TRANSCRIPT

[Helgi] I'm not sure of the area, I think its Eykireyri, that's what my cousin told me, it sounds like that's where they seemed to come [from]- but they were starving, there was no hope of them making a living, the economy there had collapsed, there was just nothing there for them. And the railroad said, hey come on over we got jobs for you, so they packed up and headed over and I don't think they brought a thing with them. I don't think they had anything. Yeah, I think it was 74 or 75 when that big trek came in through the railroad, and of course they landed - I don't know where they landed off the ship - but they all ended up in Kinmount.
[Joan] They came into Quebec City and then they went to Kinmount,and most of them came fair to dying, well a whole bunch of them did.
[Helgi] Oh a lot of them died, perished on the way over.
{Joan] And the Kinmount project dried up on them and there was just no sustenance anywhere, and they were all back to starving to death. It was just like being back in good old Iceland again.
[Helgi] When the Helgasons arrived, they were come to work on the railroad. It was December when they arrived here and the railroad said sorry we don't work in the wintertime, Because they expected to have a job as soon as they got here, and they had not a penny with them. They lived in cardboard boxes for that first winter and my grandad was the only youngster to survive the trip over and the first winter of that group.
[Joan] Really, no kidding
[Helgi] The only youngster. Every last one of them perished and many adults with them. So they had a pretty rough go. I don't know that any of them worked on the railroad again, I think they probably found things to do. Well they had to find something to do or they'd starve to death, so they had to take odd jobs. So I don't know whether many of them worked on the railroad the next summer or not, I have no idea. So that guy in - Gislason or something -in Ontario - I would love to get that book -
[Joan] Don Gislason [see http://icct.info/kin_index.html for more details]
[Helgi] - and read that cause he's got all that history of that group. In fact he's got the ship records and the pass...
[Interviewer] passenger list?
[Helgi] Yeah he's got all of that. No, that was a pretty devastating winter that one.

Helgason, Helgi