The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.2000, Side 36

Vol. 55 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
334
Avenue and Center Street. The Viking statue
stood on the lakeshore next to the Betel
Home. There was the harbour and there was
the lake. These things didn't change. But of
course they did change. By the time I was in
my thirties Betel had been rebuilt and became
Gimli's newest building. The Viking Statue
was moved further down the lakeshore. Then
the new hotel went up, right at the town’s
main intersection! Seventy-five rooms, fine
dining, jaccuzi, and two swimming pools -
indoors and outdoors - right beside the lake
and the harbour. The new hotel was built on
the property where the old post office used to
be. They had to take the jet down from its
pedestal to make room for the hotel's new dri-
veway entrance, and put it in mothballs until
they could figure out a new place to put it.
The center of town began to look really dif-
ferent.
Not only did the coming of the new hotel
signal changes at the corner of First Avenue
and Center Street, but with it also came a gov-
ernment grant to re-do the sidewalks and
street lights all the way along Center Street.
The sidewalks in Gimli are now patterned
with blue and grey brick, and the new lighting
fixtures look like navy blue lanterns hanging
on square stained wooden poles that are
intended to look like ship's masts. The town
called "Heaven" wasn't as timeless as it used
to be in my younger eyes. Gimli began to look
upscale! High Tech! It was just the beginning.
I can only imagine how much the town must
have changed to my grandmother's eyes when
she could still walk down to the harbour and
out on the dock and look it over.
Rev. Stefan Jonasson
ARBORG UNITARIAN CHURCH
GIMLI UNITARIAN CHURCH
9 Rowand Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3J 2N4
Telephone: (204) 889-4746
E-mail: sjonasson@uua.org
How about the image of Heaven as a
place of harmony, the peaceable kingdom. At
Gimli's town centre there has for many years
been a reminder of that image of Heaven - one
of the biggest bird hotels in Canada. Built by
the Purple Martin Society, this avian condo
complex is almost three stories high and
involves over thirty separate birdhouses. I
worried about whether the new hotel for
humans would mean the removal of the pur-
ple martin hotel that sits right beside it, but
my fears were unfounded. It's still there.
There is a lot of wildlife around Gimli, but I
have always felt that the town has a particular
affection for birds, an attraction to winged
creatures that seems appropriate for the resi-
dents of a place called Heaven. I remember
the summer when the big attraction in Gimli
was the town's effort to become a home for a
family of peregrine falcons. The peregrines
were almost extinct, and these birds have
some strong associations with Icelandic
mythology and the Viking heritage, for they
were hunting birds.
The government has been trying to
increase the population of peregrine falcons in
the wild — no easy task! After the baby birds
are hatched in captivity, they must be fed and
protected and then gradually introduced to
their freedom. It requires a major commit-
ment of volunteer time keeping watch on the
young falcons as they make their first tenta-
tive forays into the wide world.
Each bird is worth about three thousand
dollars. The town had to make an application
to host the young falcons. My cousin spear-
headed the successful campaign to bring the
peregrines to Gimli. We got four of them:
three females, and one male, and they were
promptly given two Ukrainian and two
Icelandic names: Hanja, Luba, Freya, and
Thor.
When they were old enough to travel
they were brought to Gimli and given a home
on the roof of the old elementary school,
which at that time had been abandoned for
years. When it was time for them to fly, the
town volunteers had to organize themselves
into shifts from sunrise to sunset to watch
them, to record their behavior, to note which
one flew when and to where, and to make sure
that in their first clumsy efforts at flying
around Gimli these birds would not turn into