The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2014, Síða 10

152
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
Vol. 66 #4
1916.There was opportunity
for their generation to
dream of a future beyond
the limiting restrictions of
surviving settlement and
pioneering a new land.
Although the country was at
war, Canada was connected
successfully by railway and
telegraph communication
and booming with growth.
It must have seemed that
their individual dreams and
aspirations could certainly
be realized through goal
setting and hard work.
Laura was born in
Winnipeg in 1890, a daughter of Icelandic
parents who came to Canada in 1887 to the
developing west. The well-known exodus of
thousands of Icelanders, starting in 1875
included Lauras and my ancestors leaving
their homeland with the largest group
settling in Manitoba. In her book The Viking
Heart, no longer in print, Laura captures the
experiences, difficulties and the importance
of inherited culture for the fourteen
hundred Icelandic Immigrants who came
to Manitoba in 1876. She creates a vivid
portrait of a family and their descendants. A
woman worthy of greater recognition, and
Icelandic Canadian novelist, she is known
for winning the Governor-General’s award
twice, for The Hark Weaver in 1937 and
for her autobiographical Confessions of an
Immigrant’s Daughter in 1939.
George was born at Union Point in
1894, near Aubigny, the son of an Irishman,
Alexander Gunness Jackson who bought
a section of land in southern Manitoba to
become a farmer after working on building
the Canadian Railway and the driving of
‘The Last Spike’in 1885. My grandfather left
home as a teenager and went to Winnipeg
to work delivering telegrams. With a grade
eight education and determination to create
a life for himself off the farm,
he applied his considerable
technical and people skills
to ultimately become the
Manager of the Canadian
National Telegraph in
Winnipeg. He married my
grandmother Susie Crandon
from Wiarton, Ontario
in Regina, Saskatchewan
in 1916. They lived most
of their married lives in
Winnipeg and had three
sons.
I have a tin type photo
of my great grandfather
Alexander as a young man,
lots of old farm photos and his sheared
beaver ‘great coat’, which is likely well
over 100 years old. I sneeze every time I
rustle the flannel sheet covering it, and
wonder if it’s time to find it a new home
instead of beside my winter coat in the
front hall. There is a family legend that after
coming to Manitoba, he wrote a letter to
a sweetheart in Ireland to join him on the
farm. Apparently the sweetheart’s sister,
Alice McVittie intercepted the letter and
came instead. Surprisingly, he married her.
My father, George Crandon Jackson told
the story of his grandfather being proud to
be one of the first customers at the bank at
Portage and Main. He bought a Model T
Ford, drove it once to Winnipeg and back,
and then parked it in the shed and never
drove it again. He helped to build the
church at Union Point where he was buried,
and the church and his family graves are
still there. As children we would go there
with my grandparents in the summer to cut
the grass.The church and graveyard are now
on a bit of tall grass prairie surrounded by
highway.
Laura uses quotes at the beginning
of every chapter in The Viking Heart, and
her interest in study and developing her
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ARDEN JACKSON