Lögberg-Heimskringla - 23.09.2005, Blaðsíða 9

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 23. september 2005 • 9

Karen Emilson reads from
her non-fiction book about
the effects of the BSE crisis
in JustaMatterofTime
A reading by a family member,
Lillian Vilborg's Harðfiskur&
Skyr, Memories andStories ofan
Amma and Editor
Herefrom England,
Gillian Johnson's Thora,
A Half-Mermaid Tale, is a
story of a very different
10-year-old
Bruce Benson, commercial
Fisherman in Gimli, witha
story of a fisherman in
A SeasonforSkufty, The
First ofthe Gimli Chronides
THE ASPIRE THEATRE
GENERAL MERCHANT
Established 1899
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Box1818
82-1st Avenue
Gimli, MB R0C1B0
Tel: (204) 642-5958
Fax: (204) 642-9017
SEATING WILL BE LIMITED SO BE SURE TO PICK UP YOUR FREE TICKETS IN ADVANCE AT THE STORE
-OnjiU
í í.;l.».h.
MLINPA LUNPSTRÖN

'ITavel
Join us for an engaging evening of fine food and great music with
special guest internationally renowned clothing designer Linda Lundström.
Entertainmentfrom lceland: IVIaría's Legacy-three generations of acapella singers
Special Guests: Ambassador Svavar Gestsson & Guðrún Águstsdóttir
Tickets S75.00 each.
Tickets available at The New lceland Heritage Museum
or call 642-4001
Location: Waterfront Centre, 5th floor Johnson Hall, Gimli
Times: Cocktails 6:30 / Dinner 7:00
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Restoring a piece of history
David Jón Fuller
Ahigh school reunion is
usually the occasion for
rekindling old friend-
ships. But for Del Sveinsson,
it meant beginning a brand new
one as well.
Sveinsson, who now lives
in Leduc, AB, was bom in Nor-
quay, SK, and raised in Yorkton.
His family had roots in Church-
bridge, and he remembers many
visits to the family farm there.
“I went home for a high-
scool reunion in 1997,” Sveins-
son recalls. “I wanted to go to
Churchbridge. I hadn’t been
there since I was a young child,
so that would have been 40
years at least. I wanted to see
the old family farm.” His father
had been bom and raised there;
his grandparents had emigrated
from Iceland.
“There was a cemetery there
and I knew I had an uncle who
had died of spinal meningitis
when he was two years old. I re-
member visiting that grave with
my father some 40 years prior,
and I had this vivid recollec-
tion of a tree, but there was no
marker.” After locating what he
thought was the spot, he decided
to find out for sure.
He asked around Church-
bridge after anyone of Icelandic
descent who might know where
to find the grave. He was direct-
ed to Baldur Olson, at that time
82 years old, a local storekeeper
known for his knowledge of lo-
cal history. He gladly took on
the challenge.
Unfortunately, Sveinson had
to return to Leduc before finding
the grave. But Olson kept at it.
Sveinson remembers the
phone call he received two
weeks later. “Great news!” said
Olson. He had found records of
the cemetery in the basement of
a house belonging to a 92-year-
old man.
“He found out where the
grave was,” says Sveinsson,
“And sure enough, it was exact-
ly where I though it was, some
40 years later.” Sveinson had a
headstone made so that the grave
would be marked.
“But then I sort of struck
up a friendship with this old
Baldur,” he says. “And I said,
‘Baldur, you know, things are
looking a little rough around the
cemetery, and the caim as well.’”
In 1935 Sveinsson’s great-uncle
Myndi Loptsson had been pres-
ent at a dedication ceremony
for the caim that still stands in
the cemetery. After 40 years,
says Sveinsson, “it was in rough
shape.
Olson and Sveinsson took
m
on the challenge of restoring
the grounds. “It was actually
Baldur who did the work,” says
Sveinsson, who contributed fi-
nancial support to the effort.
Olson found a mason to refinish
the caim with new stone and fix
up its platform. He also cleared
away brush and planted trees on
the site.
“Then he and I went to work
on the cemetery,” says Sveins-
son. “Through faxes and phone
calls back and forth, we made a
record of all the persons buried
in that cemetery, because the re-
cords were in disarray. We got
that all straightened out, and I
hired the services of a surveying
company, who drew a complete
drawing of the cemetery with all
the plots, and assigned all the
names of those individuals in the
plots to them.”
Olson, he says, really threw
himself into it. “His daughter
told me it was really one of the
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PHOTO COURTESY OF ARNI JOHNSON
The memorial cairn at the site of Concordia Hall.
best things that could have hap-
pened,” he says. “He just loved
it. He had a real project.”
The two also made up a
ledger and with the help of in-
formation from some Edmonton
cemeteries, designed a form to
record all the past and future
burials. They put a book togeth-
er and submitted it to the Con-
cordia Church in Churchbridge.
Sveinson estimates the
whole project took about two
years.
He had hoped to go to Ice-
land with Olson one day, but
it wasn’t to be. “He didn’t tell
me — he was always cheerful
— that he had cancer.” Olson
passed away June 26, 2000.
Nevertheless, the cemetery
now stands restored and Sveins-
son, for his part, is glad to have
known Baldur Olson. “It was a
nice experience; I became good
friends with the old fellow. And
he was so into it — he worked
hard.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF MARILYN HERRON
Baldur Olson

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