Prince Albert is today the third largest city in Saskatchewan after Regina and Saskatoon. The city is in the middle of the province on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. It is sometimes called the “Gateway to the North” because it is the main highway to the north of the province. The Cree natives called the place “kistahpinanihk” which means “good meeting place” or just “meeting place”. Henry Kelsey traveled around the district in 1692 when he tried unsuccessfully to get indigenous peoples to join the fur traders. It was not until 1776 that a fur trade was built there. James Isbister, a Métis and employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was the first landowner in 1862 and occupied the land until 1866, when his cousins arrived and settled there. The small community there was called the Isbister settlement after that. It was Reverend James Nisbet who came and opened a missionary center for the indigenous Cree. He named it after Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, who died in 1861. Hence the name of the city. The inhabitants of the village and the surrounding area were mostly Métis who joined the rebel and Métis Louis Riel and fought alongside him in the 1885 battle against the Canadian Army. And that is where Icelanders came into play.
Icelanders in Prince Albert
In 1869-70, Métis revolted in Manitoba in the Red River Rebellion. Before them went Louis Riel, who fled into exile to the United States when it became clear that the uprising would be broken. Apparently, he had not given up because he was in regular contact with his group on the plains of Canada and one of them was James Isbister in Prince Albert. In 1884, James participated in the return of Louis Riel to Canada, who addressed his people in the Northwest Territory (this was the name of the area west of Manitoba until 1905) and the story goes that more than 500 people listened to his speech. When the Canadian government realized that war was imminent, it was decided to send an army against Louis Riel’s troops and volunteers were requested. A few young Icelanders enlisted in the army, one of them was Jakob Sigurðsson from Barðastrandarsýsla. He came west to Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1876 and did various work for the next few years. He went west to Prince Albert in the wilderness and stayed there until 1885. He then volunteered for the Prince Albert Army, which was involved in suppressing the rebellion of the Métis. Settlement in the Þingvellir and Lögberg settlements and later in the Lakes Settlement (Vatnabyggð) attracted the most Icelanders to the Northwest Territory over the turn of the century. But there were those who looked west out onto the plain. One of them was Vigfús Sveinsson Deildal from Skagafjörður who came west to Manitoba in 1887 and first lived in Glenboro. He spent some time in Portage la Prairie but in 1905 he went west to Prince Albert. He had worked as a railroad worker in Manitoba and was hired as the foreman of a working group. He kept that job for years until he quit his job and moved to Winnipeg. Hallgrímur Sigurðsson and his wife, Sveinbjörg Pétursdóttir, settled with their children in Prince Albert in 1912. Grimur Eyford, as he was usually called in the west, was hired as the city’s city planner and worked until he was offered a similar job in Winnipeg in 1928. Further enumeration of Icelandic residents in Prince Albert is forthcoming.