivogur, Ice-
land to Foam Lake, Saskatch-
ewan just before World War I
started. Her maternal grandpar-
ents, Páll Þorsteinsson, or Paul
Thorsteinsson, and Oddný Ár-
nadóttir, emigrated from Vík,
Iceland to Victoria, BC, in 1888
and moved to Point Roberts in
1894. Her parents were Þorval-
dur Iwersen who was bom in
Djúpivogur and Pálína Þóra or
Pauline Thorsteinson who was
bom in Point Roberts.
In her book Icelanders on
the Pacific Coast Margrét J.
Benedictson says that “Point
Roberts is one of the most suc-
cessful and attractive of the
Icelandic settlements.” Pauline
agrees. “There is a lot of land
still around. I like the rural.
country life and we have long-
standing good friends in the
community. It was a feeling of
comfort to come back to Point
Roberts.”
Like other children in Point
Roberts, Pauline had to go to
school in Blaine. In her case
she started there in grade six.
“It was a shock to go from a
little one-room school to a big-
ger town, even though Blaine is
pretty small,” she recalls. It did
not take long to adjust but she
hardly went anywhere else until
she was 18, when she went to
San Francisco for the first time.
“We were happy here and
did not know of anything better,”
she says, and thinks that things
have not changed. “My daugh-
ter made me proud. She was
interviewed by the Oregonian
newspaper out of Portland, Or-
egon, and her statement to that
reporter was: “I had a wonder-
ful chiidhood here and it would
make me happy if my children
experienced the same.”
For a long time the popula-
tion of Point Roberts was about
800 - 900 but now it is about
1,500 - 1,800. People of Icelan-
dic descent used to be a strong
group and they still get together
for special events.
“Being of Icelandic descent
is very important to me,” Pau-
line says. “My father was so
proud of being Icelandic, and he
talked a lot about Djúpivogur,
where he grew up until he was
about 10 years old. I went there
in 2001 and I want to go again
to research my roots more.”
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