FISHING AS MEANING: IDENTITY FORMATION AND THE “NEW ICELANDER” IN

MANITOBA

By

Jeff R. Wood

Integrated Studies Final Project Essay (MAIS 700)

submitted to Dr. Mike Gismondi

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta

December, 2012

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ABSTRACT

Fishing as Meaning: Identity Formation and the New Icelander in

A proper understanding of the multicultural nature of the Canadian identity can best be accomplished by studies of the various cultures which constitute it. While identity formation is a discursive process, subjective, and entirely experiential, exploration of the local is never the less fundamental for understanding the whole.

This paper examines the “local” Icelandic community along the west shore of Lake ,

Manitoba. It analyzes how the community draws meaning from the practice of fishing, and looks at its significance in identity formation. The approach taken explicitly separates the act of fishing, from the meanings that are extracted from the act, connecting fishers and non-fishers in a common bond of community. I demonstrate the symbolic and ritualistic meanings connected to fishing by the Icelandic community, as well as how a sense of self, of place, of bond, and of ownership and agency is extracted and applied to identity. Questions of cultural sustainability and fishing heritage will also be addressed.

The topic is approached from an interdisciplinary perspective. I blend insights and methodologies from history, human and physical geography, sociology, and anthropology, with an attempt at an over-arching integration.

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Table of Contents

Title Page i Abstract ii Table of Contents iii

Introduction 1

Background 4 History 4 Geography of the Lake and the Fishery 7

Fishing as Meaning 9 Symbolism 9 Ritualism 11 Sense of Self 11 Sense of Place 12 Bond 13 Ownership and Agency 14

Cultural Sustainability 15

Conclusions 16

References 17

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Fishing as Meaning: Identity Formation and the New Icelander in Manitoba

By Jeff Wood

Final Project Essay (MAIS 700)

Dr. Mike Gismondi

Introduction

Canada prides itself on its multicultural composition and heritage, and since even the first occupiers of the land were themselves immigrants at some point, what it means to be Canadian has been, and is, highly subjective and entirely experiential. Every wave of immigration brings new meaning to the term “Canadian” and each is unique and complimentary to the whole.

Invariably what has been brought from the home country in the way of culture and identity is reformed, moulded, and redefined by new physical and cultural pressures, and while elements of the past remain, most often a new identity is formed as different meanings are extracted from the new environments, situations, and over the course of time.

In a broad sense, this paper speaks implicitly to multiculturalism through a focused study of a single aspect of a specific ethnic identity, which is situated in unique set of physical and temporal geographies. Canadian identity is addressed in light of these constituent studies.

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A grounded understanding of the many identities that make up being “Canadian” are prerequisite to fuller understandings of the whole.

It is the purpose of this paper to examine how meaning is extracted from the practice of fishing for sustenance and trade among the Icelandic population of the south west shore of

Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba . Explicit in its intent, is the drawing of connections to identity formation from the cultural practice of fishing, not as an act per se, but rather as a source of meaning and a focal point around which a particular self view is abstracted (since only a small portion of the population fishes) and maintained. The discursive nature of identity formation however, places limits on the extent to which one can draw conclusions about self view from any one source. It is not the intention of this work to claim fishing as a core value, or even as being particularly substantive in this regard. Instead, among the many cultural, geographical and temporal pressures that contribute to identity, fishing is only one, and that one cultural aspect is the focus of this paper.

The discursiveness with which identity is formed implies a certain subjectivity in the attempt to describe it, both on the part of the observer as well as the self view; while one may claim something, another may claim something completely different. To suggest then, that the west shore see themselves as fishers, would be one claim, but that might easily be disputed by those who do not share this background (in fact, the majority). On the other hand, the significance of the fishing industry in the Icelandic community’s initial survival, its economic viability throughout the following century, and its current location in the cultural geography of

Manitoba, can hardly be disputed. While the practice of fishing has been carried out by

2 relatively few members of the population, it is the shared experience of fishing as a meaning bearing institution (Neville, 1995: 168) that is of particular interest here.

In spite of the specificity of this inquiry, the topic lends itself well to interdisciplinary study, and in fact cannot be adequately addressed in any other way. At its core, an exploration of individual and group identity is a study perhaps well served by ethnomethodology, but there is much to explore beyond the disciplinary confines of sociology. The same may be said of anthropology and its focuses on social structure, cultural development and material artefacts, or history and its aggregation of chronologies leading to a common point of inquiry, or the fields of human and physical geography that explore human movement in, and manipulations of, the physical environment, and so on. While each disciplinary approach offers key insights into identity formation, no one discipline can in its self address the underlying complexities of the process.

This inquiry draws on all of these disciplines, with a centralizing core methodology of integration (Klein, 2012: 283). Integration, according to Repko, is a process which involves a critical evaluation of disciplinary insights resulting in a more comprehensive understanding of a problem (Repko, 2012: 263). How meaning is extracted from the act of fishing in constructing identity involves a critical investigation into the various explanations offered by each discipline.

The integrative process involves a synthesis of these individual perspectives that transcends single disciplinary understandings. With that process in mind, the research material for this paper was chosen from a variety of disciplinary sources in an effort to more broadly understand

Icelandic culture in Manitoba.

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The term “community” is used here as a broad descriptive of a number of settlements established along the west shore of that are contained within the original reserve boundaries as set in place in 1875, as well as Hecla Island, just outside of it. Community refers to the people as collective identity, and less so a physical place. As well, the term “New

Icelander” is used in reference to the residents of Icelandic heritage who occupy the reserve area and connected to the initial name of the reserve as “New ” to distinguish that space from the then District of Keewatin.

Background

History

Manitoba’s Icelandic population has its origins in Icelandic diaspora of the late 19th century, a result of economic hardship brought on by tough trade restrictions imposed by hegemonic

Danish rule, and devastating volcanic eruptions that destroyed much of the already marginal hay land (Thor,2002: 9. Brydon, 2001: 167). In 1870 the population of Iceland stood at approximately 70,000, 75% of whom were agriculturalists primarily involved in pastoralism, raising sheep, cattle and horses, as well as hay and small subsistence gardening. A further 10% extracted a living from the sea although this number gradually increased by the end of the century as the agricultural economy weakened (Arngrimsson, 1997: 40).

As a subaltern population under Danish authority and suffering increased poverty, many

Icelanders felt less connected to the homeland, and by 1870 the prospects for a better life elsewhere increased when a group of emigrants to Utah in the United States, reported on the

4 opportunities available in North America (Simundsson, 1981: 1-3). By 1873 the first large contingent of Icelanders was en route to the United States. However, while still aboard ship, a majority of the immigrants were persuaded by a Canadian immigration agent to instead settle in Canada. Promises of free land, cultural and religious independence, temporary housing and paid transportation made the offer difficult to refuse (Thor, 2002: 39).

The initial sight of settlement in Kinmount Ontario proved unsuitable to the Icelandic immigrants, (Thor, 2002: 65, 74, 78). Word reached the Icelanders of large land reserves in

Manitoba established in 1873 for the exclusive settlement of Mennonites from Russia (Lohrenz,

1974: 20) as part of the Canadian governments spatial placement scheme for settling the prairies ( Eyford, 2010: 16). A delegation went to Manitoba in 1875 to investigate settlement possibilities. Shortly thereafter they made an application to the Government of Canada for the establishment of an Icelandic reserve in the District of Keewatin on the (then) northern border of Manitoba, stretching 68 kilometres north to the White Mud River along the western shoreline of Lake Winnipeg, and 18 kilometres west (R.M. of Gimli, 2010). Subsequently the reserve was designated New Iceland (Nyja Island) as a separate entity from the District of

Keewatin.

The initial hunt for land was with strictly agrarian purposes in mind. Thor (2002: 79) points out that land west of Winnipeg was initially looked at with the intent of developing grain farm operations as per government desires for economic development in the territory. A severe grasshopper infestation had stripped the land bare that summer however, leaving the Icelandic delegation with a poor impression of the area and they rejected it for settlement. The only viable alternative, land along the west shore of Lake Winnipeg, looked to have adequate hay

5 potential, and in exchange for fewer grain farming opportunities, had the advantage of the big lake, well known to be teaming with fish. Initially however, it appears that the Icelanders had not intended to continue any fishing tradition that may have been left in the homeland, and that the reincorporation of that practice was incidental.

The settlers arrived to Manitoba in early autumn. The environmental struggles that resulted would prove instrumental in the forging of a new identity. Their destination was the Whitemud

River (later renamed the Icelandic River) at the northern end of the newly reserved land area.

With no roads or railway, the only adequate means of transportation from Winnipeg, was by flat bottomed barges pulled by the Hudson’s Bay steam boat Coleville (Arngrimsson, 1997: 131).

The treachery of the lake, in particular during the fall season, made the attempt risky, and it was the rising of the wind and waves on October 21 1875, that forced the steam boat captain to make the decision to turn back towards the shelter of the mouth of the Red River at the south end of the lake. The barges carrying the Icelandic settlers were cut loose. They paddled to shore at Willow Island, roughly half-way to the original destination point, and it was near that location where the first Icelandic settlement (Gimli) was established (Arngrimsson, 1997:

134).

Unfamiliar with the extreme cold, the wildlife, or how to fish through the ice (and as it turned out...how to fish the lake at all), the initial settlement attempt was disastrous. With inadequate supplies, hastily built housing, exceptionally poor hunting skills, and the immediate onset of a Manitoba winter, the settlers struggled simply to survive. Certainly coming from a country where mean January temperatures hover around minus 2°C (Crystal, 2000: 548) to a land where minus 45°C is not uncommon, must have been a terrible psychological blow. The

6 following year the devastating small pox epidemic of 1876-77 (Kristjanson, 1965: 47) hampered any significant progress in the settlement during the all important summer season.

The picture we have of the early Icelandic settler to Manitoba is one of struggle and hardship. That any remained (and in fact a great many did leave) is a testament to their determination, but also an important clue as to who the modern west shore Icelandic person is, and how they see themselves today.

The Geography of the Lake and the Fishery

Lake Winnipeg’s geography is a result of the retreating Laurentide ice sheet of approximately

15,000 years ago (Trenhaile, 2007: 227). Lying at the bottom of the Manitoba Lowland, the depression left behind has resulted in the terminus lake of Canada’s second largest watershed, draining almost 1 million square kilometres of land from the Rocky mountains to just short of

Lake Superior, and as far south as the northern tip of South Dakota (Watershed Observer, 2006:

12). The lake forms a geological trisection between east shore granitite Canadian shield and boreal forest , south shore rich sedimentary soils and combined grassland/ parkland, and west shore limestone, marsh and mixed forest/aspen parkland (Trenhaile, 2007: 65-69) providing for exceptional ecological diversity.

Manitoba may seem an unlikely place for a commercial fishery, but in fact Lake Winnipeg, by surface area, ranks as the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world. At 425 kilometres long by almost 100 kilometres at its widest (24, 514 square kilometres), it is larger than Lake Ontario, and 4 ½ times the size of Prince Edward Island (Russell, 2000: 18). It is a relatively shallow body

7 with an average depth of only 12 meters (Canadian Hydrographic Chart 5261, 2000) and prone to easy wind disturbance resulting in dangerous waves and hazardous navigation. The south basin is particularity turbid as a result of dissolved clay entering via the Red River, and mixing due to wave activity. The lake’s turbidity is perhaps its most recognizable feature, and it’s name, “Winnipeg” is in fact an anglicized interpretation of the Cree term Win ni pak which translates as “muddy water” (Russell, 2000: 10).

Home to over 800 commercial fishers (LWIC, 2005) Lake Winnipeg produces fully 36% of

Canada’s fresh water fish. The commercial fishery is valued at $20 million dollars (Water

Stewardship Report, 2010: 1). In addition to commercial activities, Lake Winnipeg also supports an estimated $15 million recreational fishery (Bensley, et al., 2011: 3) and has also seen growth in the tourism, retail and service sectors.

While home to a great variety of fish, the lake’s dominant commercial and recreational species are Whitefish (of particular interest to early Icelandic settlers), Walleye, Sauger,

Northern Pike, Goldeye, Catfish, Carp, and Sturgeon, with only the latter three being of no current commercial importance.

Although brief, the background information helps serve to locate the west shore Icelandic immigrants to Manitoba politically, geographically, economically, and situationally. It is reflective of a people with deep cultural roots, dislocated due to poverty and hegemonic pressures, whose relocation resulted in cultural re-growth in an inhospitable and unfamiliar environment. This cursory review provides a backdrop against which identity formation (or re- formulation) can be discussed.

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Fishing as meaning

The question of who the contemporary west shore Icelander is can be difficult to answer.

Varying experiences and personal histories, cultural blending through marital ties, in-migration, and the dynamic nature of cultural adaptations all provide for differing understandings of personal and group identity. But one commonality that separates their collective experiences from that of most other prairie settlers, including most other Icelandic emigrants is their connection to the lake. Fishing the lake has provided significance to the community in a number of ways. Several specific sources of meaning derived from fishing will be examined here: the symbolic; the ritualistic; a sense of self; a sense of place; a community bond; and ownership and agency.

Symbolism

Initially Icelandic immigrants to Manitoba had thought to learn to become agrarians, as opposed to continuing their more familiar Icelandic pastoral heritage. The circumstances that lead to their establishment along the west shore located them in a geography unsuited to grain farming, and so survival became somewhat dependent on the fishery, a practice that was familiar to them from the old country. In this sense, fishing became symbolic of home, and perhaps was the only feature of their new environment that could still be viewed as “Icelandic”.

It is important to note however, that their initial acts of fishing resulted in failure due to a profound lack of understanding of the environment and poor techniques (Kristjanson, 1965:

35). Having to re-learn the practice of fishing provided another layer of meaning to the new

9 identity, a sense of independence through self reliance. So, while there was a symbolic connection to their cultural heritage, a new cultural meaning about fishing was being established, something “new Icelandic” emerged in the relearning of the act. While fishing is symbolic of the people’s Icelandic heritage, it became equally symbolic of their unique struggles in the new home country of Canada (Charon, 2004: 19, 41).

Fishing has historically been a man’s profession among the Icelandic population in Canada.

Women were not typically included in off-shore work or the handling of the boats. The work was (and is) dangerous, physically challenging, and requires a high level of bravery to be out in small boats on often violent water. Fishing is highly symbolic then, of what it means to be a man in west shore culture. Like a truck driver, a farmer, or a logger, the practice represents a notion of gender differentiation that assigns certain values of maleness to practitioners exclusive of female involvement.

A symbolic link may also be drawn to early notions of ethnic superiority over the First

Nations People, whose territory the Icelandic settlers occupied in the 19th century displacement program (Eyford, 2010: 7-8, 295). While relations between the two cultures were relatively cordial, it is clear that typical attitudes of white Christian superiority and notions of savage heathens “Indians” were prevalent during the settlement period. The Icelandic fishers are recorded as being somewhat critical of aboriginal fishing methods which implied their superior approach. (M.A.-profs & Gunnarsdottir, 2010: 48). Fishing in this instance was symblomatic of that assumed superiority.

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Ritualism

Meaning is also extracted from fishing in the form of ritualism. Ritual provides cultural structure, conformity and a sense of community. Fishing boats were painted and built in recognizably similar colours and designs. Fishers shared methods and collaborative work practices. Rites of passage, in-group knowledge, and norms of dress, all provide ritualistic meaning. Non-fishers within the community accepted and acknowledged these rituals as cultural norms of identity representative of the group as a whole (Neville, 1995: 163-195).

Effectively the norms of a small community of fishers became constitutive of the larger community identity, which shared solidarity with them. The “fishing community” can thus be viewed more in terms of a concept than reality (Foltz, 2003: 576) in that all west shore

Icelanders viewed themselves as connected by the communal bond of the activities on the lake, even though only a few are intimately involved in the practice.

Sense of Self

Fishing also provides the west shore community with a sense of self. As prairie settlers they had much in common with any number of other ethnic groups that occupied the land in 19th century. Their distinguishing feature, a fishing culture, provided the Icelandic community with a special status however. The communal sense of self drawn from collective experience (Stewart and Stratham, 2000: 178) separated the west shore people from all other non-indigenous settlers in Manitoba. Being Icelandic, as well as people of the lake, combines in a sense of pride derived from their unique dichotomous identity.

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Sense of Place

Associated with this sense of self is a sense of place. Subaltern in their home country, and marginalized in Canada, the successes of the New Icelandic settlement schema resulted in successful ownership of a geographic place by New Icelanders (Eyford, 2010: 292-293, 299).

While initial settlement strategies failed, struggle, tenaciousness and ambition were borne out in a number of successful community developments, a booming fishery, boat building industry, agricultural successes, and a growing tourism industry in the 21st century. That the landscape is peppered with Icelandic names after 135 years of settlement bears testament to the permanency of the sense of place. Their loss of Icelandic homeland has, in effect, been replaced by the west shore. Gimli, the largest of the west shore communities, has the distinction of being the largest Icelandic community outside of Iceland. The old term Nyja

Island (New Iceland) (Thor, 2002: 109) is still commonly used.

But the sense of place extends well beyond the confines of geography. The fishing communities of the west shore have produced a rich collection of art and literature that spans the gamut of poetry, fiction, history, and academic work, as well as the full spectrum of fine arts. The “space” occupied by the Manitoban Icelandic community reaches beyond mere physical territory and into the psyche of readers and observers around the world. The place claimed is one of ethereal presence, a cognitive zone of existence that is directly tied to identity and the intimate meanings attached to it. The New Icelander occupies not only a specific physical geography, but also that of the temporal and cognitive. Locked in time and imagination are the spaces claimed by the west shore Icelander.

Once a walk at midnight taking, Gusts of rain around me shaking,

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Sky and earth alight and quaking, Lightning-blaze and thunder-jar; There beneath the poplars tow’ring, In my footprints soaked from show’ring, Traces of a camp were showing, Mired deep at Sandy Bar; Long forsaken, near-forgotten, Settlers’ home at Sandy Bar.

(Excerpt from a west shore poem by Guttormur J. Guttormsson, in The Iceland Canadian, 1992: 291)

Bond

Fishing also provides meaning to the community in the form of bond. Bonds are established by cooperative participation in a common activity, by shared experience, common goals, and of common understandings. But while these bonds can be applied in a general way to most groups, it is the bond of pride in the distinctiveness as a community of fishers among a largely agricultural population of the province that sets the west shore community apart.

Community bonds also form over a sense of loss as members perish on the lake in storms and boating accidents, or die young due to the stressful and physically demanding nature of the work. These types of affective bonds serve as distinctive but private in-group identifiers unique to fishers, perhaps comparable only to coastal communities who fish the oceans and experience loss at sea, for example in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Fishing also provides family bonds that lend structure to society, binding perhaps otherwise disconnected social structures in a common purpose. Fishing families intermarrying with non- fishers in the community create stronger solidarities among the overall group. The identity of

13 the “fisher” as an individual is extended to the family identity as a whole, and kinship becomes integral to the continued understanding of the community’s self view as fishers.

Ownership and Agency

Recently there have been concerns over water quality on Lake Winnipeg and potential damage to the fishery. Eutrophication of the water has lead to massive algae blooms that threaten to choke out oxygen requiring sub-surface biota including fish (LWF, 2012: 4-5). This concern has moved to the forefront of environmental issues in Manitoba, in particular among the 23,000 residents of the lake’s periphery and islands (LWIC, 2005). Another threat to the ecosystem is the incursion of invasive species, primarily from the United States. Studies have indicated that there are bacteria and parasites, as well as fish with foreign tissue lesions now entering the Lake Winnipeg basin from outside of it (Bensley, et al. 2011: 19-33).

The call to arms has been almost universal among the Icelandic community (and others), with much organized advocacy activity originating from the west shore. While relatively few community members are involved in the fishing industry, the possible demise of the fishery is being seen as a threat to local culture and identity, and therefore the greater community. The lake drains water from 4 Canadian provinces and 4 American states, and this geographical reality connects local west shore environmental advocacy to the international scene. The lake has become a site of opposition and resistance, and politicization of the fishery has added another layer of social meaning to the new Icelander identity The fishery serves as a platform from which the west shore communities exhibit and exert their agency, as well consolidate

14 their sense of place, and sense of self. While protecting the ecology is of economic and moral importance, the meaning derived from the struggle extends far beyond the fish themselves in terms of cultural heritage and contemporary identity formation of the west shore community.

Cultural Sustainability

That said, after almost 140 years of occupation along the west shore, the significance of commercial fishing has gradually become less important to the west shore community. In some cases commercially available boats, engines, nets and a modern transportation network have left local manufactures struggling to compete. Others went out of business. Increasingly tourism and the tertiary sector are driving the local economy forward. The question then is whether the self image as fishers remains a sustainable feature of the culture, or will the local community transition to a different understanding of themselves as they grow more distant from fishing?

Returning to the idea of community as a concept (Foltz, 2003: 576) rather than a physical set of cultural assets, the exploration of how meaning has been extracted from the practice of fishing may provide the answer. Who the Icelandic community is along the west shore, has been established by people’s experiences over the course of time, and contemporary identity is in large part a reflection of people’s history.

The practice of fishing has provided a set of important symbolic meanings to the community.

Cultural norms and structures have grown out of fishing rituals. Fishing has provided a sense of self and place. The psychic connection to the lake and the intimate relationship with it through the act of fishing, has provided ownership which in turn has reinforced a sense of agency in

15 being able to speak and act on its behalf. It may be safe to say that even without the fishery, the west shore community will likely always view themselves as connected to the identity and practices of fishers. Evidence of that solidified social identity is visible today by a casual walk through the largest community, Gimli. Some of the streets have been named after well known fishing vessels. Business names like Sauger Steve’s, The Lighthouse Mall, Fish Lips Hemp

Company, and Olson Fish Inc. reflect the fishery heritage and the importance of the lake to identity. The central tourist feature of Gimli is the “Fisherman’s Warf”. Decorative items such as anchors, rope, heavy chain, fishing nets, and boat propellers, are promoted in public spaces as cultural identifiers of the community.

Conclusion

It is unclear whether the first contingent of Icelandic immigrants to Canada came with the expectation of becoming assimilated into Canadian culture, or with the intention of establishing a distinct enclave in which to build a new Icelandic homeland (Eyford, 2010: 124-126). What is apparent is that along the west shore of Lake Winnipeg, they established a unique culture with one foot in the old traditions of the Icelandic homeland, and another borne out of the creation of a new set of meanings extracted from a variety of pressures and experiences. The result, like most ethnic identities in Canada, has been a hybrid culture that identifies strongly with a point of origin, but has also been forged into something demonstrably new, as people engaged a unique set of geographies and environments and cultural influences over time.

While identity formation is the result of many factors, this paper has endeavoured to look at the very specific practice of fishing for sustenance and trade, as a prime source of meaning in the formation of a particular local identity. While not claiming fishing as the only core cultural

16 identifier of the New Icelander, it does attempt to substantiate the central importance of that practice in how the west shore Icelandic descendants view themselves.

Had grasshoppers not devastated the prime farmland to the west of Winnipeg in the summer of 1875, this unique west shore culture likely would not have evolved. The fishing heritage of the Icelandic settler in Manitoba would have simply become a footnote in history had settlement not occurred along the west shore of Lake Winnipeg. Instead, a colourful piece in the multicultural patchwork that helps constitute the Canadian identity remains and flourishes, adding new meaning to the Icelandic and Canadian heritage portfolios.

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