In celebrating this important date, count me among the descendants of pioneer families who came to the N.W.T. before Alberta became a province in 1905. My name is Margaret Thora Rasmussen (nee Sveinson) and I was raised in Markerville where the first Icelanders arrived in 1888.
My grandparents were all born in Iceland but came to Canada late in the seventeenth century, arriving in Winnipeg before choosing further destinations. Many moved to Manitoba and some to North Dakota where they farmed for several years, before moving on to what would be their home in Alberta. When the first group arrived in Calgary, they hired Métis guides to lead them to Innisfail, then known as Poplar Grove, and on west to the banks of the Red Deer River, swollen in the June floods. Here they camped for three weeks before being able to cross the raging waters on a raft they had built from the tall spruce trees which grew on the banks of the river.
My maternal grandparents, Bjorn and Margaret Bjornson, just married, spent their first winter in Calgary to earn some money before going on to their homestead in 1990. Bjorn and Margret had ten children in quick order, but only two boys and five girls lived beyond early childhood. Their first home was a sod shack in which my mother Disa Bjornson was born in 1894, the third child. The first had been stillborn. Second was a girl, Anna. In the tenth birth after just ten years of marriage their mother died as well as the two youngest girls.
My mother, Disa was married in 1922 to my father Thomas Sveinson. His parents and their family had arrived in Markerville in 1903 after immigrating to Churchbridge, Saskatchewan in about 1890.There Thomas was born in 1893 followed by four brothers. A daughter was born in Markerville in 1904.
By this time the district that had been known as Tindastoll Post Office, finally received the name Markerville in honour of Dr. C.P. Marker, Dairy Commissioner for the North West Territories. He had been very helpful to the many immigrants in establishing a co-operative creamery for the district.
Thomas and Disa settled on their small farm and had a family of five; Cecil in 1922, Margaret in 1924, Agnes in 1925 and twin boys in 1929.We were a happy family. Sadly, our father died in 1931 leaving our mother to cope with farming during the years of the great depression. But she managed to bring us up and we all succeeded in life.
She and the twin boys moved to Innisfail in 1951 where she stayed until she died in 1971. My siblings and I all married, moved on and had families of our own. I married Hertel Rasmussen in 1947 and moved to the Drumheller area. Hertel and I had three sons and one girl. My siblings and my families produced seventeen grandchildren for Thomas and Disa. My siblings have all died. Hertel died in 1998. I am living comfortably in the Drumheller home that we bought upon retiring from many years of farming. One son and three grandchildren live nearby while one son lives in Lethbridge and one son and our daughter are in Calgary. We see each other quite often and on many special occasions.
The people in Markerville prospered as the village grew. It was a good place to live. Now it has become a tourist attraction with the restored creamery, the restored home of the Icelandic poet Stephan G. Stephanson and the ongoing restoration of the old Fensala Hall.
Markerville celebrated its own Centennial in 1988 at which time a memorial to the pioneers was erected in the form of a much enlarged cream can containing sprigs of wheat with a brass plaque which said it all: "They did so much with so little".
The Creamery with its attractive grounds is the gathering place for many. It is where my relatives and I gather for picnics annually to keep in touch with each other and with our roots. Our family members feel proud and privileged to be descendants of those who so bravely helped to pave the way for good living in a good community in the fine province of Alberta in the best country in the world.
