Memorable Manitobans: John Evinn Ingebrigtson (1919-1998)

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John Evinn Ingebrigtson
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Businessman, MLA (1959-1962).

Born at Eluabbaken, Norway on 20 October 1919, his family emigrated to Canada in 1927 and settled in Saskatchewan, moving to The Pas the next year. From 1933 to 1935, he worked on the Hudson’s Bay Company supply ship, Fort Severn. In the latter year, the Ingebrigtson family moved to Churchill where John became a hunter and trapper, attended school, and enrolled for a Radio Correspondence Course. Between 1940 and 1945, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, in the English, Egyptian, Indian, and New Zealand theatres of war and specializing in radar installations. In 1942, he met and married his wife Lorraine Helen Murtagh in New Zealand where their first son Peter was born. At the end of the war, he returned to Canada and worked for the National Research Board in Ottawa.

In 1948, he had a two-year posting to Churchill, afterwards starting a business which he carried on to the end of his life, and was active in promoting Northern tourism. He was elected to the Manitoba Legislature for the Churchill constituency in 1959, serving a single term, during which time he helped to improve education and public health, and was instrumental in having condemned several existing school buildings that were in bad condition, especially along the Hudson Bay Rail line. He pioneered development of the Frontier School at Cranberry Portage, and helped to arrange the first meeting of Aboriginal Chiefs in Manitoba, which took place in Thompson.

He died on 27 November 1998 and was buried in the Churchill Community Cemetery.

Sources:

Members of the Legislative Assembly (deceased), Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.

John Evinn Ingebrigtson, Biographical Vertical File, Legislative Library of Manitoba.

Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.

This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 17 November 2023

Memorable Manitobans

Memorable Manitobans

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