Sigfusson’s Roads: IR Book Club for June 2026
- Heather Goodman Lytwyn
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Heather Goodman Lytwyn
Join Icelandic Roots Book Club on Thursday June 4 at 7 pm CDT by Zoom. We are featuring Sigfusson’s Roads by Svein Sigfusson, with co-hosts Heather Lytwyn and Alfreda Duffy. Their guest for the evening is the author’s nephew, Brian Sigfusson. More details are available on the IR Event Calendar.
Sigfusson’s Roads is an inspiring story demonstrating the outstanding fortitude and skills of a group of men led by courage and determination. The more challenging the difficulties they faced, the more resilient they became.
Sigfusson Transportation Company built the most extensive network of winter roads in North America by 1973. These roads were built of snow and ice and had to be rebuilt every fall. They began in the northern bush country in Saskatchewan, then moved into Manitoba and finally Ontario. They employed a combination of tractor and truck routes to open up and connect isolated northern communities. These areas had formerly relied only on the sporadic arrival of cargo planes for supplies and medical help.
Their company created employment for thousands of men between the 1940s and the 1970s. They not only built winter roads, but supported the fishing industry by building and supplying fishing camps and stations at strategic locations. Their success came from their reliable guarantee of transportation of tons of fish from the north to southern Canada and the US before the spring thaw.
Anyone reading Svein’s book will be continually amazed at the creativity and inventive solutions that developed out of crisis and self-reliance. One of their challenges was thin ice caused by too much snow falling early in the season; it was insulated from the cold. One solution was the creation of an amphibious machine that mashed muskeg. They called it the Trailblazer. It traversed over deep snow, packing it down, allowing the ice to form. “The theory was that snow was one part ice crystals and seven parts air, and the drags effectively scoured out the air, and left hard ice.” (Sigfusson, p 175)
One year they had a late start and the snow was deeper than usual. Even the Trailblazer became mired down in mud and snow. This forced them to use bombardiers that would never have worked if they had not refitted them with oversized skis, two feet wide, allowing them to ride over and pack the snow down so they could proceed.
There are many examples of their inventive solutions to potential calamities, but the one that stands out the most for me is when a tractor hit a tree stump and broke the crankcase into smithereens. The only solution was to pick out hundreds of shards and fragments of the oil pump and put them back together, invent an oil screen from the cook’s flour sifter, fashion an oil pan from an oil drum, and repair it over days and nights when it was -8 degrees Fahrenheit (or -13 degrees Celsius).
This is just one of the examples of survival and self- reliance that was essential before they bought planes and could bring in parts that they needed.
There were also the days when a tractor did sink on the crumbling ice. This happened more than 100 times in the 30 years in the bush. All but three men were saved, but likely no one ever forgot it could happen again.
In the early years they worked without two-way radios, and learned to be wary not just for themselves but for their coworkers. They researched by foot and by plane mapping out the safest routes over 3000 miles.
It is an amazing story and we hope you are able to join us on Thursday, June 4th to hear more from Brian Sigfusson, nephew of Svein Sigfusson, author of Sigfusson's Roads.
The Samtal link will be sent to members on Wednesday, 3 June via the Samkoma newsletter. Be sure to check your email!
