The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.2004, Síða 24

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 59 #1
of Iceland on the Prairies. Margaret Ann
Bjornson served as researcher, the infa-
mous Frank (Budge) Crawley was camera-
man and director, and Mclnnes producer
and scriptwriter. In a later section of the
book Mclnnes describes Margaret Ann’s
contributions to the social life of NFB.
Just before the section on Ms Bjornson,
Mclnnes talks about Ms Bjerring’s arrival
at NFB’s Ottawa offices in the winter of
1942 and some of her subsequent film work
there. The book, One Man’s
Documentary, edited and with an
Introduction by Gene Walz is now avail-
able from the University of Manitoba
Press.
Following the occupation of Iceland
by Allied forces, including Canadians,
there had been some suggestion that the
Icelandic community of Canada, which
had been established in Manitoba since the
1870s, would be interested in a “Canada
Carries On film” about its ancient home-
land. A by-product of the research con-
nected with the film was the discovery that
the Icelandic community was itself well
worth a film as an example of our immi-
grant mosaic which, while retaining a
strong individuality, had adjusted success-
fully to the Canadian social pattern, and of
whom, along with other pieces of the
mosaic, sacrifices were now expected. The
fact that the Chairman of the National Film
Board, Flon. Joseph Thorson, was an
Icelandic Canadian, may also have had
something to do with it. His knowledge of
the Winnipeg community was wide and
deep. In due course, therefore, having just
emerged from a film about gun production,
I received instructions from Grierson to go
and see Joe Thorson. The Minister sug-
gested that I get out to Winnipeg at once
and make contact with Miss Margaret Ann
Bjornson
She turned out to be a girl in her early
twenties with a lovely figure and magnifi-
cent head of silky golden hair (though her
father, curiously enough, was one of the
“dark” Icelanders). But she had also, and
unexpectedly, a seriousness of manner and
intellectual approach which was frankly
frightening. She had also a delivery of
speech so mannered that at first I simply
didn’t believe in her, thinking, as perhaps
most young men would have done, that she
was putting on an act.
It took us many years of working with
Margaret Ann to realize this mistake, and it
robbed us of some valuable company. But
on this distant day, as I set out with her in
a rented Dodge to explore Iceland on the
prairies and prepare a shooting script, I
found her monologues excruciating and
longed for the arrival of the rest of the crew
who were due in from the East in a few
days.
We visited the grim scraped “inter-
lake” region of Manitoba to look at
Icelandic settlements at Ashern and
Lundar; we swung south into the more fer-
tile valley of the Assiniboine to find at
Glenboro Mr. Tryggvi Arnason who, hav-
ing told us with great relish and many times
over coffee and ponnukokur how he had
“f---d” the Cockshutt Plow Company”,
was at once cast for the hero of our film.
We went north up Lake Winnipeg, an
immense sheet of water 200 miles long but
very shallow, in search of Icelandic settle-
ments. We visited Gimli (Heaven) where
the immigrants had first settled; Hnausa
where we saw an Icelandic fair with the
girls in floppy red and white dresses; and
finally Riverton where we were entertained
to a reading in Icelandic of his own poems
by a genuine bard, with the truly wonder-
ful name of Guttormur Guttormsson. We
returned to Winnipeg to listen to the
Icelandic male voice choir under the baton
of Ragnar H. Ragnar. We hobnobbed with
the local Icelandic undertaker (“How’s
business?” “Business is dead, ha! ha!”) We
listened to folk legends and myths from the
lips of Rev. Egill Fafnis.
We visited the offices of Heimskringla
and Logberg, the two Icelandic language
weeklies; and we endeavoured, without
much success to persuade ourselves that
Sargent Avenue, focus of the Icelandic
community, was more different from the
rest of Winnipeg than it actually was.
Throughout all this intense research
Margaret Ann was constantly suggesting
places to be visited, personalities to be
interviewed, and astute slants to be
watched for: such as the almost uncon-