The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2009, Side 43

Vol. 62 #3
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
133
ment.” In her autobiography for
Heimskringla, Halldorson hoped to justify
her wartime subversion and wrote that it
was also the coalition government’s con-
sideration of the recommendations of the
Sirois Report, which motivated her to
oppose the coalition. “As Social Credit
policy is absolutely opposed to the idea
that authority over each person be placed
in the hands of a few men,” wrote
Halldorson, “I could not in all conscience
support the coalition.” Interestingly, how-
ever, Halldorson failed to mention her role
as a vocal opponent to the war itself, a
stance which was appeared considerably
unpopular with many Icelandic Canadians,
particularly her constituents in rural
Manitoba.
(Celebrated Icelandic Canadian poet
Stephan G. Stephansson spoke to this
abrupt shift in political sentiment upon the
declaration of war;
So maudlin, with pity and pathos I
stood
If someone who erred got he lashes;
If hanged, I’d weep over the ashes.
With vocal dispraise such injustice I
viewed.
But somehow as soon as the war-craze
ensued,
When slaughter en masse was the pop-
ular mood
And corpses all over the planet were
strewed,
With dumb indecision I stood.
Her wartime campaigns focussed not
only on opposition to the war itself, but
also on building a broader, implicitly paci-
fist women’s Social Credit movement.
Here again Halldorson’s role as a dissenter
appears remarkable within the context of
the now incredibly restrictive atmosphere
of the wartime legislature. Other dissenting
MLAs such as the lone Communist, James
Litterick, endured censorship and eventu-
ally banishment from the legislature.
Litterick’s disappearance in 1942 and
rumoured murder are powerful reminders
of the serious risks that political dissenters
faced during this period.
As a public opponent to the war and as
a popular figure within the community,
Halldorson must have also alarmed
Canadian officials anxious to promote
enlistment and quell dissent within ethnic
communities. Although she received little
support from other MLAs during this
tumultuous period, Halldorson continued
to fight for the dissolution of the coalition,
while also introducing an unsuccessful bill
protesting the government’s use of private
financial institutions in the funding of the
war and co-coordinating an ill-fated
wartime vote of non-confidence in the fed-
eral government.
Although Halldorson received no sup-
port from the pro-war Aberhart adminis-
tration as well as her former Social Credit
MLA colleagues, she continued to focus
her challenges to the wartime assembly
based on Social Credit principles. In one of
her last published speeches, “The Menace
of Centralization”, (1940) she announced
that she “would like to issue another warn-
ing to the Hon. Members that the steps
they are advocating are leading in the
wrong direction- away from true democra-
cy and towards over-riding bureaucratic
control which is totalitarianism... Social
Credit points the way in the opposite
direction.” Despite her decision to oppose
her own party in the Assembly, she also
remained president of the Manitoba Social
Credit League, using it in her attempts to
draw support from Manitoba Social
Crediters and sympathetic women’s orga-
nizations.
Halldorson’s activities within the
Legislature as well as her persistent appeals
to Manitoba women to take a stand against
the war failed to preserve her once glowing
reputation amongst the Anglo-Canadian
media and particularly with both the
Bracken and Aberhart administrations.
Halldorson hoped to continue to use the
same gender-based appeals that had helped
to popularise her unemployment and eco-
nomic reform campaigns among women in
her pacifist campaigns, although her writ-
ing from this period suggests that she had
begun to take a more radical approach, dis-
posing with politics and housekeeping
imagery. “Women!” Asked one Manitoba
Social Credit League pamphlet written by
Halldorson, “Do you want to end