Curious and fearless

Multi-talented mother embraced all opportunities

By: Jim Timlick

Irene Bergthorson was never afraid to try something different.

The multi-talented mother of four had an insatiable curiosity and wouldn’t hesitate when an opportunity to take on a new role or experience presented itself.

Nowhere was that more evident than in her work life. Over the years, she worked as a music and guitar teacher, a daycare assistant, a clubhouse manager at a golf course, ran a home-based hair-styling business, served as an emergency medical technician for a local ambulance service and even worked as a riveter on Second World War-era planes.

That same fearlessness also inspired Bergthorson to embrace new learning opportunities, whether it was taking an upholstery course or enrolling in an art class.

“She wasn’t scared to try anything,” recalls her daughter Trina Bjornsson, the youngest of her four children. “She would be like ‘I want to do that’ and off she’d go and do it.”

Bergthorson was born Aug. 22, 1925, to parents Donald and Polly Malcolm, who owned a farm just outside the town of Lundar in Manitoba’s Interlake region. She was the fourth eldest of 12 children in the family, which also included siblings Judith, Robert, Howard, Don, Vick, Isabel, Eva, Rose, Trudy, Val and Cora.

Bjornsson says the fact her mom was part of such a big family had a profound impact on her, especially during her formative years. The siblings served as something of a mutual support network for each other and rarely called on help beyond their tight-knit family grouping.

“She was really close with her siblings. They didn’t need outside people. They had each other. They relied on each other. They were like a clan,” she says.

“It’s so wonderful to have a sibling that you love and they love you back. But to have a whole bunch of them? I think that just boosted their confidence. They supported each other.”

Bergthorson was married twice. Her two eldest children, Judy and Max, were from her first marriage while the two youngest, Trina and Mike, were the product of her second marriage to Mickey Bergthorson, whom she married in 1953.

Bergthorson’s own upbringing had a big influence on the kind of mother she would become. All four of her children were treated as equals and the term “step-sibling” was never a part of the family vocabulary.

“She was a great example for persevering and believing in yourself,” says Bjornsson.

“She was a really good mom. She was so loving and so nurturing. It was her love and her strength that helped us to succeed in life. We maybe didn’t have the best life at times, but we all did well and mom played a big part in that.”

While Bergthorson took on a variety of different roles over the years, one of the constants in her life was her connection to the community of Lundar.

She spent most of her adult life there and lived in the same house she and Mickey bought for more than 65 years until moving into Rosewood Lodge in Stonewall in 2023 at the age of 97.

“It was home to her,” Bjornsson says of the bond her mom had with the community.

“She could talk to anybody and welcomed everybody. She would just jump in and join groups. She was a doer. She didn’t sit back and wait for people to take action. She would get on the phone and phone people and say, hey, we need you here or we need you at this. She was very good at organizing and getting people involved.”

One of Bergthorson’s most enduring contributions to the town was her more than 50 years of helping co-ordinate the Lundar Lutheran Church choir. In addition to singing in the group, she organized performances for special occasions, such as weddings and funerals, and took care of the gowns choir members wore.

Bergthorson’s love of music dated back to her youth. Her mom was always singing in the family’s home and Bergthorson would often join in on harmony while helping her mom in the kitchen. By the age of 13, she had learned to play guitar and would often perform at barn dances in a band with some of her siblings and their father.

“Music was the thing they all shared. All 12 of them played an instrument or multiple instruments,” Bjornsson says.

It was through her involvement in the choir that Joy Guttormson first got to know Bergthorson in the late 1950s and later became friends with her.

Guttormson says what she remembers best about her friend was her warm, easy-going personality and how she befriended people wherever she went.

“If you looked at a picture of her… she just looked like she could be a friend to anybody. That was just her personality. There are just some people that you automatically like,” says Guttormson, who moved to Winnipeg with her husband two years ago.

“She had this big smile and you could always stop and have a chat with her if you happened to be walking uptown. We miss a lot of things about that small town and she’s definitely one of them.”

Another big part of Bergthorson’s lasting legacy is the Lundar Golf and Country Club, a nine-hole course located near highways 6 and 419.

She and Mickey were part of a group about a dozen people who formed a co-op in the early 1960s and approached Lundar’s then-reeve about leasing town-owned land to build a golf course.

Mickey, a heavy equipment operator, helped terraform the land that would become the course’s greens and tee boxes while Irene served for many years as its president and clubhouse manager. Their contributions to the course have been acknowledged with a tournament named in their honour.

Bergthorson died on Dec. 30, 2024, at the age of 99 after having battling several health-related issues for the previous few years. As for the secret to her longevity, she often credited a combination of good genes and daily walks for her resilience.

“I must have walked 60,000 miles so far in my lifetime — two miles a day (rain or shine), everyday,” she told an interviewer in 2018 as part of the Coldwell/Lundar Community Foundation as part of its Your Legacy, Our Future initiative.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca