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The Secret Life of Canada: Season 6, Episode 4. Crash Course: Icelandic Canada

Hosts: Leah-Simone Bowen and Falen Johnson

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: This is a Secret Life of Canada crash course. Just a little bit of history.

FALEN JOHNSON: Hey, Leah.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Hey, Falen.

FALEN JOHNSON: Leah, I have a question for you. Can you guess where the most Icelandic people live outside of Iceland?

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Canada. Because the show is called The Secret Life of Canada.

FALEN JOHNSON: Okay. Well, that's a good guess. But can you be a little more specific? Like what province or territory?

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Okay. Based on where I think Iceland is, without looking at a map, I would say it's probably in the Maritimes. Like if you're getting in a boat and coming down, it would be Maritimes.

FALEN JOHNSON: Right. Okay. Well, no, you're wrong. It's Manitoba, specifically the town of Gimli.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Really?

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. And I know what you're thinking, Leah, right? Gimli, right?

SOUNDCLIP

Movie clip: He was already dead. He was twitching. He was twitching cause he's got my orcs embedded in his nervous system.

FALEN JOHNSON: No, the town was not named after the dwarf from Lord Of The Rings.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: I was not thinking that at all. I didn't even know that that was the name of a dwarf. So. Okay.

FALEN JOHNSON: And to be fair, Iceland is a place that believes more in elves than dwarves, so they probably would have called it Galadriel or Elrond, or maybe even Gil-galad.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Why are we still talking about Lord Of The Rings? No, I don't want to. I'm getting the sense that you're a huge Tolkien nerd, which I did not know about you.

FALEN JOHNSON: Just a bit of a Tolkien nerd. Perhaps just a bit.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: But, you know, you know he was racist, right? Because it's just half the time.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. Well, yes, Leah, I have heard that. Some of Tolkien’s work has been slammed for its descriptions of elves being light skinned and therefore good, and orcs being sallow skinned, meaning, well, not white and therefore bad. And this controversy is going on right now. There's a new series that's out. Season two is coming out, I don't know, sometime soon. And, you know, in that series, the Tolkien verse is trying to address some of this racism.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Oh my God. First of all, you use the word Tolkien verse, which I've never heard before, which makes… I don't know why it made me sad, but it did. But we have other things to deal with, people. Like the world is on fire. Can we move on?

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. Okay.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: I’ve kind of gone off here, but I don't care is what I'm saying. I don't care about this.

FALEN JOHNSON: Okay. You know what, yes, let's move on so that I can watch the trilogy next Christmas, which is my sort of great tradition.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Okay.

FALEN JOHNSON: Okay, Leah, so let's learn about Icelandic history in Canada.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: So when did Icelandic people leave? And why did they choose to come to Canada? And why especially Manitoba? I'm very confused about that.

FALEN JOHNSON: Well, it was really because of one guy, Sigtryggur Jónasson. He is often referred to as the father of Nyja Island, or as it translates to in English, New Iceland. Back in 1873, Jónasson hopped a ship and headed over to Canada. Once arrived, he set up shop as a businessman, and he seems to have done pretty well. Within two years of being in Canada, he had learned English and was named an immigration agent by the government.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Hmm. Mensa level for Mr. J ónasson.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, pretty quick.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Very smart, obviously. Two years turnaround to get a benefit paying job in the government. Like that's impressive.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. I imagine the benefits weren't very good then if they existed. Anyway, in previous years, Icelandic folks, they had been immigrating to North America. Many were heading to the U.S., but Jónasson made his case for people to come to Canada. And I imagine, you know, that having someone from your country tell you to come on over, that that kind of might be a selling point.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: But why did people want to leave Iceland, a cold place, and come to Canada, a cold place, in the first place? Like it's a sideways, a sidestep move, right?

FALEN JOHNSON: It’s a lateral move. Well, not exactly. Not exactly. There were a few reasons. There was a lot of famine and overcrowding in Iceland at the time, and the land was really hard to farm. And in the mid-1870s, a devastating volcanic eruption poisoned the land and livestock. And this is when many Icelanders began to leave the island.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: And how many ended up in Canada?

FALEN JOHNSON: There were a few waves of people coming over. Initially, some ended up in Halifax, some in Ontario, and in 1875, a boat carrying over 200 Icelanders docked in Winnipeg. Around this time, the Canadian government decided these Icelanders needed a settlement, a reserve for Icelanders.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Okay, that's very interesting. That was something actually I wanted to address, which is, you know, a bunch of settlers coming over and just setting up shop on indigenous land.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: And as a heads up, that's what our show is about. So we have a lot of other episodes on settler history, like our episode on the RCMP. You can find them all in our feed. So yeah, I'm just not confused about it, but I'm just wondering what was going on with the indigenous people in the area when these folks were coming over.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. The Canadian government at the time was desperate to settle the West with non-Indigenous people. This was all happening during the time of the Dominion Lands Act. This was when the Canadian government was giving away land, free land for Europeans, people who the government thought would hold the same values and would blend nicely. You'll hear of something similar happening in the U.S called the Homestead Act. This was all about encouraging people to come over and, well, I like to think of it as officially squat.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Mm. I do have a vague recollection of this, reading stuff about this. I mostly remember the posters. You know, they have very classic posters. Free land. You know, nobody lives here. Just come and, you know, build, build your thing.

FALEN JOHNSON: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, this thing had a huge marketing campaign. And, you know, you had all these advertisements that were translated into a bunch of languages and sent out across Europe. So basically, what the Dominion Lands Act meant was if you were a settler coming over to Canada, you could get some land for free if you built a little house, farmed a bit, stayed there and just kind of chilled on your free land. The government wanted to secure Western lands to secure the use of resources, develop the railway. It was all about economic and political security for the newly created Canada.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: And this is, of course, a time when many First Nations folks were being forced into reserves.

FALEN JOHNSON: You know it. The area that was decided upon for the Icelandic reserve would be set up on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg. New Iceland was about 42 miles long and 11 miles wide. So that would be like three times longer and five times wider than the island of Manhattan.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Wow. You know, sometimes, when I hear the size of this country, it still shocks me with these kind of comparisons. We live in a huge place.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, I know. I know. The area was chosen because there was proximity to water for fishing, half decent land to grow on, and the railway wasn't too far. The Canadian government at the time was of the mind that Icelanders had, quote, racial fitness to be colonists in the northwest.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Oh, racial fitness. Isn't that just a feel good term? Like it's just like a warm blanket that you just want to wrap around yourself. Why have we lost it? You know, you don't see racial fitness just in passing anymore. It's a shame. It's a shame.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. Racial fitness, not a racist gym, but a system of determining who was the most fit to immigrate to Canada. I don't know if I'd go to a racial fitness.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Well, I bet that it would be very expensive for us. I don't think that we would get the discount that we were looking for, so I definitely won't be going either.

FALEN JOHNSON: Probably not. Yeah, no, you're right.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Yeah. And I'm sure like the indigenous people who had been living on the land obviously weren't doing it right, so they needed to bring in some new people who could show them how.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, absolutely. The Cree, Ojibwe and Métis who were in the area at the time, they just had no idea what they were doing. They was totally lost. And I hope that the sarcasm there is thick enough for listeners to catch.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: I think we got it. Yes.

FALEN JOHNSON: The Icelandic reserve was set up differently from First Nations reserves. This reserve made their own laws, managed their own education and had a unique political system. It was almost like a republic or a colony in some ways. And on the Icelandic reserve, there wasn't the equivalent of an Indian agent like on First Nations reserves. There wasn't like an Iceland agent.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Hmm. Iceland agent sounds like a good Nordic detective show, which I would love to watch.

FALEN JOHNSON: It does. Yeah.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: I love those. Like those are some good murder shows, I have to tell you. I enjoyed them.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, I would. I would watch them. In 1876, a group of Icelanders went over to OG Iceland and convinced a group of around 1200 people to join them in Canada. Some travelled to other places, but in 1876, New Iceland boasted a population of around 2000 people.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: So things were going really well then.

FALEN JOHNSON: Well, yes and no. It was also in 1876 that a smallpox epidemic went through the community. New Iceland was placed under quarantine. This cut the settlement off from trade and destroyed New Iceland's economy.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Yeah, that was… I mean, smallpox was going through just about every population at this time. So yeah, makes sense.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. Yeah. In 1881, the population decreased to about 100 people. Many had left for Winnipeg and other cities for more opportunities. And that same year, New Iceland became no more. It was absorbed into the province of Manitoba. But even though the official colony or res of New Iceland was no more, there's still a very strong Icelandic flavour in Manitoba. Like in towns like Gimli, where each August, the town hosts the Islendingadagurinn, also known as the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba. There are Viking battles, entertainment and food, and it's been happening for over 130 years.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Oh, I like that. I would love to go to this because I do love feats of strength, okay? I love a Viking feats of strength. I love a tall, big old white man with a beard and a sword. I love that. Like Game of Thrones, all of those big white men with beard, oh my God, I love it.

FALEN JOHNSON: I feel like you should either read Tolkien or go to a craft beard festival, Leah.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Yeah, maybe both.

FALEN JOHNSON: Maybe both.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Try some new things in 2024.

FALEN JOHNSON: I have to say, there seems to be some pride among the people who have Icelandic roots and have roots to that new Iceland community. And as an indigenous person, I got to say I don't hate it. So many people come over from Europe and then promptly forget who the hell they are and where they came from. And any time people remember that they aren't from here, it kind of feels like an active acknowledgement that this isn't their land.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Right. Yeah. It's like, yes, you do have a culture and identity. You can be proud of that, remember that you're not from here, and then, you know, appreciate the land that you're standing on and who was here first. You know what I'm saying?

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, exactly.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Just like acknowledge it, man. Acknowledge it.

FALEN JOHNSON: Mm hmm. So the next time I find myself in Winnipeg, I might be taking a road trip up to Gimli. So lock up your dwarves and elves.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Oh my God, I'm sure they love that. I'm sure they love it there.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, I'm sure they do too. Well, Leah, until next time, silo Anor bo men li.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Okay. What does that mean? I don't know what that means.

FALEN JOHNSON: It's elvish, Leah.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Oh no. Oh my God, I didn't know you were this person.

FALEN JOHNSON: It’s elvish for may the sunshine on your robe.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: No. Oh, I reject all of this. I just… I feel like, do you know Klingon as well? Like is this what I'm going to learn about you?

FALEN JOHNSON: Know. I mean, if I can work it into a script though.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Okay. I'm leaving now, but thank you for this.

FALEN JOHNSON: Okay, bye. Silo Anor bo men li.

LEAH-SIMONE BOWEN: Bye. No. Bye.

TRANSCRIPT: The Secret Life of Canada, Season 6: Crash Course on Icelandic Canada

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