The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.1988, Side 22

20
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SPRING, 1988
IN THE RED RIVER VALLEY
by Jdhann Magnus Bjarnason
translated by Thelma Whale
Book 1 — Chapter 1
The Crooked House
It was late in the evening of January
28th, 1883, when I arrived in Winnipeg. I
had spent five days travelling from Nova
Scotia which had been my home for eight
years. I was sixteen years old; travelling by
myself; I knew no one in Winnipeg and
was all alone in the world except for a
cousin, named Solrun, whom I had never
in my life set eyes on. But it was to her that
I had written before I set off from Halifax
and I knew that unless unavoidably de-
tained, she would meet me at the railway
station in Winnipeg that day.
I had now arrived in Winnipeg, this
progressive city in the fertile Red River
Valley, the capital of the broad, rich, but
thinly-populated Canadian North-West,
the city to which men from many lands
streamed by thousands, which the Iceland-
ers in the Western World had already taken
as their own. Young as I was, I had long
dreamed delightful dreams about this town,
had concocted many grand hopes about
her and had long desired to see her and
make my home there. I expected to become
rich and to live happily ever after.
At this time Winnipeg was quite insignif-
icant compared to what she is now. She
was then in her youth, exceedingly large
for her age and precocious, but with a
rather unimposing and ugly face. Now she
has developed and attained greater growth,
greater beauty, greater perfection, and will
undoubtedly become one of the handsom-
est cities in the Western World.
I remember clearly how surprised I was
when I came to Winnipeg. Everything was
completely different from what I had ex-
pected; everything had a different appear-
ance than I had first anticipated. That day,
there had been a downpour which was just
clearing up as I stepped out of the railway
car. I found a kind of dullness resting over
all; water dripped in large drops from the
roof of the station waiting room which was
an ugly wooden structure, very unlike the
stately structure which stands there now.
The streets were wet and dirty and great
mud puddles stood here and there, even on
Main Street. Men and animals travelling
on the roads were spattered with clay and
the gummy Red River mud clung to their
feet and piled and kneaded itself around
the horses’ hoofs and the boots of the people
so that, at a distance, it appeared as if
everyone was trudging along with the great-
est difficulty on heavy snowshoes. All the
sidewalks were made of planks; nowhere
was pavement to be seen. And the side-
walks were so narrow that two men could
scarcely walk abreast on them. On several
streets, even in the middle of town, there
were still no sidewalks at all. The houses
were low and scattered and not always in
straight lines along the streets, not even on
Portage Avenue or Main Street. On the
east side of Main Street, all the way from
the C.P.R. station and south on Logan
Avenue, which was then called Logan
Street, there were only tiny, low shanties,
looking like skull caps. Some of them
stood just a short distance from the side-
walk. But in many places in the lanes be-
tween these huts there were tents, some
white and new, some striped and others
faded with age, some brown or stained and
weatherbeaten. In most of these tents cold
drinks and fruit and trinkets were for sale.