The Icelandic Canadian - 01.05.2008, Page 26

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 61 #2
116
future mother-in-law of novelist and suf-
fragette, Nellie McClung (Kinnear, 1998, p.
25; Prentice et al., 1996, p. 205).
In the rural areas of Canada, including
Manitoba, Women’s Institutes were estab-
lished, and they focused on raising the gen-
eral standards of people’s health. Their
meetings included a wide variety of topics,
i.e., housekeeping, supervision of school
playgrounds on holidays, hot lunch pro-
grams at schools, circulating libraries, war
memorials, and child welfare (Kinnear,
1998, p. 147). Women’s organizations
believed in and encouraged self-improve-
ment through self-education. The women
of the Icelandic community in Manitoba
were champions of such beliefs. The
Icelandic Women’s Suffrage Society was
founded in Winnipeg in 1908; however,
“The Icelandic population remained
isolated from the Anglo-Saxon majority by
its different language and culture. A major
distinction between the two communities
was the role and status of women. The cul-
tural, economic, and political participation
of Icelandic women drew not only on a
solid community base, but also on a long
tradition of equal rights for women ....
Also, under the society’s auspices a regular
column, written by various Icelandic
women, began publication on January 16,
1890, in the newspaper,” Heimskringla.
(Prentice et al., 1993, p. 205)
When Manitoba entered confederation
in 1870, the Federal Elections Act stated
that, “no woman, idiot, lunatic, or criminal
could vote” (Treble, 2000, p. 77), only men
could vote. Women in the province began
to demand the vote and were aided, in part,
by one young immigrant woman who
made a significant contribution to the cause
of suffrage and human rights in Manitoba.
Margrjet (Margret) Jonsdottir (later
Benedictsson) who was born in 1866, in
Hrappsstaoir, Vioifdalur, Iceland. She was
the daughter of Jon Jonasson and Kristjana
Ebenesarsdottir and was self-sufficient by
13 years of age (Prentice et al., 1996, p.205;
Wolf, 1996, p. 73). Benedictsson, “was pos-
sessed by wonder and admiration as she
read the story of Jon Sigurdsson’s struggle
for freedom” (Kristjanson, c. 1965, p. 372)
and as a young reader, she immersed herself in
articles and books about oppressed people,
unhappily married women, and girls who
wanted to break free from parental restrictions
(Johnson, 1994, p. 122). Benedictsson wrote,
Angry and distressed I read the laments of
oppressed persons, unhappily married
women, and the misfortunes of young girls.
And it is this evil that aroused in men and in all
honorable persons, a yearning to break down
all the fetters that tie people to evil and dis-
tress, all fetters by whatever name we call
them. (Kinnear, 1982, p. 176)
Benedictsson emigrated to the Dakota
Territory in 1887, to an Icelandic community,
possibly the Mountain settlement, where she
lived for four years (Thor, 2002, p. 260). She
valued education and had worked to put her-
self through grade school and attended
Bathgate College in Bathgate, the Dakota
Territory, for 2 years (Bumsted, 1999, p. 21).
In approximately 1891, Benedictsson moved
to Winnipeg where she continued evening
studies at the Winnipeg Central Business
College, learning shorthand, typing, and
bookkeeping. She also became involved with
the Icelandic Women’s Society, which was
staging plays and holding tombolas (a kind of
lottery with tickets usually drawn from a turn-
ing drum-shaped container, especially at a fair
or festivals) as fundraisers. Such monies were
used to pay tuition ($87.00) for girls to attend
a Winnipeg convent school for a year (Lindal,
1967, p. 160-161).
In 1892, she married Sigfus B.
Benedictsson (1865-1951), a well-known
writer, poet, printer, and publisher in the
Manitoba Icelandic community. Sigfus had
arrived in Manitoba in 1888 and was familiar
with John Stuart Mill’s (1869) writing on the
liberty of women, “The Subjection of
Women” (Kinnear, 1982, p. 151). Sigfus pre-
sented public lectures in Winnipeg during
1889-1890 on the emancipation of women
(Wolf, 1996, p. 9). Sigfus and Margret were
married in and “became charter members of
the first Unitarian Congregation west of
Toronto” (Treble, 2000, p. 77) in Winnipeg.
The First Icelandic Unitarian Church of
Winnipeg was established February 1, 1891.
The majority of Icelanders were members of
either the Lutheran or the Unitarian Churches