Politics

For the most part, Icelandic-Canadians have held centrist views on major social issues, voting for either the Liberal or the Conservative Party, a position that has probably remained consistent over the years. However, no statistics on voting patterns have been compiled. Lobbying has not played a central role in Icelandic-Canadian community life since no political issues affect it as a group. Until the 1950s community leaders tended to be prominent citizens from the clergy or professions. These men – women’s roles were generally limited to the supportive – held positions with the newspapers, churches, and other cultural institutions. They were the vehicle for the absorption of mainstream Canadian attitudes, and they combined a desire for acceptance and success within the larger society with pride in Icelandic culture.

Originally the Lögberg and the Heimskringla newspapers both reported on national and world news and the progress of the independence movement in Iceland. Competition between their two editors was fierce. Lögberg represented the views of the Liberal Party and the Lutheran Church, and Heimskringla, the Conservatives and the Unitarians. Both men were eloquent and combative, and their positions on many issues, particularly on provincial and federal politics, became progressively more adversarial and spread into the community. However, controversy faded when the editors retired in the 1930s.

Historians of the community in the past have emphasized the loyalty, sacrifice, and commitment to Canada of Icelanders who served in the two world wars. Newspapers of the time reflect this patriotism, in contrast to the home country’s pacifist and neutral stance. Army enlistment affected Icelanders’ perceptions of themselves as Canadians. For example, on 3 September 1914 an editorial in Heimskringla argued that they should not join a general meeting for recent non-British immigrants concerning participation in the war. Instead, it advocated an independent gathering in order to dissipate distrust on the part of English-speaking Canadians of “foreigners.” Here, as elsewhere in community publications, Icelanders are described as having an inherent love for law and order, an attempt to justify their wholehearted support for the war.

Similarly, published responses to the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 advocated compromise. Although they supported organized labour’s demands during the strike, the newspapers condemned its tactics. When riots erupted on 21 June, the editors of both Lögberg and Heimskringla were quick to blame the strikers and call for government intervention to restore order. They did not question the use of violence to suppress labour protests or the arrest of the leaders. Since most Icelanders lived in the west end of the city, they were ignorant of the desperate situation of immigrants living in the north end and removed from the strike’s main events. They identified more with the majority of British origin, which tended to promote a conservative reaction, and most Icelanders would not voluntarily go on strike. One exception was Sigurdur Júliús Jóhannesson, the publisher of Voröld, who practised homeopathic medicine in the poorer areas of Winnipeg. The police arrested him, but were forced to release him so that he could deliver a baby. Icelandic community leaders also attempted to have him incarcerated.

From the beginnings of settlement, Icelandic women had formed their own organizations (kvennfélag). In 1881 they established the Icelandic Women’s Society, which helped new immigrants and the poor and promoted education and moral values. Lutheran and Unitarian churches in every Icelandic settlement had their ladies’ aids, which shared these aims and in some cases formed the grass roots for the suffrage movement. Icelandic-Canadian women were leaders in the first wave of feminism and the fight for women’s suffrage in Canada. Women had won the right to vote in municipal and congregational elections in Iceland in 1882, and they became eligible to hold local office there in 1902. In Canada in the 1890s, Icelanders founded the first women’s suffrage association in the west. Because they used Icelandic in their meetings and publications, the role of these women in creating the fertile ground for other activists such as Nellie McClung to achieve the goals of the movement is not well known. In 1910 women members of the Icelandic community delivered to the Manitoba legislature two petitions in support of women’s suffrage signed by their compatriots. They thus played an important role in the granting of full political privileges to women in Manitoba on 27 January 1916.

Margrét Benedictsson and her husband Sigfús became the community’s leaders over women’s rights. Margrét was deeply influenced by Iceland’s independence leader Jón Sigurdsson and later by American suffragists Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Stanton. The couple published Freyja (Selkirk, Man., 1898–1910), a journal devoted to promoting women’s issues, state-sponsored social welfare, the liberalization of divorce laws, and reproductive choice for married women. Margrét gave her first speech in Winnipeg in 1893 and toured throughout West Icelandic communities giving public talks.

In recent years, Icelandic Canadians as a group have not engaged in political action. However, many individuals have successfully entered politics at all levels of government. In Manitoba, Magnus Eliason devoted his life to public affairs, serving as a party organizer for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and its successor, the New Democratic Party, in British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Known for his fine rhetoric and debating skills, he was first elected to city council in Winnipeg in 1968 and continued in office throughout the 1980s. George Johnson, the Conservative member of the provincial legislature for Gimli in 1958– 69, served as minister of both health and public welfare and education. From 1986 until 1993 he was lieutenant governor of Manitoba. His daughter, Janis Johnson, also active in the Conservative Party, was appointed to the Senate in 1990. Eric Stefanson, the first elected Conservative member of the legislature for Selkirk in 1990, has held the posts of minister of industry, trade, and tourism and of finance in the Manitoba government. Previously he was a Winnipeg city councillor. In British Columbia, Byron Ingemar Johnson, a member of the Liberal Party, was premier from 1947 to 1952 in a coalition with the Conservative Party. Harold MacKay Huskilson, a descendant of original Markland settlers in Nova Scotia, served as a Liberal member of the legislature in that province from 1970 to 1993. In the latter year his son, Clifford Brian Huskilson, was elected to succeed him.