Lögberg-Heimskringla - 25.03.2005, Blaðsíða 7

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 25. mars 2005 • 7
VUcótserÍMá
aMy Iceíandio
kockey piotteer
In the early 20th century, descendants of
lcelandic immigrants in North America had
to fight for acceptance in many walks of life.
Professional hockey was no exception, and
few fought harder than Cully Wilson, who
played for teams ranging from Winnipeg to
Toronto to Seattle. Wes Wilson and Elma
Kozub tell the story.
While growing up in Vi-
dir, Manitoba during
the 1950s, our hockey
experience was limited to watch-
ing weekend scrimmages played
on an outdoor rink just north of
my great-uncle Siggi Sigvalda-
son’s general store. Memories
of those crisp winter aftemoons
are as clear as if they happened
yesterday. The stars of those
games were hard-working men
and boys from our community
who relished the opportunity to
let off a little steam after a long
week on the farm. In retrospect,
it’s amazing how well they
played. Their speed, skill and
heady competition more than
inspired the next generation of
us kids who simply wanted to
leam how to skate well enough
to make it from one end of the
rink to the other.
Vidir was also the home of
our afi Albert Wilson who, in his
later years, lived next door to us
on our farm. Afi was a wonder-
ful conversationalist, natural-
ist and storyteller, and it was
through him that we first heard
about the exploits of his brother
Cully, who had found a measure
of fame, if not fortune, during
the early years of professional
hockey in Canada and the Unit-
ed States.
Afi always spoke proudly
of this talented athlete who had
gone on to fulfill his dreams in the
“pros” and his stories intrigued
our family as we were growing
up. But Cully was a mythic fig-
ure who lived far away, and after
afi passed away in 1956, many
of those memories gradually
faded away as well.
For succeeding generations
of the Wilson family, Cully’s
story might well have been for-
gotten were it not for my sister
Elma. Over the past 20 years, she
has devoted herself to research-
ing and documenting the many
branches of our family tree with
painstaking thoroughness. The
result is a comprehensive writ-
ten record of our family’s roots
that include the Erlendsson
(Wilson) immigration to Canada
in the late 1800s through to the
present.
One night in 2000,1 was re-
laxing and reading the chapter
Elma had written about Cully.
As I read through the details of
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF WES WILSON
his life, I began to realize what a
fascinating man this was. It was
as if afi’s pride in his brother had
suddenly been awakened in me.
I immediately went to my com-
puter and typed “cully wilson”
into the search engine. I didn’t
have any great expectations as I
waited for the page to load, but I
was immediately rewarded with
what seemed like a gold mine of
information. Since then, Elma
and I have continued our re-
search as a kind of impassioned
hobby and have managed to col-
lect a comprehensive record of
Cully’s life in hockey.
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed
the experience of getting to know
our great-uncle better. What we
discovered was a man full of grit,
determination and pride whose
talents with skates and a stick
offered him unbelievable oppor-
tunities to succeed. It’s also the
story of an enormously competi-
tive man with a short fuse who
played and fought hard in the
game he loved.
Cully was bom in Winni-
peg on June 5,1892 to Sigurður
Erlendsson and Metonia In-
driðadóttir. Like many newcom-
ers to Canada at the time, Ice-
landers experienced problems
fitting in because of language
and custonis. Sigurðuf under-
stood this early on and decided
to change his sumame. Adopt-
ing an English-sounding name
like Wilson was more likely to
offer advantages in a job market
not always friendly to immi-
grants. Their children, five sons
and three daughters, all grew up
adopting the Wilson name.
Cully grew up on Home
Street in an area some referred
to as Winnipeg’s Icelandic
“West End.” From an early age
he showed a natural talent and
passion for skating, and ulti-
mately hockey. We don’t know
a lot about how Cully developed
as an athlete at this time but it’s
almost a certainty that he was
noticed and nurtured by some
of the great hockey players that
made up the two-tier Icelandic
league in Winnipeg at the time
— the Vikings and the Falcons.
Both of these teams were
made up entirely of Iceland-
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