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“It’s not just by chance that [Icelanders] happen to be talking about Canada,” said Maurice Levi, a professor of international finance at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

“The Canadian dollar has gained 60% of value and that raises the standard of living of Canadians substantially.”

Indeed, the loonie is looking pretty sexy these days. But perhaps there is something else Icelanders have been eyeing as they contemplate their economic salvation.

And that something is Gimli. In Icelandic it means “paradise.” In Manitoba it means summer vacation. A sun-dappled community of 5,000, Gimli is perched on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, about 75 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

Before Gimli was Gimli, it was known as New Iceland, a name you won’t find in too many Canadian history textbooks, but one most Icelanders know well.

Times on the island in the north Atlantic might seem tough now. But in 1875 they were truly awful.

‘Everyone in Iceland knows about Manitoba and readily knows things about Winnipeg and the history’

The tiny nation was buffeted by volcanic eruptions, shivering through a century-long cold snap that wiped out its livestock industry — the engine of the economy — and hostage to a Danish trade monopoly.

Icelanders needed a way out and Canada needed immigrants, a convenient collision of wants that led to the creation of New Iceland.

“There was a tract of land [around Gimli] that was given to the Icelandic settlers,” said Tammy Axelsson, executive director of the New Iceland Heritage Museum in Gimli.