Lord Selkirk
In 1812 Winnipeg was comprised of Fort Rouge and a camp where Red River and the Assiniboine River meet. This was the year when the Fifth Earl of Selkirk wanted to drive away the buffalo hunting Metis and start farming the prairies. Lots of skirmishes ensued between the pioneers, among whom there were three Swedes, and the Metis. These eventually led to the massacre at the seven oaks that is considered to be the bloodiest incident in western Canada. 23 pioneers and soldiers were killed, among them Lieutenant Einar Holte. Jacob Fahlstrm and the blacksmith Micael Heden survived. Heden was later captured by the Metis but managed to flee while Fahlstrm moved to Minnesota and married an Indian chief’s daughter.

Sven Delblanc
“I was born May 26, 1931, in the small pioneer town of Swan River, Manitoba, Canada, as a tender dependent of George V, King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India and much more,” wrote Sven Delblanc in an introduction to his book Kaanans Land. “Our lord, in his gentle mood, thought that I would be born as the Earl of Grosvenor, the oldest son of the multimillionaire old Duke of Westminster. The devil wanted me as the ninth son of a beggar in Calcutta. As our lord felt old and tired he had to agree to a slim compromise: I was born as the first son to a Swedish immigrant in Manitoba”.

When tough pioneer life and economic difficulties became too much for the Delblanc family, they returned to Sweden. Sven’s father eventually came back to Manitoba with a new family somehow drawn to a “life of poverty and failure on the Canadian prairies.” Sven Delblanc (1931-1996) wrote more than 30 novels, a Swedish literary history and countless articles, making him one of Sweden’s most prolific and successful authors. A book with Sven Delblanc’s letters to his Canadian half-sister, Alice, published after the author succumbed to cancer, document his links with Canada that always held a very special place in his heart.

Folklorama
One of the best times to visit Winnipeg (www.travelmanitoba.com, 1-800-665-0040) is during the first two weeks of August when Folklorama turns the city upside-down with 40-plus cultural pavilions from around the world. Folklorama (www.folklorama.ca) is the longest running and largest multicultural event of its kind in the world, highlighting the many ethnic groups with food, performances and cultural displays.

This year at the Scandinavian Cultural Centre (764 Erin Street, phone 204-774-8047 scandinaviancc@shaw.com) there was food galore and “trolls, huldras, H.C. (pronounced Jos!) Andersen, Pippi Longstocking, Moomin and numerous other creatures of the imagination” to reflect on the theme of “Once Upon a Time”.

You can visit the Scandinavian Centre throughout the year. This is where the Nordic groups meet in the downstairs or upstairs auditoriums or in each country’s individual room furnished and decorated in distinctive styles. The Swedish Cultural Association (204-774-8047 or President Ellen Boryen e_boryen@shaw.ca) has a monthly get-together as well as a Midsommarfest, Lucia and other events, sometimes co-arranged with the Strindberg Vasa Lodge (204-488-8018).

Linda Lundstrm
“I am a fashion designer who feels that fashion design is bullshit,” says Linda Lundstrm. She has made a habit of doing things differently. She made her own clothes at age eight and now leads a $10.5 million clothing and design manufacturing company (CompanyFile Aug05) that employs 100 people in Toronto and that sells its collections through three flagship stores and 450 independent boutiques. Linda has roots in Winnipeg where her parents and sister still live and where there is a thriving clothing industry. Linda Lundstrm’s most famous design is the Laparka coat that has been sold in more than 125 000 copies and that has been inspired by the Laplanders around Jokkmokk in northern Sweden where her father has his roots.

Logan Avenue
Today Logan Avenue in Winnipeg is a rather dull industrial street just east of the center of the city. In its heyday, up until the 1920s, it was Swedish Canada’s “Snuff Boulevard” with everything a Swede could wish for. Many visitors stayed at Fountain House or other boarding houses. You met countrymen at Gta Caf, New Central Caf, Caf Sverige, Norrlands Caf, Caf Svea or Caf Stockholm, to mention but a few. There were two Scandinavian barbers, a pool hall with six tables run by a Swede, the tailors “Skrddar Nelson” and “Skrddar Johnson” and “Snus Gustafsson” who ran a hardware and Swedish import business. You could speak Swedish wherever you went and you could buy Canada Posten and Svenska Canada Tidningen directly from the publishers.

During the “dirty thirties” when many of the Swedish-related stores had moved elsewhere, it was the remaining merchants and the three Swedish churches on Logan that took on a social responsibility and helped homeless, jobless and starving countrymen. You can still see the beautiful, but abandoned Swedish Mission Church and the Lutheran Zion Church, but the latter is now adorned with an onion cupola as it has become the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

At one time there was a saying that “if you were looking for a Swede who you knew was in Canada, all you had to do was to wait on Logan. Sooner or later he or she would turn up”. Today what remains of the legendary street are all the stories in Canada Tidningen that started in 1887 and remained on the street until 1970, and that served as the major source for Lars Ljungmark’s Svenskarna i Winnipeg (Emigrantinstutets Vnner 1994, ISBN 91-971460-6-4) that is the only study of the Swedish emigration to Canada.

Clarence Tillenius
is one of Canada’s leading wild-life painters and an “explorer, lecturer, teacher, photographer and writer” and recently the subject of the movie Til-lenius: The Art of Nature. He was born in the Interlake country of Manitoba 91 years ago and walked the wilderness over large areas of North America always keeping a record of his observations in his sketchbook. He speaks Swedish and you can see his dioramas at the National Museum in Ottawa..

Vasalund
Close to the Assiniboine Park lies an idyllic Swedish enclave. Vasalund Park started off as the perfect venue for picnics and celebrations for Swedes in Winnipeg some 65 years ago. Today the acres at Vasalund house the original pavilion, the Swedish Canadian Home, built in 1965, and the 64 luxury apartments in Vasa Lund Estates that were ready for 55-plus couples in 2000. The recent project did not necessarily attract many Swedish-Canadians but it provided a secure long-term cash-flow for the volunteers who run the park and the rest home.

The Carlsons
The architectural landscape of Winnipeg has changed dramatically over the last century. One of the big players in the transformation has been Carlson Decorating & Sandblasting that employed as many as 300 painters during the war years. The company was founded in 1939 by Edwin Carlson from Stora Skedvi in Dalarna and is now run by his son Neil.

Ed was appointed Swedish Consul for Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 1962 and in 1980 Neil “inherited” this position for life. Sharing his time between Winnipeg and Palm Springs, 95-year-old Ed Carlson, who can boast 3 holes-in-one, is still very active. Neil took over his father’s business in 1965. On weekends he and his wife Lynn flee to Gimli where they can relax in their two large boats. Neil also owns a fiberglass construction company and he used the resources there to build a motor yacht himself. Unfortunately that boat turned out to be too large for the harbour.

Svenskbyborna
Emil Hoas proudly shows off his new $1.3 million state-of-the-art barn with the latest Swedish Tetra Laval computerized milking equipment. The proud and successful farmer is also a link to a fascinating piece of Swedish history that goes back to the 13th century. This is the story of the Svenskbyborna (Swedish Press May 99). In 1228 some 30 Swedish families settled down on the island of Dag in present Estonia. 150 years later, still Swedish-speaking but now under Russian rule, the “Svenskbybor” were forced to relocate to Ukraine. The 1200-mile journey took its toll and of the 1 207 men, women and children who started off, only 150 survived.

In Sweden nothing was known about this Swedish-speaking community until a Swedish-Finnish priest came upon the Svenskbybor near the River Dniepr around 1850 and a contact with Sweden was established. Some aid packages were sent during the dirty 20s and when the Svenskbybor were going to be “stalinized” after the Russian Revolution the whole village of 888 demanded and was eventually allowed to leave for Sweden in July 1929 on two freighters chartered by the Swedish Red Cross.

Emil’s father John Hoas was 14 years old then and can still tell you about the dramatic escape, first by boat and then by train and ferry to Sweden. The majority of the Svenskbybor stayed in Sweden but 240 returned to Ukraine. John and his family moved to Canada where they had relatives who had moved there earlier.

Together with six other families they bought a large farm in Meadows, an hour north of Winnipeg and farmed it as a “Gammelsvenskby” cooperative until it was fully paid and split up in 1959. There is a stone marker at the farm telling the story of its beginnings, but it is even more fascinating to listen to John Hoas tell it in his old-fashioned Swedish and to find out that he has lived under the rule of Czar Nikolaus II, Lenin, Stalin, Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, Queen Elizabeth II and now various Canadian prime ministers.

Heritage B&B
Forty minutes north of Winnipeg you can take a step back in time in a beautifully restored Swedish homesite. The Nordin Heritage Bed & Breakfast Inn and Guest Cottage (204-886-3818) is located in Teuolon, close to Lake Winnipeg beaches and golf courses.
In the beginning of the last century, the Nordin family settled in this area and set up a dairy farm that soon produced milk for the whole community. The loft of the immense stone and frame barn became a favourite for barn dances. Today you can visit the Swedish-designed blacksmith shop and walk the original wagon trails across the 800-acre property. The large farmhouse and nearby guest house has been transformed into a charming antiques-filled retreat that attracts visitors from all over the world.

From the September 2005 issue and Swedish Press