Immigrants from Iceland to start arriving in Manitoba in late summer or fall

The latest article on the cooperation between the government of Manitoba and Iceland to bring Icelanders over to Manitoba to work now gives an indication of when they will begin to arrive

“If things go as planned we might see these people arriving in late summer or fall.”

At the moment people from the Manitoban government are in Iceland to establish a joint labour agreement to make it easier for those hiring in Manitoba to find the right employees in Iceland. There appears to be a huge amount of interest as well:

The Canadian Embassy hosted a half day information seminar on March 13 for skilled workers, who are interested in working in Manitoba.

“At the information session we were initially expecting to have about one to two hundred people, but it turned out that five-hundred people attended,” said Karen Sharma, Manitoba’s acting director of strategic labour market initiatives. “The session was streamed live via the internet so people across Iceland could watch it. There was a lot more interest then we were anticipating.”

Hopefully the majority of the people from Iceland arrive in the summer because Manitoba is actually much colder than Iceland and I would hope they get to experience at least a little bit of the summer before the winter rolls in again. Manitoba could seem to be a pretty desolate place if the only impression they have of the province for the first six months is endless winter. My recommendation to anyone from Iceland that makes their way to Manitoba after the cold weather rolls in is to plan a visit to Victoria perhaps in November or January/February to break up the monotony.