The Icelandic Canadian - 01.05.2008, Page 21

Vol. 61 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
1 I 1
No record of our country’s past will be of
greater interest or more inspiring than the
record of their lives, if ever their lives are
adequately recorded, as they should be.
(Healy, 1923, p. 260)
William J. Healy (1867-1950), the
Provincial Librarian for Manitoba, wrote a
tribute to the women of an earlier day
(1806-1873) entitled, Women of Red River:
Being a book written from the recollections
of women surviving from the Red River
era. The above statement appeared near the
close of his book. The research which fol-
lows will address Healy’s (1923, p. 23) plea
by reviewing records pertaining to the life
of one particular Icelandic woman who was
a pioneer in Manitoba, Margret
Benedictsson.
Historical Background
The Confederation of Canada
occurred in 1867 and Manitoba (situated
between the industrialized province of
Ontario and the farming province of
Saskatchewan) became the first Canadian
prairie province in 1870. In 1872 under the
Dominion Lands Act, settlers received a
160-acre homestead for ten dollars (van de
Vorst, 2002, p. 15). If settlers could erect a
house on the property and clear thirty acres
of land within three years, they received
clear title to the property. Lured by the
offer of free farmland, the second wave of
immigrants arrived from Europe in the lat-
ter part of the 1800s (1876-1881). Forty
thousand immigrants arrived in Manitoba
from other parts of Canada and from out-
side the country in the time period known
as “Manitoba Land Fever” (Thor, 2002, p.
185). After Confederation, immigrants
were encouraged to settle in groups or
colonies on the prairies. Friesen (1987)
states that the first significant colonies to
settle in the west were the Mennonites
from Russia (1874 and later), French
Canadians from New England in 1874, and
Icelanders in 1875-1881, plus Scots,
Romanians, Finns, Swedes and Jews (in the
early 1880s) and Germans from Austro-
Hungarian and Russian backgrounds, not
initially from Germany (p. 186, 262). The
growing culturally diverse City of
Winnipeg had a booming prairie economy
and was a magnet for those looking for
work. Local plants produced farm prod-
ucts (flour mills, malting facilities, brew-
eries, dairies). Sources of construction,
clothing, and printed materials were avail-
able. There were also local fire, property,
and life insurance companies, a stock
exchange, trust companies, and banks.
Winnipeg had become a Canadian financial
center and national railway hub (Friesen,
1987, p. 287).
The Role of Women
Benedictsson lived in Manitoba from
1881 until 1912. What were the expecta-
tions for women at this time? The
Victorian Period (1837-1901) defined
women as belonging to the private world of
home and children:
A woman’s place was in the home.
Domesticity and motherhood were por-
trayed as a sufficient emotional fulfillment.
These constructs kept women away from
the public sphere, but charitable missions
began to extend the female role of service
and Victorian feminism emerged as a
potent political force. (Abrams, 2001)
The term “feminism” noted in the pre-
ceding quotation, has no single definition
but the writer is comfortable with
Kinnear’s (1998, p.7) generic description in
A Female Economy: Women’s Work in a
Prairie Province 1870-1970. She states fem-
inism has three core components: a belief in
sexual equality (e.g., a rejection of a sex
hierarchy); that women’s condition is
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