I hate to admit it but I
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Who Am I?
My grandfather came to Winnipeg from Ireland before WWI. He already had three sisters in Winnipeg, all three married to Scotsmen. His Winnipeg world was very Anglo-Saxon. He and my grandmother lived on a street with an English family on one side, a Scots family on the other, and an Irish family across the way.
From the time I was very young, I was shipped on the bus from Gimli to Winnipeg. My mother would take me to the bus, explain to the bus driver that my grandmother would meet the bus at the station in Winnipeg and off I
Will You Remember Them?
Many came to Amerika because they were desperate. Desperate to leave behind hunger, insecurity, ill treatment, poor living conditions. They risked going to Amerika because they thought there
Icelandic Diaspora
There
Book Review: Historical Images of New Iceland Settlements
Ben Holyk
The Last of the Pioneers
Once, they were myriad. You found them everywhere. Icelanders having kaffi and kleinar, passionately discussing politics or religion, reciting poetry, the state of the crops, the weather. All of it, of course, in Icelandic. That sing song language was heard in stores, on streets, in homes.
At first, of course, it was the original settlers who began to disappear into places like Brookside cemetery. Go to the cemetery and you will find gravestones with Icelandic names. My father
On Losing Icelandic
There were good reasons for our immigrant great grandparents and grandparents not wanting their children to learn Icelandic.
All you have to do is read some books about how immigrants were treated. The stories are disheartening. The racism, tribalism, and prejudice was overwhelming. Comments about immigrants in the newspapers are shocking.
Icelanders, when they first came to Canada, were not considered equal to people from the UK. Icelanders were not
Four weeks. A long time? A short time? Not enough time?
My former colleague, Dave Godfrey (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Godfrey-Brownell-Vineyards/), sent an email to say that having a triple bypass must have been frightening.
Shocking, yes. Frightening, no. No time to be frightened.
It was a sunny day. All was right with the world. I went to see my GP for a seven minute appointment. It was about something minor, a bashed toe or something. Then he said, how are you doing? And I said, fine, no problems except I
The Things We Care About
Strange, the things we care about. Some people care about the fate of the timber wolf or the prairie gopher or the red legged wombat. Others care about historic events, are fixated on Napoleon and the battle of Waterloo. Others are passionate about Mediterranean frescoes. There
Olive Murray’s Love of Iceland 1929
I was unable to find another good picture of Olive so I took the picture from her book about her winter journey across Lapland by sledge and reindeer. However, this post is about her final days in Iceland.
It
