Lögberg-Heimskringla - 26.08.2005, Page 6

6 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 26 August 2005
An importantpart of the
The IceFest in Kinmount attracted many guests and people showed interest in the history.
Guy Scott
Kinmount, ON
In the 1850s, the govemment
of Canada West opened up
a huge tract of wildemess
called the Ottawa-Huron Tract
for settlement. This section of
Ontario was on the Canadian
Shield and was bounded by Geor-
gian Bay (Lake Huron) and the
Ottawa River. It contained some
of the best forests in Canada, but
as a whole was “marginal” farm
land.
Agricultural settlement was
encouraged and soon the region
was filled with pioneer farmers
and happy lumbermen. Access
to this region remained a prob-
lem, despite a series of colo-
nization roads built at govem-
ment expense. It became clear
by 1870 that railways were the
answer to improved access into
these “back townships” (back of
the Lake Ontario shore front).
In 1874, a railway line called
the Victoria Railway was char-
tered to run between Lindsay
(the front) and Haliburton (the
back). A halfway point on the
line was the sleepy pioneer vil-
lage of Kinmount, nestled in the
valley of the Bumt River at the
intersection of the Monck and
Bobcaygeon Roads.
No firm plan
The new railway company
faced many problems such as
rocky terrain, large river cross-
ings and financial shortfalls.
But an immediate problem was
a shortage of labour. The lum-
ber camps soaked up available
labour at a higher wage, so an
altemative sourece of railway
“navvies” was needed. About
the same time (the summer of
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1874), a group of 360 Icelandic
immigrants were sitting idle in a
warehouse in Toronto.
They had just immigrated
from Iceland and arrived in Can-
ada with no firm plan for their fu-
ture in their new residence. They
were “recruited” to work on the
new railway line, and dispatched
to the Kinmount section. They
had no concept of what awaited
them at their destination, and the
locals had no idea of what was
coming to town.
A great-great uncle of mine
(affectionally called “Uncle
Charlie”) was hired by the rail-
way company to team the new
arrivals from the head of the
rail line at Coboconk to their
new home outside of Kinmount.
The local teamsters expected to
pick up a crew of burly railway
navvies. The accommodations
for the newcomers consisted of
“lumber shanty style” barracks
build as a temporary residence
for single men.
To their surprise, at the sta-
tion they faced whole families of
dazed and confused immigrants,
ill with various ailments, hav-
ing no clue where they were and
speaking not a word of English.
The 90 railway navvies tumed
into whole families numbering
360! Two small children died on
the short joumey and many oth-
ers were so sick they died within
days of their arrival. Dysentry
and dehydration caused by dia-
horreaha were the main culprits
and carried away the young chil-
dren and weaker adults.
Furthermore, the locals were
confused about what Icelanders
really were. Informed Iceland
was a cold, northem island, they
expected Eskimos (geography
not being a strong suit in 1870).
Thus the Icelanders were nick-
named the “blue-eyed Eskimos.”
Overcrowded shanties
The colony got off to a poor
start and went downhill from
there. The lumber shanties (sev-
en in number) were designed for
about 100 single men and were
grossly overcrowded. Unsani-
tary conditions were eventually
improved by the railway com-
pany. The diet prescribed by the
employers was unsuitable for the
newcomers. Icelanders were not
used to the heavy food eaten by
lumbermen.
Culture shock was a big
problem. Most of the newcom-
ers had been fishermen or small
livestock herders back in Ice-
land. Now they were expected
to be day-labourers who worked
10-hour days, six days a week.
They didn’t fully comprehend
they had to show up for work on
time, every day. On any given
day, at least 25 per cent of the
workforce failed to show for a
variety of reasons. The Icelanders
were not used to chopping trees,
grubbing out huge stumps and
filling in ravines and swamps.
They were forced to “leam on
the job,” to the frustration of the
railway supervisors. As only one
man, S. Jonsson, spoke any Eng-
lish, communication with the lo-
cals was difficult.
No jobs
Nevertheless, the Icelanders
soldiered on through the winter
of 1874-5. Railway construction
was actually continued through
the winter months just so they
could be kept employed.
Then, in the spring of 1875,
disaster struck. The railway
company ran out of funds, work
was suspended and the Iceland-
ers were laid off. Now what?
With no jobs, no farms and
unskilled for the local job mar-
ket, the new colony was in peril.
Free farmland was offered by
govemment officials to every
family who wanted to take up pi-
oneer farming. But the land was
poor (a local joke goes, “How
do you make a million dollars
farming at Kinmount? Start with
two million!”), and the Iceland-
ers iacked many of the necessary
skills (except determination) to
be pioneer farmers. The land
was covered by dense tree cover
and pioneer farmers were nick-
named “axmen.” The Icelanders,
coming from a relatively tree-
less land, were not competent as
lumbermen.
They also wished to settle
in a group to be near each other.
There was not a large enough
tract of land left near Kinmount
to accommodate this wish. They
were to be scattered over many
townships to become farmers.
Times were tough. Many Ice-
landers moved away to find
employment. The colony was
slowly dissolving.
Relocation
In their hour of darkness,
fate intervened in their favour.
One day, a young woman named
Caroline Taylor was passing
through Kinmount to visit her
uncle working as a missionary in
the lumber camps in Haliburton.
She happened to notice several
Icelandic women dressed in their
native costumes, walking down
the main street of Kinmount.
Her curiosity aroused, she in-
quired who they were. A local
person summarized their plight.
Intrigued, and feeling sorry for
their situation, she told her uncle
who promptly came to their aid.
The end result of Charles Taylor’s
mission was the decision to relo-
cate the Icelandic settlers to the
Gimli area of Manitoba. Thanks
to Taylor’s lobbying, the Govem-
ment of Canada paid transporta-
tion costs and gave a land grant.
The scattered immigrants were
gathered from all over the area
and sent to Gimli by the end of
1875. The rest is another story.
All the remaining Iceland-
ers, save one woman who mar-
ried a local man, had come and
gone from Kinmount within one
year. Had they waited a little lon-
ger, would history have marched
down a different road? Perhaps.
The railway restarted work in
the fall of 1875 and jobs became
plentiful again. Kinmount started
towards a new zenith of prosper-
ity with the opening of the Victo-
ria Railway in 1876 and became a
properous railway and lumbering
centre. Prosperity arrived on the
heels of the departing Icelanders.
And yet, Kinmount could not
steal a place in their hearts. Sad
memories of lost children, hard
times, strange customs and unfa-
miliar geography prodded them
to move to the more congenial
surroundings of Manitoba.
And what did they leave
behind? Hayford, the “shanty-
town” was soon erased by time.
Other workers completed the
railway. Their farming attempts
were taken up by new settlers.
Memories, legends and over 20
unmarked graves were all that
was left... until recently.
The decendents of those gal-
lant Icelandic settlers returned
and erected a magnificent me-
morial to the memory of their
ancestors whose first stop in
Canada was a pioneer village
on the Burnt River. For despite
all their cares and woes in a new
world, retuming to Iceland was
never an option. The Icelanders
just had to find their niche in
Canada. Kinmount was not it,
Gimli was. And thus ends an-
other chapter in the history of the
great nation called Canada.
Guy Scott is an author in
Kinmount, Ontario, and has,
among other things, written the
book History of Kinmount, A
Community on the Fringe.
Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca