The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1982, Blaðsíða 37

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
35
AN EXCERPT FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF THORDUR "TOM" LAXDAL
edited by LaDonna Breidfjord Backmeyer
(Concluded)
How clearly I remember our approach to
the St. Lawrence, the green banks and
small towns and villages on each side of us
as we steamed upriver on a beautiful
morning. We landed at Montreal and spent
one night there before boarding a train that
would take us west to Winnipeg. In Win-
nipeg we had friends and relatives, people
who spoke our own language. How happy
we were! We spent three or four days in
that city resting up after our long and tiring
journey; then, once again, we set forth by
train to cover the remaining four hundred
miles of our trip. Father met us in Wadena,
Saskatchewan, and we thought at that time
that all of our troubles were over. This was
the new country, but we all had trust and
hope in our father as he had always pro-
vided so well for us.
After arriving in Wadena we were taken
to the home of an Icelandic family, Mr. and
Mrs. Tom Vatnsdal, the owners of a lum-
ber yard in which my father had worked.
These people, friends of my father’s, pro-
vided a lovely dinner for us, after which we
said goodbye and left to cover the final
twenty miles of our journey to the new
family home. Father’s first cousin, Louis
(Lulli) Laxdal, my mother’s nephew, Skuli
Jonsson, and a young fellow of eighteen
years, Bjami Thorlacius (who later married
my sister, Jona), had also come to Wadena
to meet us. Father drove a spring-fitted
Democrat, a sort of two-seated wagon, and
each of the other men drove a wagon pulled
by a team of horses. The road was poor,
mostly prairie trails, and our progress was
slow as the road wound in and out among
the sloughs and poplar groves. It took us all
day to go the twenty miles to Dad’s home-
stead. However, one of the outfits, the
wagon that carried Skuli, Jona, and Oli,
did not make it, so those three had to spend
the night with some Indians. As we had
been told in Iceland that Indians killed
white men on sight, this was no picnic for
any of the three, but by the next morning
their wagon approached our new home. I
don’t think that any of us slept much that
first night as, except for Mother and Dad,
we had no beds, but we were glad that this
was the end of our journey.
Dad’s homestead was very poor farming
land, mostly sloughs and bush, with only
fifteen acres of cultivated land. He had
built a log house on the place, but had not
had time to plaster or chink the cabin. One
could see out between the logs, and the
wind and the rain blew directly through the
gaps. To come to this house was a drastic
change, mostly for our mother, and al-
though she never did complain, we often
saw tears in her eyes.
Our new home was located ten miles
from the nearest village of Leslie, two
miles from our nearest neighbors, the Stef-
fanson family, and five miles from the
nearest school, located at Kristnes. The
first years on that homestead were pretty
rough because we had no money. How-
ever, some friends of Dad’s gave us two
cows, and others donated a dozen chickens.
We lived mostly on milk, eggs, potatoes,
wild geese, ducks, prairie chicken, part-
ridge and rabbit. The rabbits, ducks and
geese were plentiful, so Oli and I quickly
became good shots. Hunting certainly was
a cheap way for one to eat. Nevertheless,
one still had some expense. Since a box of
twenty Dominion shotgun shells sold for