Lögberg-Heimskringla - 04.11.2005, Blaðsíða 6

6 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 4 November 2005
DESTINATION: SélUirk
Working with the community
Selkirk ’s mayor seeks to encourage progress
David Jón Fuller
Mayor David Bell of
Selkirk, Manitoba’s
fifth-largest city, is
proud of his Icelandic heritage
— and, these days, he’s a busy
man.
Bell also works full time
at the Selkirk Mental Health
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Centre in the extended treat-
ment program. He says “it
makes for long days,” but he
enjoys it.
Bell is the son of Kristinn
and Eleanor Bell (née Cou-
ture) and grew up in Hecla,
MB. He was born in Selkirk
in 1959, but the family did
not move there until the early
60s. Kristinn was a fisherman
on Lake Winnipeg and Elea-
nor was a nurse. David is the
third bom of seven children,
and he grew up surrounded by
his grandparents Emest and
Lovisa Bell (née Thordarson)
and extended family. Icelandic
was his first Ianguage.
That changed when he
started elementary school in
Selkirk in 1965. “I don’t al-
ways understand how you lose
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a language, but I certainly
did,” he says. “I found myself
later on asking ‘How do you
say this,’ and ‘How do you say
that.’ Fabricating stories, ri-
diculous stories, was my way
of getting the language back.”
When he picked up new
words, he added them to his
stories. “So one of the things
would be, ‘Tell me about the
guy and the gun.’ And it would
be ‘Bragi tók byssuna og skaut
mig í hausnum.’ And I would
just augment that with a few
words. So the next thing you
know I’d have this long-wind-
ed tale about how somebody
had taken a gun and shot this
person, and they’d laid on
the floor for three days and
their sister called up and they
couldn’t figure out what was
going on with them and re-
ally it was just fun gossip. But
that’s a lot of how I kind of got
some of it back.”
However, his mother did
not understand Icelandic and
wouldn’t allow the language
to be spoken in the house.
“Which is understandable,”
says Bell. She felt excluded
when her in-laws came over
and she couldn’t share in the
conversations.
While growing up, Bell’s
time was divided between life
in Selkirk and visits to the
farm at Hecla in the summer,
on weekends and on holidays.
He adds that he was the first of
roughly 80 grandchildren to be
married on the island. He and
his wife Maggie were mar-
ried there in 1985. “And it was
record rainfall there, in 104
years!” he adds with a laugh.
“But it was very enjoyable.”
Bell began working at the
Selkirk Mental Health Centre
in 1975 as an orderly. “I’ve
been fortunate to have some
very positive female role
models in my life,” he says.
His mother worked full time
— “She taught us to be inde-
pendent,” he says. One of his
aunts helped dispell the myth
of the mental hospital as an
“ominous” place, and after a
few years he decided to study
Psychiatric Nursing at the
Centre. He graduated in 1982.
He went on to work at a
forensic assessment unit in
Calgary General Hospital and
for five and a half years at St.
Boniface Hospital in Winni-
peg, as well as at Betel Home,
which he did for seven years. In
1990, he retumed to the Centre
in Selkirk, where he worked
in acute care for 13 years. He
recently began working in the
Centre’s extended treatment
program.
As for his career in public
office, he says “I always credit
my son with that.” His son,
Teigun Bjorn was four years
old at the time. The cenotaph
in the veterans’ park next to
their home had been defaced,
and Teigun commented that
nobody was doing anything
about the vandalism. His father
took that to heart and decided
he would run for mayor.
He was elected in October
2002. His campaign mantra
was “inviting progress, encour-
David Bell
aging change,” and he tries to
live up to it. “If you don’t in-
vite progress, nothing’s going
to happen in your community,”
he says.
He feels he has made a dif-
ference in Selkirk, but is quick
to stress that it’s a group ef-
fort. “You work with a body
of people; with planners, and
planning boards, and CEOs,
and engineers, and so many
people, that kind of fit into this
puzzle.”
It seems to be paying off.
Selkirk is undergoing an eco-
nomic boom, with present
businesses expanding and new
ones moving in. In a recent
article in the Winnipeg Free
Press, Selkirk’s economic de-
velopment officer Don Pear-
son described the accelerating
growth and dropping unem-
ployment rates as “unprec-
edented.”
It’s a far cry, says Bell,
from the days not too long
ago when, for many goods
and services, Selkirk residents
would have to drive to Winni-
peg. “Now,” he says, “Selkirk
has most of the amenities you
could want.”
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