Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.01.2007, Qupperneq 6

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6 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15 January 2007
Linda Bjarnason
Maria Sesselja Ingib-jorg Freeman was born on 29 July,
1911 in Winnipeg, MB. She
was born in the home of
her mother’s friend at 1286
Downing Street. An Icelandic
doctor assisted in the birth.
Maria, or Mary, and her five
siblings were the first genera-
tion of Canadian-born chil-
dren in her family.
Mary’s mother was
Guðlaug, or Gudlaug, Helga
Þorleifsdóttir, born in 1876
at Álfhóll (Elfin Hill), East
Húnavatnssýsla, Iceland.
Guðlaug’s father, Þorleifur
Björnsson, sent her to Can-
ada with friends who were
emigrating in 1888, when
Guðlaug was only 12 years
old.
She lived with a fam-
ily in Winnipeg for the first
two years and later secured
a job as a kitchen helper in a
boarding house. The owner,
a Scottish lady, did not speak
Icelandic and Gudlaug knew
very little English.
Mary recalls a story her
mother told her about this job.
The first time that her em-
ployer asked her to go to the
pantry and get a frying pan,
she said, “I must have brought
out six different cooking pots
before I came back with what
she wanted, my English was
so poor!”
Somehow they managed
to communicate and Gudlaug
enjoyed living there for sev-
eral years.
As the years went by,
Gudlaug’s English improved.
Every Sunday she would have
the day off and go to a home in
Winnipeg where other newly-
immigrated Icelanders gath-
ered. At this house, people
enjoyed eating and visiting,
while making new friends
and talking about family back
home in Iceland. It was at one
of these gatherings that Gud-
laug met her future husband,
Sigurdur Sigurdsson.
Sigurður Frímann Sig-
urðsson was born in 1872
at Sigurðarstaðir on the
Melrakkaslétta Peninsula,
North Þingeyarsýsla, Ice-
land. He had come to Cana-
da in 1876 with his mother,
Guðrún Guðmundsdóttir and
his sister, Guðný. Sigurdur’s
father had died in a fishing
accident in Iceland, prior to
the family’s move to Canada.
Guðrún and children settled
in New Iceland in Manitoba,
because they had relatives liv-
ing there who had emigrated
from Iceland before them and
offered to help them get set-
tled. Guðrún died in 1878 and
the remaining family moved
to Baldur, MB. The men of
the family built a large brick
house in Baldur, where they
lived for many years.
When Sigurdur was 19
years old, he moved to Win-
nipeg to work as a labourer.
He too, enjoyed Sundays at
the Winnipeg house where
other Icelanders gathered. It
was at one of these gatherings
that he met Gudlaug. Sigur-
dur and Gudlaug married in
1897 in Winnipeg and lived in
the Charleswood area. In the
years to come, they had six
children, one of them being
Mary. Mary’s siblings were
Margaret, Sigrun (Runie),
Skuli, Halldor (Dori) and
Haraldur, who died when he
was three years old.
Sigurdur changed their
last name from Sigurdsson to
Freeman around 1896. (Sig-
urdur chose a variation of
his middle name for his last
name). This was because so
many Sigurdssons were com-
ing to Manitoba at that time
that it led to confusion.
While living in Charles-
wood, Sigurdur became a
market gardener. He grew a
variety of vegetables and then
transported them by horse and
wagon to sell in Winnipeg.
Sigurdur did that for a few
years before moving his fam-
ily to Fairford, north along
the east shore of Lake Mani-
toba. In Fairford, friends had
reserved a piece of land for
Sigurdur. He did not realize
until moving there that most
of the land was underwater
and rather remote. However,
Sigurdur built a house and
the family lived there for six
years.
Mary remembers not be-
ing permitted to attend school
until she was old enough to
walk the three-mile distance
on her own. “I was seven years
old at the time and our nearest
neighbour was one mile from
our home,” she says. The oth-
er neighbour lived five miles
away and Mary recalls many
happy gatherings with both
of these families. Sometimes
they would have Christmas
concerts or box socials, with
both children and adults en-
joying the company of the
few neighbours they had at
that time.
When Mary’s brother
Halldor was old enough, he
acquired a quarter section of
land from the government,
north of Fairford, near Lake
Manitoba. Because of its
beauty, the family often re-
ferred to their land as “God’s
Country.” The Freemans lived
there for four years. Their
nearest neighbors were five
and 10 miles away. The near-
est town was Davis Point, 35
miles from their homestead.
Twice a year, Sigurdur would
take the horse and wagon for
supplies to Davis Point, a
two-day round trip.
In 1919, one of Mary’s
sisters, Runie, contracted tu-
berculosis. She was sent to
ARGYLE
Transfer Ltd.
Specializing
in livestock transportation
Wally & Linda Finnbogason
Stonewall, MB
Wally 467-8822 Mobile 981-1666
Daryl 322-5743 Mobile 981-5460
Robert T. Kristjanson
125 5th Avenue
Gimli, MB R0C 1B0
Fax: 204-642-7306
Phone: 204-642-5283
Mary Stewart: portrait of a Winnipeg pioneer
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LEIC
Mary Stewart is a long-time and active member of the the Leif Eiriksson Icelandic Club of Calgary. She was made an Honorary Member of the INL in 1998.