In VÆÆ V. there is the following story about Baldvin Árnason, better known in the west as Capt. Baldi Anderson: “Captain Baldvin (Baldi) Anderson was a legendary figure during his lifetime because of his cheerfulness, optimism and hard work. He worked various jobs in his youth, e.g. he spent 15 years on cargo ships on Lake Winnipeg and was for a long time captain of m.s. Árora and there he received the captain’s nickname. When the C.P.R. railway company was laying a railway north of the settlements, he took on a project for the company and got to build a hotel on the border of the Gimli settlement (at Boundary Creek). Later he built another hotel in Gimli and it can be said that hotel management was his main job during that period. There was a lot of traffic, life and excitement in these hotels during the settlement years.”
Travel and Bathing Beach
“He traveled a lot, e.g. he went to Alaska to learn about fishing there, also to Churchill on the Hudson Bay, and once he went south to the United States to act in a movie, which required the use of dogsleds. Three Icelandic men from Gimli were hired with their dogs and sleds to act in that film. He built a home on land he inherited from his father and named it Laufskála and lived there ever since, except for 3 years when he moved to Mikley and lived there, but then moved back to Laufskála. It so happened that Laufskála farmland was exactly the area in Víðinés that the Icelanders first landed on in Oct. 22. 1875 and is a historic date in the settlement. It was Baldvin’s dream to establish an outdoor recreation area (Summer Resort), but it was his grandchildren who made it a reality over time. The Árnason family took care of that work, built roads, built summer houses, prepared a bathing beach, which is called Baldi’s Beach after Baldvin. Then the historic white settlement stone was well cared for, for its preservation, as in its shelter the first Icelander was born in New Iceland, shortly after the people arrived there. At one time, the president of Iceland, Ásgeir Ásgeirsson, opened this field to the public when he was visiting Canada. Floods from Lake Winnipeg have later spoiled this plot to some extent.”