The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1973, Page 13

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
11
Editcrial
ROSSEAU CENTENNIAL
by Arilius Isfeld
“Your friends say ‘hello’ and so
does Baldvin to his foster .parents,
Steini and Gudny”.* This is the con-
cluding sentence of a letter sent from
Rosseau, Ontario. It did not travel by
air jet delivery route nor was the
sender surrounded by the myriads of
modern conveniences that bring the
comforts and contentment that these
casual comments seem to infer. No!
The letter referred to was written on
September the first, 1873; one hundred
years ago! The receiver at best would
see it some thirty days later after it
had travelled some two thousand miles
across the ocean on a rather slow
steamship. This letter was sent by
Bjorn Kristjansson of Rosseau, Ont-
ario to Steini Kristjansson of Akur-
eyri and Kristjan Kristjansson of
Storagerdi in Iceland.
A very brave and optimistic group
of people had left Iceland on August
5, 1873, and arrived in Quebec, Can-
ada, twenty days and five and one-
half hours later. Eventually a half doz-
en families from this group located
at Rosseau, Ontario, “where a small
but permanent settlement formed”.
This was the first group of Icelanders
to settle in Canada, Sigtryggur Jonas-
son having come to Canada as an
individual in 1872. They could well
(* Runningjarnir biSja aS heilsa og Baldvin
fdsturforeldrum si'num Steina og GuSnyju.)
have decided not to settle in Canada
because at this time Pall Thorlaksson,
who had previously settled in Wis-
consin in the United States, was wait-
ing at Quebec and was anxious that
they should come to Wisconsin where
he had arranged employment for some
forty immigrants. However, this brave
group was already committed to go to
Ontario. Actually one hundred twelve
went on to Ontario, while some forty-
three went to Wisconsin with Pall
This is the hundredth anniversary of
the group’s forming a settlement in
Canada and it seems fitting that we
should reflect upon the courage,
patience, perserverance and bravery of
these people who faced the rigors of
a slow stormy voyage and the un-
known frontier so vastly different
from their homeland so far, far away.
They left their home land on Aug-
ust 5th on the Steamship “Queen”
which they humorously dubbed
“Walker’s Stable” because some 250
horses were -their companions on
board and crowded off some twenty
or thirty members of the party till a
later trip. However they bid farewell
to “The Stable” at Granton, Scotland
and later at Glasgow boarded the
“Manitoban”, which took them to
Quebec.
This voyage had taken months of
negotiations and organization work
mainly by Olafur Olafsson from Espi-