Lögberg-Heimskringla - 23.09.2005, Qupperneq 6

6 * Lögberg-Heimskringla» Friday 23 September 2005
Descendents of the Bjarnason family at the road in Churchbirdge named for them during a
family reunion and road dedication in 2001. Vi Bjarnason Hilton stands third from the right.
‘Bloom where you’re planted’
A former Churchbridge gal reminisces
David Jón Fuller
Vi Bjamason Hilton spent
the first eight years of her life
in Churchbridge, SK and it has
had a lasting influence on her.
Hilton recently retumed
to her ancestral home for a re-
union last July in Churchbridge,
where both sides of her grand-
.parents homesteaded. Her ma-
temal grandparents Petrún and
Kristján Kristjánson came from
Iceland and settled in Thing-
vallabyggð in 1900. Her pa-
temal grandparents, Björg Pé-
tursson (from Ames, MB) and
Sigurdur Bjarnason, met in Sas-
katchewan. Hilton is also de-
cended from a local Ijósmóðir
(midwife) of some renown
named Oddný (Magnúsdóttir)
Bjamason.
Though she has lived in
many places since her family
moved from Churchbridge, she
still has strong connections to
the town. Her brother Sammy
Joe (Sigurður Jóhann) Bjama-
son still lives there on the origi-
nal family homestead, and the
baptismal font in the Concor-
dia Lutheran Church is dedi-
cated to her langamma Oddný.
More recently in 2001, a road
in Churchbridge was named for
the family — Bjarnason Road
— and the dedication was the
occasion for a family reunion.
Hilton was bom in 1935
and grew up speaking Icelan-
dic. “The north part of our
farm had the Pennock school
on it,” she remembers, “so all
the little ones from the south
were Icelandic and all the little
ones from the north were Ger-
man. The German kids spoke
German and the Icelandic kids
spoke Icelandic.” Butatschool,
she remembers, everyone was
careful to speak English.
As a young girl going to
church, she says, she had seen
the baptismal font dedicated to
Oddný. But the aspect of church
she remembers most was Pas-
tor Kristoffersson’s sermons.
“When you’re sitting on your
mom or dad’s lap,” she laughs,
“and you’re looking towards
the back, where most of the
Oddný (Magnúsdóttir)
Bjarnason
men sat, [you’d see] they were
all sleeping. So my concept of
going to church was that when
the sermon came, you could sit
back and relax — or sleep.”
Concordia Church no lon-
ger stands on its original site. In
the beginning it was an Icelan-
dic church; but more recently it
has been used by the German
community as well. The build-
ing was moved into the town of
PHOTO COURTESY OF ARNt JOHNSON
The Concordia Lutheran Church at its original location.
Churchbridge in 1967. Pres-
ently a memorial cairn marks
the spot where it once stood.
Across the road from the
church was the old Concordia
Hall, which also conjurés up
many memories for Hilton. lt
was the site of dances, birthday
parties and tombólas. Hilton re-
members leaming to dance on
her mother’s and father’s arms,
and attributes her lifelong love
of music to the performances of
the Gunnarson boys, who per-
formed at many of the events.
Of course, the children
had to go to bed earlier than
the adults, and Hilton remem-
bers especially the cold winter
nights when they were tucked
in at the hall. “We little kids
were all put into these four little
bunks, and our mattresses were
the coats,” she says. Lucky was
the child who got to sleep in the
warmer upper bunk.
Unfortunately, says Hil-
ton, even in the 1940s the hall
was in poor shape and difficult
to heat. It was eventually tom
down. Perhaps not surprisingly,
given its central role in social
occasions, the hall has also been
marked with a separate caim.
Among the places Hil-
ton has since called home are
Minnedosa and Brandon, MB,
where she studied at Brandon
College; Digby, NS; Victoria,
BC; Winnipeg, MB, where
she studied att United College;
and Chiliwack, BC. Nowadays
she lives in Winnipeg. In every
community, she has gotten in-
volved with the local Icelandic
organizations.
Part of the reason for all
that moving was being mar-
ried to Maj. Ken Hilton of the
Canadian Armed Forces. Her
philosophy on calling so many
places home is, “You have to be
happy where you are, so ‘bloom
where you’re planted’.”
Hilton doesn’t really think
of Churchbridge as home any-
more, but she still has strong
feelings for it. She has encour-
aged her relatives to come
together to help care for the
Thingvalla and Concordia
Cemeteries, where, she jokes,
“the Bjamasons are so thick
they’re about to fall through!”
She adds with a smile, listing
all of her close relatives buried
in the cemetery, “I’m going out
there too.”
From Esterhazy
to Calagary
As the bylines in this issue
show, Calgary’s Gwen Mann
has close ties to Church-
bridge.
Olivia Guðrun Gwen-
dolyn Johnson was bom in
Esterhazy, Saskatchewan on
August 4, 1942. Her grand-
parents were pioneers lo the
Icelandic settlements north of
Churchbridge, SK.
Gwen received her edu-
cation in Churchbridge, then
took nurse’s training at York-
ton, graduating in 1963.
In 1966, Gwen married
Lloyd Mann, a chemical engi-
neer also from Saskatchewan.
His career in the oil industry
took the fantily to many loca-
tion, Edmonton, Slave Lake,
San Francisco -and back to
Calgary.
Today she is an active
rpember of the Leif Eiriksson
Icelandic Club of Calgary,
and proud of her heritage.
Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca