The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.2000, Side 37

Vol. 55 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
335
some cat's three thousand dollar lunch.
Every morning for a week, you could
walk by the old elementary school and see
half a dozen people with binoculars and bicy-
cles and cameras standing around with their
heads pointed skywards. The teachers at the
day care centre next door, and even the boys
at Chudd's Garage across the street would be
out there too, looking up at the school, getting
a stiff neck. A friendly rivalry developed over
who would fly first - the females or the male.
The day care centre staff were rooting for the
girls, and the guys at the garage had their bets
down on Thor. The guys won, when Thor
took off on a big looping circle around the
school building, but it was a short-lived tri-
umph, because soon thereafter one of the girls
took to the air and flew two whole blocks
away to spend the day roosting on top of the
Lutheran Church. One of the birdwatchers
proclaimed: "She must be one of the birds
with an Icelandic name."
Those who contemplate the balance of
species of the peaceable kingdom might con-
template the addition of peregrine falcons to
Gimli with some suspicion. "Do they eat pur-
ple martins?" we might ask. A concern for the
ecology of the town's wild population is not
inappropriate for a place called Heaven, for
the purple martins do not come to Gimli for
purely aesthetic reasons. They eat mosqui-
toes, and that is a great asset in the summer-
time in Gimli. We all hoped that if the falcons
did make it in the wild, and kept returning to
Gimli, that the purple martins will not be on
their menu. No one knows for sure though.
One falcon-watcher remarked that if the
Icelanders and the Ukrainians could learn to
live together, the falcons and the purple mar-
tins could too.
While they were still dependent on their
human friends, the falcons would eat quail,
which would be brought out from the freezer
over at Tip Top Meats, and carefully thawed
and transported up to the roof of the elemen-
tary school for their breakfast. Tip Top Meats
was founded by my uncles Valdi and Joe, and
is now owned and operated by Joe's sons,
Brian and Ken. Tip Top's role in this unfold-
ing ecological drama was most appropriate,
for Tip Top Meats is also a living thing trying
to find its niche in the changing economic
ecology of the town of Gimli. A town's ecol-
ogy involves more than the wildlife that sur-
rounds it.
The economic aspect of that ecology
begins with the natural resources that sur-
round the town. For years Gimli was a center
for the fishing industry, and although that has
changed a great deal, TipTop Meats stays in
business by acting as the major supplier of
meat for the northern fishing camps. The gro-
cery business is another story.
The grocery business brings to mind the
third image of Heaven — a place of plenty, a
place where the residents want for nothing, a
place, a place where all your wishes are ful-
filled.
When I was growing up Tip Top was the
symbol of plenty in my mind. Valdi and Joe
started the shop after the Second World War.
During the fifties, in the days before giant