From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Icelanders/Anne Brydon
The historic pattern of Icelandic employment in Canada has been both rural and urban. Settlers in New Iceland fished, farmed, or engaged in both occupations. As in their homeland, the women remained on the land to tend crops, animals, and children, while the men travelled for days, weeks, or months on fishing expeditions. Sometimes the men would leave their families to find work on the railways, in logging, or in construction in Winnipeg. The strong character of Icelandic women is in part attributable to these periods when they remained in charge of the farms, a domestic pattern consistent with life in Iceland, where men would also spend long periods away from home on fishing boats.
Icelandic Canadians are most closely identified with the fisheries. The Interlake region, including Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, has supplied freshwater fish throughout Canada as well as to the United States. Although the industry was never exclusively their endeavour, Icelanders were central to the commercial fisheries once they were started by a few American companies in the nineteenth century. Initially, however, they lacked the skills needed for lake fishing, which they learned from the local Saulteaux. Settlers relied on home industry to supply nets, floats, harnesses, implements, woollen garments, and even fishing boats. Because of the size of these lakes, the working conditions closely resemble those of coastal fisheries on the Atlantic, and violent storms took many lives over the years.
At the turn of the century, more than 2,000 metric tons of whitefish were caught annually. Icelanders would dry it to make hardfiskur for their own consumption or sell it to middlemen, who transported it to markets in Chicago. Entrepreneurs such as Thorsteinn Antóniússon, Stefán Eyjólfsson, and Jóhannes Horgdal acted as shippers, buyers, and sellers of fish, cordwood, and grain. Yet the industry remained largely in the control of American monopolies until the late 1960s, when the McIvor Commission established the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation as the exclusive purchaser of fish in Manitoba. Whitefish, pickerel, and sauger are the main commercial species today; northern pike is an occasional catch, while sturgeon is now a rarity. Between 1970 to 1972 the Manitoba government closed the Lake Winnipeg fisheries because of the water’s excessive mercury levels. Like fisheries elsewhere in Canada, the Interlake industry has been threatened by low prices for fish, declining stocks, and increased competition for the limited quotas.
Despite the historic and symbolic significance of fishing for the Icelandic community in Canada, the preponderance of men were agricultural labourers in the early twentieth century. Those in other occupations were more inclined to be skilled, rather than unskilled, labourers. Immigrants to Winnipeg found wage labour; the young women worked as maids (receiving higher wages if they could speak English) and the young men as builders on such projects as the Main Street sewer. Most urban Icelanders were employed as labourers, although some were able to start their own small businesses and others profited from the real estate boom of the early 1880s in Manitoba. Many Icelandic men in urban areas became involved with construction. They came to dominate the industry and were the first ethnic group in Winnipeg to form their own carpenters’s union, the Icelandic Carpenters’s Association, which was started in 1911. When property values in Winnipeg began to soar in 1881, some Icelanders were poised to take advantage of new opportunities. Those who could not speak English still benefited from increases in wages in the construction industry, and those who could entered into real estate transactions. Helgi Jónsson, known as the Gold Baron, became the first Icelander to build a house in the city; he did so from profits earned by selling land at six times the original purchase price. Forty-five Icelanders banded together to form an investment firm. For the most part, however, they came late to the activity and were forced to sell their property at less than the purchase price.
B.L. Baldwinson, editor of the newspaper Heimskringla (Round World; Winnipeg, 1886–1959), championed the ideal of the self-made man and profiled successful Icelandic businessmen to emphasize individual achievement. At the same time, the paper encouraged Icelanders to help each other to succeed. Some moved from farms into the city to benefit from an increased availability of skilled jobs. They quickly learned carpentry skills, unknown in Iceland, where houses were made of sod and stone, and banded together to form their own construction companies.
Ross Leckow’s studies of Winnipeg directories for the period 1901–13 have revealed the pattern of business formation in the city. In 1901 two Icelandic contractors were listed, while four years later the number had risen to seven, though the businesses were evidently all small. By 1907 twenty-four contractors were listed in the business section of the directories. At the same time, there was a decline in the number of carpenters listed from fourteen in 1906 to nine the following year, suggesting that several had gone into business for themselves. Icelandic contractors also began to specialize, but apparently the businesses continued to be small since most were operated from the owner’s home. A recession in 1907 forced many contractors back into employment as carpenters; the directory for that year indicates a decline to fifteen still in business. It has been suggested that some may have left the city altogether, since the combined number of contractors and carpenters decreased in the following two years. Icelandic companies operating between 1901 and 1907 were small, transient operations, but the situation shifted with the boom of 1909. Between that year and 1914 Icelanders built about a hundred apartment blocks, primarily in Winnipeg’s west end and largely for Icelandic use. These companies showed greater business expertise, opening up downtown offices and hiring more of their countrymen or subcontracting the work.
Some resentment developed between labourers and contractors, that is, between individuals with skills and those with financial resources. The Icelandic Labour Association had been founded in 1890 with a membership of a hundred and fifty. It led successful strikes in both 1891 and 1892. Not long after, the organization lost its cohesiveness when labourers moved away from Manitoba or formed other, more specialized unions. After 1913 some carpenters unable to find work at home travelled to Chicago and Milwaukee for seasonal employment. The first women’s industrial union in Manitoba, Local 35 of the United Garment Workers of America, was predominantly Icelandic. It was formed after an unsuccessful strike in 1899.
For many artisans World War I was a solution to unemployment; of the Icelanders who enlisted, 69 percent were labourers. The pattern of enrolment among members of the community is in contrast with that for Canada as a whole. Although the overall number of volunteers declined, forcing the imposition of conscription in 1917, enlistment by Icelanders increased as the war progressed. The first to join had been unemployed urban labourers, but 1916 saw a greater number of farmers. In that year, following the authorization of units for special groups, community leaders had formed the all-Icelandic 223rd Battalion, which may have been a factor in the high level of involvement. In 1916 Icelandic women founded the Jón Sigurdsson chapter of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire as a means to supply support to Icelandic soldiers. The chapter is still active today.
The professional class outnumbered the merchant sector at this time. Of 565 urban occupations, 18.7 percent were unskilled, 31.7 percent professionals, and 9.7 percent merchants, while clerks comprised 11.7 percent and skilled labour 28.5 percent. The high proportion of individuals found in skilled and reasonably affluent occupations probably meant a greater degree of community solidarity and less division along class lines. The presence of a number of clerks indicates a willingness to leave Icelandic enclaves to seek employment in enterprises owned by British Canadians. Initially, for those who became wealthy, contacts with the ethnic community were at first retained largely for economic reasons. Community newspapers encouraged Icelanders to join successful commercial ventures. Later their participation in the community became more socially oriented, and they donated money to Icelandic-Canadian cultural organizations.
