The Icelandic Canadian - 01.10.2002, Page 16

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 57 #2
Society for Applied Anthropology in
Canada to provide a national association to
encompass those not only in the profes-
sional Universities and Museums but all
interested. I am a member of the Rotary,
and active with the planning of the new
museum in Gimli where I can help by using
my anthropology. I now sing with the
Gimli Senior choir. I may be the junior
member of it, but it is great fun. I was the
President of the Icelandic Canadian Club
in Winnipeg and on the board of the
Icelandic Canadian magazine for many
years.
I did not attend church for many years.
A few years before I retired I returned to
the Lutheran Church, in Fort Richmond.
Rev. Lindquist was the minister there. We
became very good friends. We would often
have lunch together and discuss matters of
theology which interested me. My return
to the church did not mean that I joined in
socializing such as going to their social
gatherings.
Since my move to Gimli and retire-
ment, I have roused my interest in art. I
have always had an interest in art, even in
high school I elected art over "shops". My
interest has always been in painting. On a
sabbatical leave, I spent a wonderful year
on an island just out from Nanaimo,
British Columbia—Protection Island.
There I became part of a society of people
who were welders, fisherman and some
hippies left over from the '60s. It was
unlike anything I had done before. I wasn't
sure how they would accept me as an acad-
emic professor as I certainly didn't know
how to handle a chain saw! They accepted
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me very graciously. I joined the Lions Club
as it was the only service club there. We
would work on little community projects
and so on. Life was very different from
what I was accustomed to. I had planned to
write during that year. I began to paint, and
that got me back to into art again and I
have done it sporadically since.
I did belong to an art club where we
took lessons from a professional back in
Winnipeg. Now in Gimli, I belong to the
Art Club that is very active. Again, I do not
participate as actively as some members do.
As far as my professional career, I have
done a lot of writing—about 50 articles,
journal writings, and book reviews. As
stated before I am very proud of my book
and the fact that it used by Universities
now. I wrote poetry down through the
years and have published some. I find I
want to go back to that. I don't know if I
have any talent for it. I don't know who
said it but "poetry is crystallized truth".
You can often see things in context of a
poem which would bring pithiness of expe-
rience. I like that style.
I have now turned my attention to
other kinds of writing. I am writing a play
on Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who I said was
my hero ever since I decided to go to the
Arctic, and a novel. I now have the freedom
and can write and draw on my anthropolo-
gy without having a journal editor putting
it into format.
Music has always been something that
is around me. My mother was an accom-
plished pianist. She taught music in
Winnipeg and also in a small rural commu-
nity before her marriage. After my father's
death she made her living by teaching and
as an accompanist for local singers.
At a very early age I became interested
in jazz. I subscribed to Downbeat
Magazine when I was only ten years old. I
began to play the trumpet at age eleven. At
that age, I would get on my bicycle on
Saturday morning to ride around Winnipeg
looking for record sales that had been
advertised. I became a collector at that
early age.
I played with some of the local musi-
cians in the evenings after their gigs, when
we would go to one another's homes. I