Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.05.2016, Qupperneq 10

10 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • May 15 2016
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Go West young man, go West. In 1871, that was the advice of Horace Greeley, the editor of
The New York Tribune.
Horace Greeley said that anyone
who had to earn a living should go where
workers were needed and wanted, where
they will be hired because they are
needed, not because someone is giving
them a job as a favour. He added some
conditions to his advice. Before going
West, he said, a young man should learn
to chop, to plough, and to mow.
Because of geography and shipping
routes, the Icelanders arrived in Quebec
City. Some made their way even further
east to Nova Scotia. But that did not last.
The Icelanders were latecomers. The
good land was already taken. Others
went to Kinmount, Ontario. After a
disastrous year, they, too, continued
the journey west. That journey west,
with many stops and starts, would
continue over the years until Icelandic
immigrants reached the furthest west
possible – first Vancouver, then Victoria,
British Columbia. This weekend, we
have all gathered to celebrate that long,
arduous, and often dangerous journey.
Following their dream of travelling
to America and the life it offered had a
high price. Not in the fares people paid,
but in the lives lost. In the first stage of
this saga, people died and were buried at
sea. Later, they died in Nova Scotia, in
Kinmount, they died on the journey to
the promised land of New Iceland.
These sacrifices were not made for
frivolous reasons. They were made
because in Iceland there was a shortage
of land, a lack of opportunity, a rigid
social system, and natural disasters
created by cold weather and volcanic
eruption.
Horace Greeley had said learn to
chop. The movement west was made
harder by the fact that the Icelanders
didn’t know how to chop. How do you
learn woodsmen’s skills when your
forests are dwarf birch?
Greeley said learn to plough. They
didn’t know how to plough. How can
you plough lava deserts and glaciers?
How could they learn to plough when
no crop other than grass would grow?
They did know how to mow, but as
more than one writer has pointed out,
they mowed what we would think of as
short domestic grass, not prairie grass
that reached to the top of a man’s hips.
On the immigration forms, they called
themselves bondi, farmers, but they
were not farmers by any definition in the
West. They were herders.
According to Dr. S.O. Thompson,
in his history of Riverton, the settlers
were unprepared for one of the coldest
winters on record. They were faced with
conditions so unbearable that many of
the stronger adults, and the older children
capable of seeking work, walked to
Selkirk and Winnipeg. He says “the men
found work at 10 to 20 dollars a month
on the farms. Women and children were
hired as domestics in Winnipeg homes.
Only about one hundred were left in the
original settlement when scurvy broke
out. Thirty-four of the remaining one
hundred died from the disease.”
Faced with the difficulties in New
Iceland, many of the settlers began
moving west to Brandon and to Argyle.
It is hard for us to conceive how slow
travel with horses or oxen and wagons
was. What made it possible for people
to move further west was the building
of the railroad. As the railway moved
west, settlers took wagons, cattle, and
equipment in the boxcars to the end of
the rail line, then unloaded and drove
away onto the vast prairie.
It wasn’t until 1886 that the first
train reached Port Moody, BC. In 1887,
the first CPR passenger train arrived in
Vancouver. Some Icelanders were on
those first trains to BC. We have been
coming to BC ever since.
Horace Greeley said go where you
will get a job because you are needed,
not because someone is doing you a
favour. Icelanders followed this advice
in the past and their descendants have
followed this advice in the present. In
preparing this speech, I began to think
about the members of my family who
have moved west. One of the first was
Valentinus Valgardson. He was married
to Thora Sigurgeirson from Hecla Island.
They got as far as Moose Jaw. They
stayed and he became both a teacher
and a farmer. My father’s brothers,
Earl and Allan, moved to Edmonton
and Calgary. My cousins Rudy and
Sandy Bristow moved to Victoria and
Vancouver. One of my father’s aunts
moved to Vancouver. My family marks
the Icelandic trail west.
Hulli Bjarnason was a successful
businessman and our neighbour in
Gimli. When he retired, he and his wife
Gusta moved to Victoria. Their three
daughters, Linda, Margaret and Carol,
also came west. Keith Sigmundson
came to be the head of psychiatry.
Elroy Sveinsson became a salmon
fisherman. Janis Olof Magnusson, from
Winnipeg’s West End, went to Regina,
Saskatchewan, then to Victoria to work
as an agricultural economist. I went
from Gimli to Winnipeg to Victoria
to be a professor at the University of
Victoria. There’s Glenn Sigurdson from
Riverton and Heather Ireland from West
End Winnipeg. Heather can tell you
about the migration from Lundar to
Winnipeg and the trek west. The exodus
west came from every community. This
room, this city, this province, is filled
with people of Icelandic descent.
Richard Beck came from North
Dakota to Victoria to retire. He brought
with him his passion for all things
Icelandic and he and his wife, Margret,
created the Richard and Margaret Beck
Trust at the University of Victoria. With
the income from that money, the trust has
brought over a hundred experts on many
aspects of Icelandic history, society, and
culture to give lectures. The Beck Trust
has sponsored summer-school courses,
including courses in Icelandic film and
language. Glenn Sigurdson moved
to Vancouver to work as a successful
lawyer and then negotiator. Yet, he
recently published a book about the
Lake Winnipeg fishery called Vikings on
a Prairie Ocean. In this journey west,
our heritage has not been forgotten.
We’ve come here under many
different conditions. Bob Asgeirsson told
me he left Winnipeg in a raging blizzard
to have a holiday in Vancouver. When he
got off the train in Vancouver, there was
a light, warm rain. He bought a return
ticket to Winnipeg, quit his job, and
moved to Vancouver. Ian Sigvaldason,
who is originally from Arborg, moved
to Salt Spring Island to open the Pegasus
Gallery of Canadian Art.
There are here today, the descendants
of the group of Icelanders who left
Riverton and Hecla and Gimli in the
late thirties and early forties. They were
fishermen and boatbuilders. One of their
descendants, Lisa Sigurgeirsson Maxx,
is with us. Ken Kristjanson of Gimli
tells me that a number of this group tried
to get his father and uncle to join them.
Many of that group settled in Steveston.
There are enough of us living on
the West Coast to have Icelandic clubs
in Vancouver, Victoria, Naniamo,
Bellingham, Blaine, and Seattle.
There are endless stories of this
journey west, both historic and current.
But one of the most fascinating is
that of Christian Sivertz and Elinborg
Samuelsdottir. Although Christian’s last
name was Sivertz, he was a hundred
percent Icelandic.
Christian Sivertz and Elinborg
Samuelsdottir both came separately
from Iceland. They knew no English.
Christian arrived in Winnipeg in 1883.
Christian worked long, hard hours in
Winnipeg for little pay. He travelled
west to Victoria in 1890 for greater
opportunities. He was 25 years old.
After he arrived he met Elinborg
Samuelsdottir, who had left Iceland in
1888 with two brothers and two sisters.
They had spent two years in Winnipeg.
At the time they arrived in Victoria,
there already were about 20 Icelandic
families.
I mention the Sivertz family because
I got to know Ben Sivertz, the youngest
son, quite well. On many a Sunday in
W.D. Valgardson
Victoria, BC
COMING WEST
PHOTOS COURTESY OF W.D.VALGARDSON / WDVALGARDSONKAFFIHUS