Be Still the Water

by Karen Emilson

I always knew that someday I would write about Lake Manitoba and the immigrants who settled there. One day we had a visitor from B.C. who grew up in the area. She asked if we’d take her to visit an old grave site. Her mother lost four younger siblings during the Diphtheria outbreak in 1905 and had spoke often of the heartbreak. Standing out on the natural prairie looking at the stone memorial erected under an oak, facing the water and seeing those four young names, stirred something in me. I started visiting old grave yards after that, wondering about the immigrants who were buried there.

  I sat down and wrote a 5,000 word outline but set it aside to finish the sequel to my first book. I’d also been working on my first fiction attempt, an epic tale that quite frankly, I was ill equipped to write. I must have written a million words, then finally set it aside. I wrote a non-fiction book about the Canadian cattle industry and when I was done that, started another novel, this one set in rural Saskatchewan, inspired during the time I spent at the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend.

  By 2011, I was no longer living at Siglunes but I witnessed the devastation of the flood via my computer. Seeing that beautiful land completely submerged, neighbors, loved ones and friends fighting to save their homes and scrambling to relocate their cattle was heart-wrenching. On June 11th I finished reading a friend’s Facebook post and instead of going back to the third draft of my Saskatchewan story, I opened the outline from 2001 and started writing.

  We understand the story is based loosely on real events. Can you tell us which events in the book actually occurred and what is fiction?

  In the initial draft I tried to honour the actual dates of events, but then the question arose: how close to the truth do I keep? I did not want to cause confusion and appear to be re-writing history, so I scrapped the original and started over, adhering only to major historical dates.

  I wanted to give a broader audience to some of the hardships experienced by those early settlers, so I worked in the story of a young man who shot off his arm and was saved quite heroically, only to drown later; and how two of the mill owner’s sons drowned.

  I changed the date of the Diphtheria outbreak and the first high water event to suit the time line of my story (the real events were in 1905 and 1902 respectively).

  The Siglunes School was built in 1907, but the Post Office was already there in 1900. The mill which employed many new settlers burned in 1912. The ‘Castle on the Lake’ did exist—I was in it a few times during the 1980s—but I can’t remember what details are correct and which are products of my imagination. The magnificent home, owned by Jim and Lucille Freeman, burned in November 1991.

  The Siglunes ball team was formed in 1913 but didn’t play competitively until 1916. The team continued to be a force well into the 1990s and was inducted into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.

  Siglunes is a real community and men from there did participate in the formation of the municipality that now bears its name.

  The exact meaning of ‘Siglunes’ eludes me, though. I’ve seen a few translations in print, settling on the interpretation written on the Manitoba Historical Society website. Ghost Island does exist but I was never able to pinpoint its location on the map. The island you can see from shore at the former mill site is named Ducharme.

  The Lake Manitoba Narrows had a store owned by Helgi Einarsson, who moved to Fairford in 1911. I apologize to his descendants for portraying Helgi in such a hard-nosed way. I am sure the real Helgi was a far more understanding man.

  Other historical figures, Margrét Benedictsson and Tómas Jónsson I kept true as possible. Lundi is the fictional town of Eriksdale and Lundar combined. Eriksdale has a hospital and care home while Lundar hosts a lovely agricultural Fair every June.

  As for the characters, they are all fictional. The only characters who closely resemble real people would be Dr. Steen and J.K. Kristjansson. I needed to create an optimistic, successful, community leader. In the late 1800s, there was such a man who settled along the Siglunes bay and his name was Jónas Kristján Jónasson. I never met the real J.K., but people spoke very highly of him. Some may see a resemblance but the dramas that unfold in my character’s lives are products of my imagination.

  What part of writing this novel did you find most challenging?

  Deciding on the character names, and whether or not to include the accents and Icelandic letters. I will start with the names.

  Since I knew I’d be writing for a largely non-Icelandic audience, I wanted to choose names that were fairly easy to read, and ones that people may have heard before. Shortening ‘Astfridur’ and ‘Asmundur’ was easy. Using the initials ‘J.K.,’ gave his character a bit of distinction from the others. With a cast of so many, I chose to not name them all, including Bensi’s wife. And Einar was not given a surname.

  In Icelandic communities, there are/were numerous people with the same first name, surname or both. Be Still the Water is not authentic in the sense that only a few names are repeated. Also, I did the unthinkable—there is only one Jon in the story.

  The fact that all Icelandic couples when they immigrated did not have the same surname posed a bit of a problem as the way Icelanders name their children is not easily explained in a novel (see the explanation at the beginning of the book). I decided to refer to the families by the husband’s last name.

  To complicate matters, Pjetur’s surname would have been Solmundsson, since Soli was his father. I wanted to keep the relationship between Pjetur and Bensi a secret, so sharing the same last name would have sent up a red flag. I decided to have Freda—the independent woman that she was—change Pjetur’s name to Gudmundsson to hide the fact Soli was his father. Not too far a stretch since Amma did pretty much whatever she wanted.

  The accents and a Icelandic characters posed a challenge since most names had them. I worried that adding the accents to my character names would make the text too heavy, especially during dialogue—so I adopted the 1980s spelling to the whole story.

  Written correspondence had to be considered since letters to and from Asta would have been in Icelandic. I decided to add the accents and characters to names in the letters for that reason.

  What is next? You mention that you’ve shelved a few manuscripts, is there any chance you’ll be working on one of those for publication soon?

  Part of the reason it took five years to write this book is that all the while I’ve been outlining ideas for future novels. I won’t promise what is coming out next—because that would be tempting fate—but I will say it won’t take me long to publish again. I’m also in discussions with someone about writing another true story—something I thought I’d never do.

  I have the first draft of another novel finished. It is set in 1980, in Lundi so you’ll be seeing a few of these characters again. In the final chapter Asta says she knows how to find Freyja’s first born child. Well, unbeknownst to her, she had already set the wheels in motion months earlier.

  I’ve concluded that I like writing a two-book series. So that’s what you can expect from my fiction in the future.

  Essay by Scott Forbes

  “Trees do not grow on wet land,” Asi Frimann said: “Find yourself a hundred-year-old oak to build beside and you will never be flooded out.”

  These are wise words for Lake Manitobans. Floods on this lake define the landscape.

  The berm that rings Lake Manitoba today is the residue of a flood that occurred seven decades ago. High waters pushed sand and gravel to the lake margins, creating a new shoreline. Between 1954 and 1957 the lake rose more than four feet above its average level, flooding, farms, pastures, ranches and homes along the lake, and killing the riparian forest.

  Natural floods on Lake Manitoba are slow moving events, resulting from a series of wet years that cause the lake directly upstream—Lake Winnipegosis—to rise. Lake Winnipegosis feeds the Waterhen River that in turn feeds Lake Manitoba. The Waterhen is the primary natural i
nflow for Lake Manitoba.

  The flood of the 1950s was due to high Waterhen flows. By June of 1855, the lake had reached over 816 feet, its highest level since 1882. It was a level that would not be seen again until 2011.

  In 1882 something quite extraordinary happened. A connection that had not existed for 3,000 years was re-established.

  Manitoba’s great lakes, including Lake Manitoba, are remnants of glacial Lake Agassiz. When the glaciers retreated the Assiniboine River flowed directly into Lake Manitoba. That changed about 3,000 years ago when the Assiniboine channel shifted, draining eastward toward its confluence with the Red River.

  In the flood of 1882 the Assiniboine overflowed its banks. Floodwaters made their way north through the old channels of the Assiniboine to Lake Manitoba causing the. Lake to rise to 818 feet above sea level, about six feet above normal and its highest ever recorded level.

  In 1922 and 1923, the Assiniboine overflowed again and flood water again made its way to Lake Manitoba. But by 1936 this path was closed. Human constructed dikes prevented Assiniboine floodwaters from reaching Lake Manitoba. This was not the first human alteration to natural water flows to and from Lake Manitoba nor was it the last.

  Upstream drainage of wetlands by farmers in the upper Assiniboine basin had begun. Natural wetlands hold back snowmelt and reduce the rate of run-off. Without the natural wetlands, water leaves the landscape quicker and downstream flooding becomes more likely.

  In the aftermath of the great Winnipeg flood of 1950, engineers and hydrologists began planning a system of flood protection for the city. From a flood management perspective the location of Winnipeg, at the confluence of two large rivers, is unfortunate. It sits on not one floodplain but two.

  Two elements of Winnipeg’s flood protection system are attached to Lake Manitoba. Following the flood on Lake Manitoba in the 1950’s, the Fairford Water Control structure was built. It deepened the outlet to Lake Manitoba and allowed for more outflow. It was built as part of a larger plan that included the construction of a channel at Portage la Prairie. What is now known as the Portage Diversion re-establishes the connection between the Assiniboine River and Lake Manitoba. During Assiniboine floods, some or all of its flow can be diverted north to Lake Manitoba. This protects Winnipeg and others living on the Assiniboine floodplain.

  Hydrologists at the time calculated that the expanded Fairford Water Control Structure could handle the extra inflow from the Portage Diversion on Lake Manitoba. But solving one problem often creates another somewhere else. Such is the case with the Portage Diversion.

  The engineers of the 1950s and 1960s did not foresee the long-term changes in hydrology that were to come. The Portage Diversion opened in 1970 and for the next two decades, worked as planned. It opened infrequently, only when Assiniboine River flows were high. This was a relatively dry period and the extra inflow to Lake Manitoba had little effect on its levels. The extra water was drained through the expanded Fairford Water Control Structure.

  But in the early 1990s all that began to change.

  Spring flows on the Assiniboine began rising, in part due to long-term climate changes. It was also in part due to upstream drainage of wetlands, causing more rapid rises in river levels and higher peak flows.

  Since the early 1990s the Portage Diversion has opened in most years, for longer periods, and at higher flows. The wet cycle that started in the 1990s affected not just the Assiniboine but the Waterhen River as well. Beginning in 2006, flow on the Waterhen River rose to above average levels and remained above average for the next decade. This raised the level of Lake Manitoba.

  By the fall of 2010, Lake Manitoba had reached its highest level since the Fairford Water Control Structure opened in 1961. And events upstream in the Assiniboine basin were about to take a bad turn. Heavy fall rain left rivers, lakes and reservoirs overflowing, and soil moisture high. Heavy winter snowfall made matters worse.

  The stage was now set.

  The coup de grace came in the form of heavy spring rains in southern Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan. Flows on the Assiniboine and Waterhen Rivers reached record levels. Assiniboine flows were ten times normal and the Portage Diversion opened in early April to protect people on the floodplain downstream. At that point the lake level of Lake Manitoba rose dramatically.

  What took nearly three years in the 1950s, a rise in lake level of about 4.5 feet, took just three months in 2011. That couldn’t have happened without the artificial inflow from the Portage Diversion.

  On the 31st of May 2011 a party at The Forks in Winnipeg celebrated the return of the Winnipeg Jets to the city. At exactly the same time, 100 km to the northwest, people on Lake Manitoba were running for their lives.

  The lake was already well above flood level when strong winds -- averaging more than 70 kph—made matters much, much worse. The lake rose five feet along its eastern shore in just a few hours, blocking exit routes for some who had not yet escaped. Quick action by municipal officials completed the evacuation of those stranded. People were rescued by boat, helicopter, and in one case, carried out in the bucket of a front-end loader over the surging floodwaters.

  Remarkably, no one perished during this inland tsunami.

  No one was really prepared for these events. Flood defenses consisted of sandbag dikes that work for river floods. But on Lake Manitoba these melted away in the driving wind and rising waters.

  When people re-entered the flood zone two weeks later, they were greeted with damage unprecedented in Manitoba’s history. It looked as though a tornado had travelled along the lakeshore destroying everything in its path. Homes and cottages were flattened; the land underneath was scraped clean; seawalls collapsed into the lake. Giant cottonwoods had toppled into the water.

  It was the most expensive flood disaster in Manitoba’s history. As bad as it was on Lake Manitoba, it was as bad or worse downstream on Lake St. Martin. Lake St. Martin is fed by the Fairford River which has risen during the flood on Lake Manitoba. Whole communities were evacuated in May 2011. The Lake St. Martin First Nation, nearly 2000 people, has yet to return home in the summer of 2016.

  For the First Nations on Lake St. Martin and downstream on the Dauphin River, their troubles began not in 2011 but in 1961 with the opening of the Fairford Water Control Structure. Flooding became much more common and the problem grew worse after the Portage Diversion opened in 1970.

  Engineers have now drawn plans for new outlets from Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin to prevent future floods. The cost is steep with a price tag of a half billion dollars. The First Nations who were not consulted when the Fairford Water Control Structure and Portage Diversion were built are wary of new channels that will run through the heart of their traditional lands.

  If built and operated correctly, the proposed flood control structures could avert future flooding on both Lake St. Martin and Lake Manitoba. But they would also create new problems, disrupting fish, wildlife and lands important to local people.

  What is the long-term solution? There is no simple answer. The landscape has been forever altered by human activity. In the short term new water control structures will help. In the longer term, restoration of wetlands upstream holds the most promise, reducing Assiniboine River floods and the need to open the Portage Diversion.

  The wild card is our changing climate. Forecasts for the middle of the 21st century are for increased spring run-off in the Assiniboine basin, increasing the risk of flooding. If this comes to pass, we may need to change the rule of thumb for choosing where to build on Lake Manitoba.

  Find a 300 year old oak and build beside that.

  Scott Forbes is an ecologist and Professor of Biology at the University of Winnipeg where he has been since 1992. He has owned property on Lake Manitoba since 2000.

  Reading Group Guide

  1.In the opening chapter Stefan saves Freyja’s life but he was forced to push her away to do so.
How does this foreshadowing play out later in the book?

  2.Finn said in the first chapter that he didn’t believe in legends and yet near the end he pulled an eagle feather from his pocket. What do you suppose influenced his decision to take the feather with him to Winnipeg?

  3.Early on Asta says: “If it wasn’t for boys, girls would seldom get themselves into trouble.” How true is this statement in the story?

  4. Amma and Bergthora were strong, independent women. How did each influence Asta’s life?

  5.Do you think that Pjetur, Leifur and Asta believed that Bensi was responsible for Freyja’s disappearance or do you think that in their grief he simply became a target? How many of you hoped, like Signy, that Freyja ran away?

  6.Bensi’s early actions toward Pjetur resulted in eventual ruin for him. Which decision sealed his fate with the family?

  7. Who did you think Asta would marry—Bjorn or Finn? Or do you believe Asta was destined to never marry and devote her life to her profession?

  8.Be Still the Water is a story about promises kept and broken. Who kept their promises and who didn’t? Were these conscious decisions or were most of the disappointments in the novel a result of fate?

  9. Bjorn, Leifur and Finn made choices that ultimately ended in death. Each man believed he was being punished. How do you as a reader feel about each of them?

  10.Setta was an important character in the story. What parallels did you draw between her life and Asta’s?

  11. Before his death, Magnus reflects on his life along the lake. How did his experiences relate to the book’s title?

  12. What are your thoughts on Signy’s reaction toward Freyja when she came home for that brief visit. She said to Leifur: “If Freyja wanted us to know her whereabouts, she could have easily told us. Or written.” Should she be blamed for Asta’s accident?

  13. Thinking back on Amma’s premonitions, how many came true?