Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.10.2018, Page 5

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. október 2018 • 5
Most people who are
familiar with the
history of the Icelandic
immigrants to Manitoba are
aware of the visit of Lord
Dufferin to the New Iceland
settlement in September
1877. (Lögberg-Heimskringla
published his remarks at
Gimli in our Canada 150
special issue on July 1, 2017.)
Frederick Hamilton-Temple-
Blackwood, the Earl of
Dufferin, who was Governor
General of Canada from 1872
until 1878, showed a special
fondness for the Icelanders
who arrived in Canada during
his tenure. As a young man,
Lord Dufferin visited Iceland
and wrote about the experience
in his book, Letters from High
Latitudes, which was first
published in 1857. Before
returning to Ottawa, Lord
Dufferin delivered an address
in Winnipeg, part of which
focused on the Mennonite
and Icelandic immigrants to
Canada. Here are his remarks,
which were recorded in John
Macoun’s Manitoba and the
Great North-West (London:
Thomas C. Jack, 1883).
In close proximity
to Winnipeg two other
communities – the Mennonites
and Icelanders – starting from
opposite ends of Europe,
without either concert or
communication, have sought
fresh homes within our territory;
the one of Russian extraction,
though German race, moved
by a desire to escape from the
obligations of a law which was
repulsive to their conscience –
the other, bred amid the snows
and ashes of an Arctic volcano,
by the hope of bettering their
material condition.
Although I have witnessed
many sights to cause me
pleasure during my various
progresses through the
Dominion, seldom have I
beheld any spectacle more
pregnant with prophecy,
more fraught with promise of
a successful future, than the
Mennonite settlement. When I
visited these interesting people
they had only been two years
in the Province, and yet in a
long ride I took across many
miles of prairie, which but
yesterday was absolutely bare,
desolate and untenanted, the
home of the wolf, the badger
and the eagle, I passed village
after village, homestead after
homestead furnished with all
the conveniences and incidents
of European comfort and a
scientific agriculture, while on
either side the road corn-fields
already ripe for harvest and
pastures populous with herds
of cattle stretched away to the
horizon.
Even on this continent –
the peculiar theatre of rapid
change and progress – there
has nowhere, I imagine,
taken place so marvellous a
transformation; and yet, when
in your name, and in the name
of the Queen of England, I
bade these people welcome to
their new homes, it was not the
improvement in their material
fortunes that preoccupied my
thoughts. Glad as I was of
having the power of allotting
them so ample a portion of our
teeming soil – soil which seems
to blossom at a touch, and
which they were cultivating to
such manifest advantage – I felt
infinitely prouder in being able
to throw over them the aegis
of the British Constitution,
and in bidding them freely
share with us our unrivalled
political institutions, and our
untrammelled personal liberty.
We ourselves are so
accustomed to breathe the
atmosphere of freedom that
it scarcely occurs to us to
consider and appreciate our
advantages in this respect. It is
only when we are reminded, by
such incidents as that to which
I refer, of the small extent of
the world’s surface over which
the principles of Parliamentary
Government can be said to work
smoothly and harmoniously,
that we are led to consider the
exceptional happiness of our
position.
Nor was my visit to the
Icelandic community less
satisfactory than that to our
Mennonite fellow-subjects.
From accidental circumstances
I have been long since led
to take an interest in the
history and literature of the
Scandinavian race, and the
kindness I once received at the
hands of the Icelandic people
in their own island, naturally
induced me to take a deep
interest in the welfare of this
new immigration.
When we take into account
the secluded position of the
Icelandic nation for the last
thousand years, the unfavorable
conditions of their climate and
geographical situation, it would
be unreasonable to expect that
a colony from thence should
exhibit the same aptitudes
for agricultural enterprise
and settlement as would be
possessed by a people fresh
from intimate contact with the
higher civilization of Europe.
In Iceland there are
neither trees, nor cornfields,
nor highways. You cannot,
therefore, expect an Icelander
to exhibit an inspired
proficiency in felling timber,
ploughing land, or making
roads, yet unfortunately these
are the three accomplishments
most necessary to a colonist
in Canada. But though
starting at a disadvantage in
these respects, you must not
underrate the capacity of your
new fellow-countrymen. They
are endowed with a great deal
of intellectual ability, and
a quick intelligence. They
are well educated. I scarcely
entered a hovel at Gimli which
did not possess a library.
They are well-conducted,
religious and peaceable. Above
all they are docile and anxious
to learn. Nor, considering the
difficulty which prevails in this
country in procuring women
servants, will the accession
of some hundreds of bright,
good-humoured, though
perhaps inexperienced, yet
willing, Icelandic girls, anxious
for employment, be found a
disadvantage by the resident
ladies of the country. Should
the dispersion of these young
people lead, in course of time, to
the formation of more intimate
and tenderer ties than those of
mere neighbourhood between
the Canadian population and
the Icelandic colony, I am safe
in predicting that it will not
prove a matter of regret on the
one side or the other.
And, gentlemen, in
reference to this point, I
cannot help remarking with
satisfaction on the extent to
which a community of interests,
the sense of being engaged in
a common undertaking, the
obvious degree in which the
prosperity of any one man
is a gain to his neighbours,
has amalgamated the various
sections of the population of this
Province, originally so diverse
in race, origin, and religion, into
a patriotic, closely-welded, and
united whole.
In no part of Canada
have I found a better feeling
prevailing between all classes
and sections of the community.
It is in a great measure owing
to this widespread sentiment
of brotherhood that on a recent
occasion great troubles have
been averted, while at the
present moment it is finding its
crowning and most triumphant
expression in the establishment
of a University under conditions
which have been found
impossible of application in any
other Province of Canada – I
may say in any other country
in the world – for nowhere
else, either in Europe or on this
continent, as far as I am aware,
have the bishops and heads of the
various religious communities
into which the Christian world
is unhappily divided, combined
to erect an Alma Mater to
which all the denominational
colleges of the Province are to
be affiliated and whose statutes
and degrees are to be regulated
and dispensed under the joint
auspices of a governing body
in which all the churches of the
land will be represented.
An achievement of this kind
speaks volumes in favour of the
wisdom, liberality, and Christian
charity of those devoted men by
whom in this distant land the
consciences of the population
are led and enlightened, and
long may they be spared to see
the efforts of their exertions
and magnanimous sacrifices in
the good conduct and grateful
devotion of their respective
flocks. Nor, I am happy to think,
is this good fellowship, upon
which I have so much cause
to congratulate you, confined
either within the limits of the
Province or even within those of
the Dominion.
In a word, apart,
secluded from all extraneous
influences, nestling at the
feet of her majestic mother,
Canada dreams her dream,
and forbodes her destiny – a
dream of ever-broadening
harvests, multiplying towns
and villages, and expanding
pastures; of page after page
of honorable history added as
her contribution to the annals
of the Mother Country and to
the glories of the British race;
of a perpetuation for all time
upon this continent of that
temperate and well-balanced
system of Government which
combines in one mighty whole,
as the eternal possession of
all Englishmen, the brilliant
history and the traditions of the
past, with the freest and most
untrammelled liberty of action
in the future.
LORD DUFFERIN ON THE MENNONITES AND ICELANDERS
First Lutheran Church
580 Victor Street
Winnipeg R3G 1R2
204-772-7444
www.mts.net/~flcwin
Worship with us
Sundays 10:30 a.m.
Pastor Michael Kurtz
Greetings from
Gordon J. Reykdal
Honorary Consul of the
Republic of Iceland
Suite #10250 – 176 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
T5S 1L2
Cell: 780.497.1480
E-mail: gjreykdal@gmail.com
IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Lord Dufferin in 1878