Chair of the Marketing, PR, and Fundraising Committee

The Lögberg-Heimskringla was a regular “read” in the Borgford household where Karen grew up in the Icelandic immigrant area of Winnipeg’s West End. Through both her paternal and maternal grandparents who emigrated to Canada passed down many Icelandic traditions.

After attending the Snorri Plus program in 2007, Karen pledged to support the Icelandic heritage and culture within her community, becoming and remaining an active member of the Icelandic Canadian Fron and the Jon Sigurdsson Chapter IODE boards, serving as President on both. As a long-time subscriber to the L-H she has been a sometime contributor. She sits on the Iceland Canada Foundation Board as the representative for INLNA. In 2016, Karen was honoured to have been chosen as Fjallkona for the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba.

Throughout her career and in retirement, Karen has been an educator having worked as a teacher, principal, and school board administrator and consultant. She has served on several boards including the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation and the Public Utilities Board, both as vice-chair.

Karen loves art, travel, casual golf, and her time at Arnes on Lake Winnipeg. Karen and her husband, Dwight are the proud parents of two daughters, a son-in-law and two grandchildren.

Blair joined the LH Board in December 2021. She traces her Icelandic roots through her mother, Heather (Amundson) Lockhart of Selkirk, Manitoba. Blair participated in Snorri Plus in 2014, which ignited her passion for Iceland. She loves harðfiskur, knitting and vínarterta! Blair is a lawyer, although she started out her career as a geologist and loves rocks - another reason to love Iceland! As a lawyer, she has worked as a prosecutor, as well as legal counsel for mineral exploration companies and HSBC Bank. She is now a Commissioner for the British Columbia Utilities Commission. She and her husband Tony live in BC and have two children. 



Blair formerly served as president of CISV Canada, a volunteer children’s peace education organization that champions building global friendships. Blair coordinated the Vancouver portion of the 2019 Snorri West program and came on board as Snorri West Co-Director in 2020. She cycles to work, keeps a vegetable garden, reads a lot, and walks 10,000 steps every day.

Ian, a proud Vestur Islendingur married to Marie, a proud Dene and our two sons with three grandchildren who are like the volcanos of Iceland, erupting here and there as they navigate the Grade one era. Still doing pharmacy work and adjusting to the city after all our time in Northern Manitoba.

Very proud to be on the board of LH as I remember my Icelandic relatives carefully scanning each issue and beaming when their area was mentioned.

Going forward we much cherish our Icelandic roots and one sure way is to keep up the literary tradition that LH provides.

Shawn Bjornsson is married to Sherry and together they have two adult children, Svein Kjartan and Xander Lárus.
Shawn has been a self-employed financial advisor since 1990 and is currently a partner in Four Points Financial Solutions. He loves his job and has so many excellent clients he’s assisted for many years. 
As a proud Canadian, Shawn is also very proud of his 100% Icelandic ancestry. Currently he is a past president and member of Gimli Icelandic Canadian Society as well as a member of Icelandic Canadian Fron.
Shawn sits on a few other boards and is presently president of the Palliative Manitoba Board. For over 10 years he has served on the board of the L-H with most of those years as the chairperson of the annual golf tournament, The Icelandic Open, one of the main fundraisers for the paper. 
His biggest passions are family, sports, work, and helping others. He was very involved with his son's sports and coached them for years until they graduated high school. Then at age 53, Shawn took up running to stay active. He does all his running outside and has done many races and a few marathons, including Boston and Reykjavik. In the running community he's called Viking.   

Jon Sigurdson is a retired lawyer and Supreme Court of BC Judge.  His parents are Icelandic. Norma Benson born in Selkirk and Harold Sigurdson born in Riverton.  He currently teaches at Allard Law School and in the New Federally Appointed Judges program.  He was formerly the President of the UBC Law Alumni Association.  He works as a contributing Editor to the Advocate, the magazine for the legal profession in BC.  

His father Harold SIgurdson was the former Honorary Consul to Iceland for British Columbia.  His daughter Krista was a member of the Snorri Program and visited Iceland with her cousins.  His Amma Benson worked for many years for Columbia Press which printed Logberg.  

Jon is married to Lynn Smith KC OC and has  2 daughters and 4 grandchildren.   He plays golf regularly but poorly and enjoys writing and recording country/folk music, having released 2 albums on line, Songs of Jon SIgurdson and Afi Country: Songs of Jon Sigurdson Vol 2

Coming from Gimli, Owen has a deep connection to New Iceland that was a rich part of his upbringing. His mother Julianna runs the New Iceland Heritage Museum, so his connection continues to grow stronger, as does his grasp of the Icelandic language. As a participant in the 2022 Snorri Program, Owen became inspired to share so many amazing aspects of Icelandic history and culture.

In the spring of 2023, Owen graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Supply Chain Management and Marketing.  He now works full time for Richardson International in Winnipeg, MB. He spends his weekends out in Gimli.

Paul Stefansson joined the Lögberg-Heimskringla Board in June 2025, bringing with him a lifelong connection to his Icelandic heritage. Born in Winnipeg to Baldur and Sigridur Stefansson, Paul traces his roots to Iceland through generations of family tradition. A visit to Iceland in 1976 and four months living and working there in 1984 sparked a deep, lasting connection to the country’s culture, language, and values. He remains a devoted enthusiast of Viking history, harðfiskur, and vínarterta, and is passionate about preserving the legacy of Icelandic-Canadian identity.
Professionally, Paul is an investor, board member, business coach, and partner in Lightwell Homes, a Vancouver-based property development firm. He also serves on the Equity Advisory Committee at Westbridge Capital. With over 30 years of experience across actuarial science, equity research, portfolio management, and wealth advisory, Paul has built a reputation for thoughtful, disciplined leadership.
He served as Global Head of Investment Funds at UBS in Singapore and joined the firm in 2006 through its Products and Services Consulting group. From 2001 to 2006, Paul was CEO of ipac financial planning, a subsidiary of AXA. Prior to that, he was a shareholder and equity analyst at Assante Capital Management and began his career as an actuary with Great-West Life and North American Life in Winnipeg.
Paul holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Manitoba and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). He previously held designations as a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA), Certified Financial Planner (CFP), and was a Fellow of both the Society of Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries. His insights have been featured on Channel News Asia, CNBC, The Straits Times, and Business Times.
Outside of work, Paul enjoys reading especially historical fiction, cycling, the gym, traveling, and hiking.

Three of Sharron Arksey’s four grandparents were of Icelandic descent. While her maternal grandparents settled along the east shores of Lake Manitoba in the Narrows/Siglunes area, her paternal Amma’s family took a more circuitous route. The family settled first in Mountain, North Dakota (where Sharron’s Amma was born in 1891), before moving to what would eventually become Saskatchewan and then eventually to Manitoba near Langruth along the west shore of Lake Manitoba. Although Sharron’s Dad did not speak Icelandic, her mother and both grandmothers did and hearing the language every day basis was part of her childhood experience.
A graduate of the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto (now known as Toronto Metropolitan University), Sharron has spent much of her life writing for various community publications. Her weekly column “Rural Routes” appeared in local community newspapers for 25 years. In 2000, she published a compilation of those columns. Prior to her marriage, she worked for Logberg-Heimskringla, and her articles continue to appear in its pages. She also wrote for Icelandic Canadian/Connection and joined the board of that organization in 2020. When the difficult decision was made in 2023 to discontinue publication of the magazine in its current form, Sharron served as guest editor for the final issue. In addition to non-fiction, she has published fiction and poetry in literary magazines. Her debut novel “The Waiting Place” was published by Turnstone Press of Winnipeg in 2016 and was a finalist in two categories – first book and woman writer – for the 2017 High Plains Book Awards. In 2020 she joined Icelandic Roots and in 2021 she assumed leadership of that organization’s writing group. For the past three years, she has offered a six-week memoir/life writing course for members of Icelandic Roots and she hosts a monthly open mic session for IR members wishing to share their work.
Along with serving on the boards of various community organizations, Sharron has been a board member of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild, Prairie Fire Magazine, and the Margaret Laurence Home committee in Neepawa.
After 40 years on the family cattle farm at Langruth, MB, Sharron and her husband Kerry retired to Winnipeg in 2018 to be closer to other family members. She is excited to join the Logberg-Heimskringla board and will do her best to promote the publication and to assist in its continuation.