The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1959, Page 16

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Winter 1959
Trek from Thingvalla, Saskatchewan
to Lake Manitoba, in 1893
By S. B. OLSON
The spring of the year 1893 saw the
evacuation of about seventy-five per
cent of the settlers of the Thingvalla
settlement in eastern Saskatchewan,
a few miles northeast of the village of
Churchibridge. This move was made
as a result of trying conditions caused
by drought and summer frost, a con-
dition that had been developing for
the past two or three years. Then, to
top everything else, came the seven-
month winter of 1892-93. The patience
and endurance of many of the settlers
became exhausted. Some moved to
Foam Lake and its vicinity, in Sask-
atchewan, many went east, to the west
shore of Lake Manitoba. My people
were among those who went to Lake
Manitoba.
In the early morning of a clear,
sunshiny day in the first week of Sep-
tember, 1893, a middle-aged man and
two teen-aged boys headed southeast
over the open prairie. They were leav-
ing the Thingvalla settlement. Their
immediate destination was the small
town of Millwood, in Manitoba, situ-
ated near ithe banks of the Shell River,
and their ultimate destination was the
Lakeland settlement, on the shores of
Lake Manitoba, some two hundred
miles to the southeast of Thingvalla.
The middle-aged man was Jon Gud
mundsson. He had arrived from Ice-
land about three years before. The two
boys were Maris Johnson, also a recent
arrival, and myself, a comparative old-
timer, for I had come to Canada in
1878.
We were taking a small herd of cat-
tle including milch cows and young
stock, some forty head in all. At Mill-
wood we would be joined by Thordur
Kolbeinsson, from Qu’Appelle Valley,
with some dozen head of cattle.
My father, Bjorn Olafson (Olson)
had preceded us in May to Lakeland.
With him went Einar (Jonson) Sud-
fjord, one of the first settlers in Thing-
valla. My sister, Gudny, was teaching
at the Thingvalla school that summer.
Therefore, it had been decided that
Mother and the rest of the family, the
year old Doddi and the five year old
Sumarlidi, would stay until school was
closed. The cattle, however, were to
go while the grazing was good.
As we three trudged along, herding
the cattle over the endless prairie, little
was said. We felt a strong sense of
relief, tinged with sadness, at leaving
the district where strenuous effort had
led only to discouraging results. This
was the end of seven years of home-
steading in Saskatchewan. Now hopes
for the future were centred on the
district called Lakeland, near the west
shore of Lake Manitoba, about twelve
miles north of the town of Westbourne,
on the Manitoba and Northwestern
Railway.
When Father arrived there in May
he made a deal with a Mr. Allbright
for a quarter-section of land half a