The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.1994, Qupperneq 20

130
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SPRING, 1994
was able to tell him that she was
employed as a maid at the Winchester
Hotel in Pembina, North Dakota,
about a hundred miles south of
Winnipeg. As family tradition has it,
“with twenty-five cents left in his
pocket,” he set off to find and marry
his love. Icelandic stubbornness or
laudable persistence, whichever you
prefer to call it, paid off. This trait was
passed on to his first-born daughter,
Sigridur.
Sigga’s determined nature is what
spurred her on over what must have
seemed like insurmountable obstacles
in fulfilling her life-long ambition to
become a medical doctor. When she
was twelve, her family left Grand
Forks where her father had been a
carpenter. They joined hundreds of
other Icelanders homesteading in the
Wynyard-Mozart area of the new
province of Saskatchewan. As with so
many of the other Icelandic settlers of
the VatnabyggQ area, their posses-
FRESH WATER
PICKEREL • TROUT • CHAR, ETC.
SALT WATER
HALIBUT • COD • SOLE, ETC.
SHELLFISH
SHRIMP • LOBSTER • CRAB, ETC.
SMOKED
GOLDEYE • SALMON • TROUT, ETC.
ICELANDIC HARDFISKUR
OPEN IN WINNIPEG
MON.-SAT.
ALL YEAR
DIRECT FROM THE
FISHERMAN TO YOU
596 Dufferin Avenue (at McGregor)
Winnipeg, Manitoba R2W 2Y9
Fax: (204) 586-1526
rhonc & IVlail Orders ^Qr|
Welcome (204) 4
sions were meagre...
“Our belongings included two oxen,
twenty chickens ...some pots and
pans and a few dishes. Mama...
brought her spinning wheel, a feather
down quilt and Icelandic sheepskin
slippers. ”3
.. .and their hardships many,
“We lived for six weeks in a tent...
(during) a rainy spell... damp, cold
and miserable. Mama did what
cooking she could under the wagon...
we walked to the creek, a half mile
away, for water. Dad made a frame
...from it Mama hung the two pails. In
winter, we melted snow. Dad and
brother Bill... would travel twelve to
sixteen miles (for firewood). Dad
always had a big woodpile, one of our
proudest possessions. ”4
Sesselja Rakel must have been a
skilled and versatile homemaker for,
as her daughter Dora tells it...
“The first winter we had no
potatoes, no vegetables and little
1 - 204 - 642-5958
Box 1818 - 82 1st Avenue
Gimli, Manitoba
ROC 1B0