Magnus Eliason

Who was Magnus Eliason?

Magnus Eliason was a founding member of the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation. From 1969 to 1989, he was a Winnipeg City Councillor.

He was born in Arnes, Manitoba, the son of Icelandic immigrants.

He published his autobiography in 1997, Magnus Eliason: a Life on the Left. Magnus, like his elder brother Helgi, was born an albino, and so had only ten percent normal vision due to the lack of pigment and poor development of his retina; this is the definition of clinical blindness in Canada. Magnus's parents refused to send him and Helgi to the CNIB where he would have been "taught to be blind", as Magnus saw it. Even in his advanced years, Magnus never used a white cane, and his skill in navigating the physical world was so adept that no one would have suspected his visual impairment. Early in his life, in his twenties, Magnus made a sobre and objective evaluation of the things he could do, and the things he could not, and then simply focused on those things he could do, forgetting about the rest. Nevertheless, this did not stop Magnus from riding the rails in the hungry thirties or from sawing shingles.