The Icelandic Canadian - 01.11.2006, Síða 30

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 60 #3
I 16
cultural belonging.29
Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen
drew similar conclusions from their survey
of patterns in popular historymaking.
They found that their respondents used the
past to make sense of current issues center-
ing on relationships, identity, immortality,
and agency. A sense of self was partly
achieved by establishing a trajectory
between one’s past and her/his current
position and thus is intertwined with dis-
courses of continuity and disruption,
progress and decline, success and failure.
Moreover, although the ways in which
individuals and groups practice history
varied across gender, socioeconomic level,
and race, Rosenzweig and Thelen found
that a common narrative was “history as a
story of struggle.”30 Participants wanted
the next generation to take responsibility
for the past, by learning from the mistakes
(both personal and collective). This
knowledge, in turn, allowed them to imag-
ine “a new sense of themselves as agents
with the desire and capacity to change pat-
terns they had fallen into.”31
Stella was no stranger to doing histori-
cal research. She and Eric had spent many
years looking for Eric’s ancestors who had
emigrated from Iceland. Through their
genealogical research, Stella and Eric
Stephanson were able to keep alive a pio-
neer spirit that had been nurtured through
the stories told from one generation to the
next, and continued to fuel the imagination
of his generation. Eric and Stella are the last
generation to have any direct connection
with the pioneers who had settled in
Saskatchewan at the turn of the century.
They remember what it was like to travel
by a team of horses, to grow most of your
own food, to raise your own cattle, and to
have no running water or electricity.
These stories are embodied tales of hard
work, self-reliance, and sacrifice; they
highlight the importance of family and
community; and they are told with
immense pride. These stories are also
about by-gone days and are framed within
the language of loss and nostalgia and offer
“pleasurable memories of endurance.”32 At
the same time recalling the pioneer spirit
establishes a trajectory between the humble
origins of immigrants, the accomplish-
ments of succeeding generations, and the
ability to imagine an even brighter future.
The desire to preserve the pioneer spir-
it was not unique to Eric but also became a
cultural project of the government of
Saskatchewan. In the early 1980s, through
the New Horizons grant, the provincial
government funded the publication of
dozens of local histories throughout the
province. These books represent sites of
memory, a place where a collective identity
or sense of community is forged. Compiled
by large numbers of volunteers, some of
whom formed themselves into historical
societies, these massive tomes recorded the
history of towns, villages, and hamlets, as
well as their schools, hospitals, businesses,
and churches. These institutional histories
comprised about half of each book while
the remainder was devoted to short
genealogies of the families whose ancestors
had settled there. Among these local histo-
ries was the Foam Lake Historical Society’s
history, They Came From Many Lands,33
which includes the history of the