The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1981, Side 28

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
AUTUMN, 1981
TOAST TO ICELAND
Islendingadagurinn, Gimli, Manitoba, August, 1981
by John J. Arnason
Mr. Chairman — Virdulega Fjallkona,
Your Honour — the Lieutenant-Governor
of Manitoba — Mr. Jobin, Honoured
Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I want to thank the
Icelandic Festival Com-
mittee for the honour in
asking me to present the
Toast to Iceland. Continu-
ing to be an active mem-
ber of the Committee
for 26 years, being raised
in Gimli, and having
worked with my father
at past celebrations when
he was a member for over 40 years, pro-
vides me with a special insight into how
important this event is to the community at
large. Over the years, this Festival has
assisted in strengthening the bonds of
friendship and cultural ties with Iceland,
through encouraging visits and sponsoring
groups such as bands, choirs, Glima Groups
and Chess tournaments.
The culmination of that effort was so
visible during our 100th anniversary in
1975; when we opened up our homes and
our hearts to so many relatives and friends
from Iceland. The opportunity for travel
between our countries, to view the birth-
place of our parents and grandparents, and
for relatives to visit Canada to see our way
of life, has strengthened the common bonds
that tie us to our homeland. These bonds
were ably described by the late Judge W. J.
Lindal writing in the Icelandic Canadian
Magazine which stated:
“The people of Iceland are our
people, their blood is our blood.
Our fathers and mothers spoke
most affectionately of them, ex-
tolled their love of freedom, their
insistence that each individual has
the right to hew out his own des-
tiny. These very qualities they
wanted to pass on to us. ’ ’
A country is only as strong as the people
that occupy the land. First and foremost it is
the people in Iceland, with their charac-
teristics of being hard working, generous,
close-knit families, who seem to thrive on
adversity, in a land that is beautiful but
harsh in many respects.
Iceland, an island of40,000 square miles,
a population of 220,000, set in the Atlantic
Ocean, at a latitude just south of the Arctic
Circle, with relatively few natural re-
sources, continues to exist in a world of
economic woes and turmoil. The people of
Iceland have a determination to survive and
a positive attitude, liberally spiced with
stubbornness. This has resulted in a land
where people raise their children with
minimum disturbance to the environment
and fewer social problems compared with
other nations.
So many of you here today have had the
opportunity to visit Iceland and personally
experience the thrill of going “home” as it
were, to the land of our ancestors. My first
experience in 1968, changed from curiosity
as to how anyone could survive in the land
as we drove from the airport at Keflavik to
Reykjavik, to being overwhelmed at the
beauty of the land as one travelled around
the island.
In July 1974 our family visited Iceland to
join with other relatives and friends in cele-
brating the 1100th anniversary of the settle-
ment of the island. That event will be
John J. Arnason