Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.07.2015, Blaðsíða 11

Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. júlí 2015 • 11
ONLINE MAGAZINE: WWW. HEIMSKRINGLOG.COM
J.A. Gustafson and Company.
He later worked as a railway
contractor for J.M. Kullander
and a manager for Canada
Post. Johanne and their baby
daughter, Jenny, joined him
in 1903. His family became
an important part of both
the Norwegian and Swedish
communities in Winnipeg.
In October 1909, Dahl
and four other Norwegians
living in Winnipeg founded
the Norwegian Canadian
Publishing Company. He-took
over as manager of the company
in January 1910. Publication of
the Norrøna began in March
1910. Its first editor (and also
its editor in 1919) was Ingvar
Olsen.
Even though it was based
in Winnipeg until 1970, the
Norrøna was never a local
newspaper specifically targeted
at readers within the city. It
was a Norwegian Canadian
newspaper from the outset.
Front-page headlines in its
early years reported on local
happenings in Norwegian
immigrant communities across
the prairies. The paper kept
readers updated on the latest
news from Norway, the political
situation in Europe, and local
happenings in Norwegian
immigrant communities
across the prairies, with a
high standard of journalism in
general. It encouraged readers
of all political stripes and
religious convictions to write in
with their thoughts, their poetry,
and their stories. And there
seems to have been a general
consensus that this was a paper
for all Norwegian immigrants
to Canada, a space where they
could agree to disagree.
Dahl himself was a Liberal,
pro-immigration and pro-
temperence, but contributors to
the paper included both radical
socialists – including Ole
Hjelt, who called his column
“Ole’s Hand Grenades” –
and conservative Lutheran
ministers. The Norrøna’s office
on Logan Avenue was a hub for
Norwegians passing through
the city and also the location for
Dahl’s steamship agency. Dahl
was a successful and extremely
pragmatic businessman.
This put the Norrøna in an
interesting position during the
1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
The editor, publisher, and the
Norrøna’s staff were used to
traveling to report on local
events such as temperance
parties; Syttende Mai (17th of
May) celebrations, and annual
conferences, on the one hand,
and translating or reprinting
major world news stories, on the
other. Suddenly, Winnipeg was
the city making the headlines
and they were in the position of
journalists providing first-hand
coverage.
Despite the fact that
the strike put the Norrøna
in a precarious financial
situation, the paper made a
genuine attempt at balanced
coverage – appealing to its
readers to be prompt in paying
their subscriptions rather
than blaming their striking
journalists for their troubles.
It cautioned its readers, too, to
express themselves in moderate
terms – particularly after the
Western Labour News was shut
down.
Norrøna, June 26, 1919:
To contributors,
Given the great excitement
that at this time prevails here
in this country, we wish to
say a word of caution to our
contributors who write on
socio-economic or socio-
political topics.
Be moderate when
expressing yourselves and do
not write anything that could
be interpreted as seditious or
revolutionary. As you can see
elsewhere in this paper, the
workers’ paper Labour News
has just been shut down for
seditious articles. It is obvious
that those in authority will make
use of any means to stamp out
all revolutionary spirit and put
a [unclear] foot on anything
that could be interpreted as an
expression of dissatisfaction
with the constitutional
authority. It may perhaps be
difficult to stomach everything
and keep quiet about it. But …
well, write moderately, even if
it maybe seems to you that it’s
an infringement of freedom
of the press and freedom of
speech, it pays off better to
remain silent and endure than
to use forceful expressions,
when these forceful expressions
can accomplish no other end
than to land the person who
uses them within the walls of a
jail.
The Norrøna strongly
criticized the Citizens’
Committee of One Thousand
as undemocratic and seeking
to incite rather than reconcile,
and the paper deplored the
police reaction during the
demonstration on June 10th.
The paper’s editor, Ingvar
Olsen, had distinct socialist
leanings, but one reason that
the Norrøna was inclined to
side with the workers may have
been Peter M. Dahl’s own brush
with death while working in
unsafe conditions at a building
site.
Anti-strikers also portrayed
the strike as a conspiracy on
the part of foreigners – not a
tactic likely to win over this
Norwegian Canadian paper
and its staff, who were rather
skeptical of this all being a
devious foreign plot and they
made a clear distinction between
immigrants and foreigners:
Norrøna, June 26, 1919:
The military took a
demonstration tour north to
St. John’s Park and a couple
streets where many immigrants
(also called “aliens” or
“foreigners”) live. …
There were many arrests
of “aliens,” around a hundred
persons; among them over half
a dozen women were brought to
the police station.
In the aftermath of the
strike, the Norrøna protested
the differential treatment of
jailed strike leaders: those who
were born British citizens were
released on bail, while those
not born British citizens were
denied bail. Many Norwegian
Canadian soldiers had fought
and died for Canada in a war that
had ended only months earlier,
and the Norrøna’s criticism
was very pointed. Prior to the
war, authorities in the West had
been very actively promoting
immigration to Canada. A
government that eyed foreign-
born Canadians with suspicion
and treated them as second-
class citizens shouldn’t expect
settlers to flock eagerly to the
Prairies.
Editorial in the Norrøna, July
3,1919:
Equality before the law?
Among the eleven men
arrested during the Winnipeg
strike were five who were not
born British subjects. The
six who were born Brits were
released on bail, but the five
non-British-born still sit in
Stony Mountain prison and
were denied release on bail.
Given that all eleven
arrested were (as far as we have
been able to discover) arrested
on the same charges, accused of
the same offence or crime, we
have difficulty understanding
why such a distinction has been
made, and it is something to
arouse the greatest concern
among all non-British-born
Canadian citizens if the
procedure that the authorities
have adopted in this instance is
now to be made a rule.
The five still-imprisoned
men of non-British origin were,
as one will recall, arrested
under a supplement to the
immigration laws, according
to which the suspect may be
deported without his being
given the opportunity for the
case to be heard by a court. A
special board of inquiry can
determine deportation issues
without the case going to trial.
This provision, in combination
with the treatment that the
authorities have chosen to show
the five arrested non-British
men, has given all non-British-
born citizens of this country
cause for great concern. And
we fear that this treatment of
non-Brits will have an adverse
– a restraining – effect on
Immigration of non-Brits,
including that of Scandinavians.
The total number of
Winnipeggers who were direct
participants in the strike has
been estimated at as many as
thirty thousand, nearly twenty
percent of the city population at
the time. In the Anglo-Canadian
press, however, strikers were
characterized as “aliens” and
“foreigners” – even with resort
to ethnic slurs.
From May through
July 1919, the ethnic slur
“bohunk(s)” made the front
page of the Winnipeg Free Press
three times; “scum,” four times;
“chaos,” 31 times; “conspiracy,”
40 times; “foreigners,” 70
times; “protect,” 196 times; and
“alien(s),” 228 times.
Compare that to front
pages over the same period
a year earlier: May to July
1918. “Bohunk” wasn’t in the
vocabulary; “scum,” once;
“chaos,” 20 times; “conspiracy,”
25 times; “foreigner(s),” 35
times; “protect,” 142 times; and
“alien(s),” 155 times.
In the war of words
surrounding the 1919 general
strike and its immediate
aftermath, the Anglo-Canadian
press in Winnipeg was playing
the “chaos,” “conspiracy,” and
“protect” cards with a greater
frequency than when Canada
was actually at war. Also
being used with a significantly
greater frequency over this
period were broad terms for
“non-Canadians,” depicting
them as a collective group of
outsiders, a suspect presence
in the community. Negative
and derogatory language
to characterize non-Anglo-
Canadians was becoming an
increasingly common sight in
print.
For members of Winnipeg’s
Norwegian community, this
language clearly hurt. It cut
through a thin veneer of
belonging – the illusion of
being part of a community that
treated them as equals. Many
simply left the city. The wounds
would be a long time in healing.
This article is a edited
version of Katelin Parsons’s
acclaimed and provocative
presentation at the TGIF
Dinner at the Scandinavian
Center in Winnipeg on
February 27, 2015.
Lögberg anniversary greetings from Norrøna (19 Dec 1957)
Right: P.M. Dahl in Heimskringla (28 Jul 1944)