Lögberg-Heimskringla - 26.08.2005, Page 10

10 » Lögberg-Heimskringla » Friday 26 August 2005
MaÁinœ
KUmtount
About 130 years after lcelanders moved
to Kinmount Guðrún Sigursteinsdóttir
Girgis lived in the area for three months.
Last month she came back to town to
chair the organization of the first lceFest
in Kinmount. Steinþór Guðbjartsson fol-
lowed her through the village.
About five years ago, a
nine-foot high limestone
sculpture, “In the Pres-
ence of a Soul,” by Guðrún Gir-
gis, commemorating the Icelan-
dic settlement at Kinmount, was
unveiled at the Austin Sawmill
Heritage Park in Kinmount. The
sculpture represents the Icelan-
dic immigrants and was part of
the Icelandic National League’s
Míllennium program.
“On the right side, a man
can be seen with a clenched
fist,” she says. “It shows the
determination needed to leave
the home country for an un-
known land. His head is turned
back. He looks at his native land
and those left behind, his land
and relatives he wiil never see
again. The left side shows the
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PHOTO: STEINÞÓR GUÐBJARTSSON
Fran Moscall and Guðrún Girgis were on the organizing committee of IceFest.
mother cradling her child — the
clenched fist from the other
side represents the child from
this side — and the back of the
sculpture is strong represent-
ing the strength needed to cope
with new hindrances in the new
world.”
When Guðrún was working
on the sculpture, she lived in
Kinmount for three months. “I
wanted to experience, emotion-
ally, the tough life the Iceland-
ers experienced and the only
way to do that was to live here,”
she recalls. “Every moming I
walked in the area where the
Icelanders had lived 130 years
earlier. This allowed me to get
in touch with the hard life they
lived, their sufferings and their
sorrows.”
Quite many people attended
the unveiling of the sculpture
and the Icelandic Canadian
Club of Toronto wanted to keep
the memory alive. As a result,
the first IceFest to commemo-
rate the Icelandic settlement in
Kinmount was held there in the
middle of July.
“It was a wonderful experi-
ence,” says Guðrún, who was the
chair of the organizing commit-
tee. “Everybody in town came
together and it was almost as if
they needed somebody from the
outside to draw all the differ-
ent factors and focus on making
Kinmount special for a day.”
Guðrún grew up in Iceland
and has lived in Canada for
over 30 years. Her experience
in Kinmount has affected her a
lot. “When I first came here, I
had no idea of what Kinmount
was all about, but I came with
an open mind,” she says. “It has
PHOTO: JOHN WELSH
The “In the Presence of a Soul” sculpture in Kinmount.
made me grow in directions and
it would probably have taken me
much longer time to experience
the depth of the compassion tltis
community has. You have to
search far and long to find it, if
you ever do, but this is what I
found here. I have not found it
in other places. I have found it
in Kinmount.”
The celebration was part of
the yearly Moonlight Mania and
everywhere people were talking
about the importance of having
this become an annual event.
“The pressure is on and
there is a certain amount of
expectation,” Guðrún says. “It
would be wonderful to have a
showing of colour every single
year to keep the Icelandic pres-
ence here alive, because the
presence of the Icelandic soul is
in this part of the country.”
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