The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2009, Side 45

Vol. 62 #3
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
135
Icelandic language may have helped to
shield and foster radical politics behind its
linguistic boundaries, it is important to
note that Halldorson’s pacifist campaign
was unpopular with many of her con-
stituents. In contrast to the overwhelming
support she enjoyed during her 1936 cam-
paign, it was this during the period
between the 1939 declaration of war and
the following election two years later that
Halldorson felt the restrictive political
environment in Manitoba the keenest, cul-
minating in her overwhelming defeat in the
1941. Her decision to restrict more openly
subversive usages of Icelandicity such as
the story of AuSur and her pacifist cam-
paign to Icelandic illustrates both
Halldorson's failed hopes for widespread
critical and independent thought within the
community as well as a general anxiety sur-
rounding the community's appearance to
the Anglo-Canadian state and society.
Here the parameters of “acceptable”
expressions of Icelandic Canadian identity
were laid bare, despite Halldorson's best
efforts. The only expressions of Icelandic
Canadian thought to flourish during this
period, such as the IODE knitting circles
and veteran memorial book, were those
which were subservient to Canadian
national identity and policies.
It is the same primacy of Canadian
nationalism within Icelandic Canadian his-
toriography which explains Halldorson’s
historical exclusion. The radicalism of her
politics, particularly those within her
women’s pacifist campaign, created a dra-
matically different legacy than that of the
pleasant and loyal “pioneer settler from the
land of the Vikings” and of the innocuous
"lady schoolteacher turned politician"
which had garnered Anglo-Canadian a sig-
nificant amount of support and apprecia-
tion for Halldorson and her community.
Although Halldorson craftily employed
these images to further her own political
objectives, her increasingly frequent con-
frontations with the boundaries of female
political participation, wartime nationalism
and political conformity prompted her to
construct a new vision of Icelandic
Canadian female activism. Audur embod-
ied Halldorson's appeal to Icelandic
Canadian women as a female figure of
strength, intelligence and Icelandicity,
reminding this privileged ethnic communi-
ty of traditional obligations beyond the
discourses of Canadian nationalism and
domestic femininity. The community's dis-
comfort with Halldorson's radicalism and
this subversive campaign, however, fuelled
what Brydon described as the "nostalgic
narration" of Icelandic Canadian memory,
namely the renewed restriction of
Halldorson's biography to teaching, rather
than politics. Halldorson did, of course,
help to craft this image of herself and is
complied in the creation of this distorted
historical image of her career, yet it was
these multiple identities which were so
essential to her vibrancy, success and even-
tually, her catastrophic defeat.
Beyond a new understanding of
Halldorson's lost career as a dissident,
however, her work presents new challenges
to historians of Canadian ethnicity. The
sometimes uncomfortable proximity
between Icelandic Canadian privilege and
the realities of interwar ethnic discrimina-
tion, namely anti-Semitism, provides a
reminder of the limitations and implica-
tions of Icelandic Canadian identity during
this period. Halldorson's work also pro-
vides intriguing insights into the navigation
of this otherwise xenophobic era through
her references to the perceived compatibil-
ity of Anglo-Canadian and Icelandic cul-
ture and political traditions. Yet her work
also illustrates that the growth of this priv-
ilege, the community's public acceptance of
Anglo-Canadian appropriate values and
identities, as well as the restrictive atmos-
phere of Manitoba wartime politics deeply
influenced but failed to completely ensure
Icelandic Canadian conformity and sub-
servience.
Halldorson appears as both an anom-
aly and as an intriguing representative of
the dramatic shifts within Manitoba's
political climate during the 1930s and 40s.
Elected during a desperate and somewhat
politically experimental year in Manitoba,
her often bold and unyielding dedication to
female political representation and partici-
pation, pacifism and economic reform is
remarkable in its consistency, particularly