Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.12.2008, Side 7

Ken Howard was guest speaker at the recent Remembrance Day
Celebration held in the St.
Andrews Heritage Centre, St.
Andrews, Manitoba, where he
read excerpts from stories of
Selkirk’s veterans, taken from
his forthcoming book Sto-
ries of Selkirk’s Pioneers and
Their Heritage.
He paid tribute to Selkirk’s
Icelandic-Canadians Ole
Johnson, Stan Jackson and
Harley Walterson (recipient
of the Military Medal), of the
Fort Garry Horse, who landed
on Normandy’s Juno Beach on
D-Day, June 4, 1944, spear-
heading the assault which ul-
timately led to the conquest of
Hitler’s Nazi armies; and also
to his brother Lou, who fought
in the last battle of the North
Atlantic, off Nova Scotia’s
shores.
Other Selkirk Icelandic-
Canadian veterans whose
armed service is remembered
in the book include Siggi
Goodbrandson, Harold and
Paul Henrikson, Victor Er-
ickson, Victor Carson, Bill
Indridson and Dr. Paul H. T.
Thorlakson.
Ken hopes to publish the
book early in 2009.
Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca
Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15. desember 2008 • 7
Ryan Eyford
One of the most enigmatic figures in the early years of Icelandic settlement
in Canada is John Taylor, the
Canadian government’s “Icelan-
dic Agent.” Born to a prominent
family in Barbados, Taylor had
a remarkable life that took him
to such diverse places as Nova
Scotia, Texas, England, and Up-
per Canada. In his lifetime he
witnessed first-hand the end of
slavery in the British Empire,
the Revolution in Texas, the
Confederation of British North
America and the colonization of
the Canadian Northwest.
During the winter of 1874-
75, Taylor was working as a
Baptist lay preacher among the
lumbermen of Dysart Township
in Ontario. He became aware of
the struggles of the Icelanders
settled nearby at Kinmount and
began to write letters to bring
their plight to the attention of
the public and the Canadian
Government. He proposed es-
tablishing an “industrial farm”
in Ontario which would pro-
vide a safe haven for new im-
migrants while they learned the
language, customs, and modes
of work. He used his connec-
tions to get an audience with
the Canadian Ministers of Ag-
riculture and Interior, who sug-
gested that instead of an Ontario
colonization scheme, he take a
party of Icelanders to Manitoba
to find a site for a colony. In the
summer of 1875 he headed the
Icelandic Deputation that se-
lected the site on the southwest
shore of Lake Winnipeg.
From the arrival of the first
settlers in October 1875 un-
til the persistent flooding that
drove Taylor and the major-
ity of the first colonists out in
1881, he was responsible for
virtually everything from the
building of roads and ware-
houses, the transport of new
immigrants, the distribution
of food, livestock, implements
and seed, and communicating
the resolutions of the Colony
Council to Ottawa. Taylor both
carried out the policies of the
government and vigorously
advocated for measures that
he believed would improve the
conditions of the Icelandic im-
migrants. The interests of the
two - the government and the
colonists - did not always co-
incide, and Taylor was often
placed in an awkward position,
making it difficult for him to
please both sides.
During those early years,
Gimli and district became a
home for the extended Taylor
family. With Taylor, his wife
Elizabeth and his hired hand Ev-
erett Parsonage came his brother
William and his family, and their
cousins the Hearn family. The
Taylor family became literally
intertwined with the Iceland-
ers. William Taylor’s daugh-
ter Caroline married Sigurður
Christopherson, and his daugh-
ter Susannah married Halldór
Briem, later moving with him to
Iceland. William Taylor’s third
wife was Sigríður Thórarins-
sen, mother of the children’s
author Jón ‘Nonni’ Sveinsson
and the Winnipeg artist Friðrik
Sveinsson (Fred Swanson).
While John and Elizabeth had
no children of their own, they
adopted Rósa, daughter of New
Iceland pioneers Kristmundur
Benjamínsson and Sigurlaug
Björnsdóttir, and raised her as
their own child.
After the exodus from New
Iceland in 1881, Taylor re-
mained Icelandic Agent, first
at St. Andrews and later at Car-
berry, where he worked to sup-
port the new Argyle settlement.
He died in Milwaukee in 1884
at the age of seventy-one, on his
way home from a trip to Miami,
Florida where he had hoped to
recover his fading health.
* * *
When I began the research
for my PhD dissertation on the
Canadian government’s role in
the settlement of New Iceland,
I knew that John Taylor would
be a central figure in my study.
The existing information about
his early life was fragmentary
and incomplete. Almost every-
thing that later historians have
written about Taylor came
from a biographical article
that Sigtryggur Jónasson wrote
about his old friend in the peri-
odical Syrpa in 1920. This ar-
ticle provides the basic outline
for Taylor’s story - albeit with
significant gaps. Nonetheless,
it helps explain how the scion
of a white West Indian family
ended up as a Canadian civil
servant in charge of a fledg-
ing colony of Icelandic immi-
grants. It does not answer the
question of how his early life
shaped his career and actions
as Icelandic Agent. I set out
to answer this question and to
learn more about how Taylor
was perceived by the Icelan-
dic immigrants that he was
charged with helping.
Initially I wasn’t sure how I
would tackle this research prob-
lem, considering that it spanned
the Caribbean, the United States,
Britain, Iceland and Canada, and
that I was looking for someone
with one of the most common
names in the English-speaking
world! However, with help from
Nelson Gerrard, the Hearn fam-
ily of Ontario, and the late Don-
na Skardal of Baldur, Manitoba
- and a bit of luck - I have been
able to reconstruct much of Tay-
lor’s story.
However, there is more work
to be done, and I am hoping that
readers of Lögberg-Heimskring-
la can help me learn more about
Taylor’s time in New Iceland
and his interactions with the Ice-
landic settlers. I am particularly
interested in any letters, docu-
ments, photographs, or family
stories relating to John Taylor
or other members of the Taylor
family that have been passed
down among the descendants of
the New Iceland pioneers. I can
be contacted at:
Ryan Eyford
254 St. John’s College
University of Manitoba
92 Dysart Road
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2M5
Ph. 204.474.9710
email:
ryan_eyford@umanitoba.ca
IN SEARCH OF
JoHn
TaYloR,
ICELANDIC AGENT
Ken Howard addresses
Rememberance Day celebration