Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.05.2015, Blaðsíða 6

6 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • May 1 2015
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With the first sight of the Hamlet, children started running from
every direction across the island
towards the dock. Nothing
could have been further from
their minds than the stern
visage of Queen Victoria, the
commemoration of whose
birthday was the reason for the
holiday weekend. Nor was the
sight of old Jon Erickson behind
the wheel the cause of such
exuberance. Ice cream was the
precious cargo they were after,
always on board this first trip of
the year after the ice had left the
lake following a long winter.
The Hamlet on the horizon also
signaled an exciting weekend
of fun and games with picnics,
sports, events, and dances. This
was the big community send
off to all the men about to leave
for the more remote fishing
stations to the north as another
season was soon to begin. By
August they would return, and
then go north again for two
more months as the fall winds
turned the page to September.
Winter fishing followed, but
that usually was from much
closer to home.
As the children scrambled
over each other down the dock,
they suddenly stopped dead in
their tracks. Rather than the
expected tubs of ice cream, they
encountered a stranger, few
and far between on the island,
disembarking awkwardly from
the boat. He was tall and gangly,
wearing an oversized baggy
grey suit. He stood at the edge
of the dock, shaking off his sea
legs and looking bewildered,
as if mystified at having been
suddenly dropped into an alien
land. Jon and a young boy
struggled to unload a huge
black suitcase, cumbersome
and heavy, judging by the look
on Jon and his son Steinni’s
face as they struggled to push
it up from the deck to the dock.
Using both hands, his arms
crossed lopsidedly over to his
side, the stranger made his way
up the rough wooden timber
dock through the throng of
gawking kids. He walked up
to an imposing red building on
the shore, alongside the dock.
He put the suitcase down and
stopped. He looked inside and
saw three men dressed in green
rubber suits standing over
makeshift tables of painted
plywood, cutting the heads off
an endless stream of fish, slitting
the belly, and pushing the slimy
guts down through a small
triangular hole in the middle
of the table into the topless
gas drums below. On the other
side of the shed were several
men folding what he knew to
be fishing nets that he had seen
pictures of into big wooden
trays. They were engaged in
a lively conversation as they
worked in a language which he
had never heard, but he found
the rhythmic lilt pleasing to his
ears.
He watched, entranced,
for a few moments, and then
continued up the incline
leading to the narrow gravel
road that made its way along
the shoreline in both directions,
past tidy yards and well-kept
houses standing simply and
elegantly on the fields looking
out onto the lake. He was used
to dusty prairie towns, and
there were not many where
he hadn’t been. There was a
surprising charm to this place.
He had read about villages like
this in the Maritimes, but never
knew such places existed in
Manitoba. It was a beautiful,
sunny day but the soft breeze
had a crispness coming off the
still frigid waters of the lake.
For him, back in the heyday
of the twenties, when business
was booming in every prairie
town, this would have been the
end of the earth. But now he
was at the end of his rope.
It was 1933. First the
Depression, then the drought,
had throttled the thrill of the
twenties, and brought on the
dirty thirties. The thirst for
knowledge had died like the
crops, and money for books
had given way to every last
penny to survive. So for this
travelling salesman, it was time
to search out new territory, and
new places. Small and remote
as it might be, these were
desperate times. But people
needed to eat, and the lake
was still producing fish. This
meant money, and when he
heard of the locals’ reputation
for loving books, this seemed
like the best place, possibly
the only place, on earth at this
time to try to sell his wares, or
so he hoped. He had boarded
the train in Winnipeg, found his
way to Riverton, tracked down
the mail boat and dreamed
of making his fortune selling
The Book of Knowledge to the
Icelanders on Hecla Island.
Door-to-door salesmen
coming round on their
missions to sell Singer sewing
machines, Electrolux vacuums,
Watkins medical products and
disinfectants and soaps, and
encyclopedias were still very
much a part of the world when
I was a boy. As a youngster,
I recall vividly the suited
salesman showing up at the
door, spreading the books out
across the living room, and
preaching what was in effect a
Sermon from the Mount on the
parents’ obligation to educate
their children for the world
ahead with a subtext never far
from the surface – a life of
guilt and regret if you failed
to embrace this opportunity
to equip your children with
the tools to work with the big
tough world out there. They
might as well have just come
out and said it: “If your kids
don’t succeed in life, you’ll
only have yourself to blame.”
There weren’t many
prairie towns untouched by the
sermon. Recently, at a friend’s
cottage, I noticed a small case
containing books looking not
unlike those I had so often
see in my childhood. I opened
the front volume “The World
Book organized in Story and
Pictures, signed S. Millgard,
1927.” My friend Bev Briscoe
explained that this precious
family heirloom was now in her
careful custody still in the case
her dad had made as a shop
student in high school. They
had been the prized possession
of her grandmother, acquired
when she was a teacher in
Hamiota Manitoba, a small
southern Manitoba village, not
unlike Riverton where I grew
up. That was 1927; now it was
1933. Hamiota was thirsty for
water; water was everywhere in
Hecla.
He looked behind him and
saw the boy from the boat,
struggling up the incline with
two unwieldy canvass bags,
over his back In front of him
he saw a store, Hecla General
Store, with a small sign “Royal
Mail Canada” nailed to the
front. He got to the juncture of
the road. Should he go right or
left? Had he stood there fifty
years before, he would likely
have been met by a kindly man
speaking a strange language. He
would have introduced himself
as Sigurdur Erlendson, my
great-great-grandfather who had
been one of the original settlers
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The Hamlet at Hecla
When knowledge
came with a knock
PHOTOS COURTESY OF GLENN SIGURDSON
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