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Swedes in Canada Newsletter #1 December 2003
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In This Issue:
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by Elinor Berglund Barr
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A typical meeting, for a large group
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While at the provincial archives in Victoria, I fell into conversation with a fellow researcher, Denis Marshall from Salmon Arm, BC. It so happened that he had written an article about a Swede, soon to be published in a book about logging magnates, with the apt title "Sawdust Caesars". The Swede was Rolf Wallgren Bruhn, a lumber mill owner and politician elected to the BC legislature from 1924 until his death in 1942. His is the kind of success story that most other immigrants could only dream about.
But there's more. Through information Denis provided, I discovered that Bruhn went back to Sweden with Harry Macfie, for a visit. Imagine my surprise to discover that this man with the Scottish name was a Swede! But Macfie returned to Sweden for good, wrote half a dozen books about his experiences in Canada, and introduced the Canadian canoe to Swedes. The Harry Macfie Canoe Club, founded in 1985, owns two Canot de Maitre built from original drawings provided by Old Fort William, Ontario. The Club holds its annual Rendezvous in Värmland, Sweden. To find a biography of Macfie in English.
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Last November, Don and Trudy Sjoberg drove me from Edmonton to the Lutheran church in Wetaskiwin to attend a 10 a.m. meeting, arranged by Nels and Roxann Buskas. About 50 people were seated around round tables, talking. The meeting started with grace, followed by coffee and fresh Swedish goodies. Mmm. Then Don, who is the project's fundraiser, took the mike and introduced both the project and me. After I had finished speaking and fielding questions, Don invited people to come up and see the displays and handouts, and to chat with us. He closed the formal part of the meeting by singing the lovely "Hälsa dem därhemma" (Greet the folks back home).
The results of this meeting, like the others, were most gratifying. Several people spoke with me about information they had at home, or brought with them. I met a lady who had been corresponding with me for several months, about her family history. Another had brought a big brown envelope filled with photocopies about the Svenskbyborna, Swedes who immigrated from Russia. Still others sent information later. None of the items would have been available at an archives or library. All of them have now been added to the project's research material.
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Barbro Baker of Victoria, BC, travelled to Winnipeg in order to help me read documents at the provincial archives there. In a collection of Swedish correspondence, she found the following handwritten poem, titled "Platform of the Ladies of Rich Hill", and dated in Swedish, "den 10 januari 1886":
The man that drinks the raw red wine
Can never place his lips to mine.
Who smokes or drinks or cuts a deck
Shall never, never kiss my neck.
Don't you monkey with the cards
Or we can never more be pards.
If you drink wine and other slop
You never shall hear my corset pop.
The man who smokes the cigarette
Can never squeeze me, you can bet!
Irrelevant? Perhaps. But this kind of documentation also confirms the mores of the time, how quickly immigrants learned English including slang, and the Swedish penchant for writing poetry. Also, it's fun!
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In Regina I stayed with Byrna Barclay, author of Canada's only trilogy about Swedes. Ask for these books at your library - "Summer of the Hungry Pup", "The Last Echo", and "Winter of the White Wolf". They are well worth reading!
Byrna and I collected several of those thick hardcover local histories, the kind with family biographies, and went down to Staples to photocopy the pages that dealt with Swedes. If there were more than fifty pages copied for each book, I had them coilbound with clear plastic covers, so that the title page could be easily read. These titles have been added to the project's library and database, which now includes more than 700 articles and books, in whole or in part, in English and Swedish.
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