Matthew Lindfors

The Swedish Press was recently sold to Kajsa Norman of Ottawa, who is now the new publisher. We thought it would be fitting to remember Matthew Lindfors, who for so many years was editor and publisher of the Swedish Press.

Matthew Lindfors was born Mattias Mattiasson in 1899 in Offerdal, Jämtland. In 1922 he immigrated to Canada. He learnt English on the job and went to UBC for a year. In 1927 he started the ”Scandinavian school of English” teaching new immigrants English. Some of his students wrote testimonials that has been preserved in the Lindfors archives at UBC. One of them, Edvin Lidholm born in 1908 in Tomelilla, Skåne writes the following: ” Came to Canada 1927 and went to school winter 1927-28 with Lindfors. There I learnt to speak and write English well.I was very satisfied with this course.” Later Matt taught Swedish at the Vancouver school board evening classes for many years.

Matt became editor of the Swedish Press in 1933 and was connected to the paper on and off as contributor, editor,publisher and owner until his death in 1971. Gunnel Gavin, who immigrated to Vancouver in 1967, remember visiting Matt Lindfors at the Swedish Press office on Cardero Street, where she says: “Matt Lindfors was the first Swede I met in Vancouver. I remember visiting the Swedish Press office when they were printing the Press. It was chaos, the typesetter, Sture Wermee, was putting in the letters by hand on the old printing machine and when it printed some of the letters kept falling on the floor with a lot of noise!”

Matt Lindfors was a tireless promoter of everything Swedish and organized the first public Lucia in Vancouver in 1936. He was also correspondent for the CBC radio 1947-1959. He had a Swedish radio program on CJOR for many years broadcasting in the Swedish language. In the 1930’s he wrote a children’s column in the Swedish Press as “Farbror Olle” and he also founded a young people’s club called Diamanten (the Diamond), which had 600 members in 1938. Farbror Olle organized many summer camps for children at the Swedish Park in North Vancouver.

In 1956 The Swedish Canadian club in Vancouver together with a Swedish Toronto club sponsored a gymnastic troup from Sweden called “Sofiaflickorna” (the Sofia girls).Lindfors became their tour manager. He organized one night performances from Victoria right across Canada to Massey Hall in Toronto! We can also thank Matthew Lindfors for founding the Swedish Cultural Society in Vancouver in 1951.

If anyone reading this has memories of Matthew Lindfors, we would like to hear from you. Write to us at [email protected].