Read CHAPTER XXV - FORWARD STEPS of A Labrador Doctor, free online book, by Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, on ReadCentral.com.

My return to the work after serving in France was embittered by a violent attack made upon me in a St. John’s paper. It was called forth by a report of a lecture in Montreal where I had addressed the Canadian Club. The meeting was organized by Newfoundlanders at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, and the fact that a large number from the Colony were present and moved the vote of thanks at the end should have been sufficient guarantee of the bona fides of my statements. But the over-enthusiastic account of a reporter who unfortunately was not present gave my critics the chance for which they were looking. It was at a time when any criticism whatever of a country that was responding so generously to the homeland’s call for help would have been impolitic, even if true. It subsequently proved one factor, however, in obtaining the commission of inquiry from the Government, and so far was really a blessing to our work. In retrospect it is easy to see that all things work together for good, but at the time, oddly enough, even if such reports are absolutely false, they hurt more than the point of a good steel knife. Anonymous letters, on the contrary, with which form of correspondence I have a bowing acquaintance, only disturb the waste-paper basket.

The Governor, the representatives of our Council, the Honourable Robert Watson and the Honourable W.C. Job, and my many other fast friends, however, soon made it possible for me to forget the matter. If protest breeds opposition, it in turn begets apposition, and a good line of demarcation a “no man’s land” between friend and foe and gives a healthy atmosphere in so-called times of peace.

In the year 1915 a large cooperative store was established at Cape Charles near Battle Harbour, which bred such opposition amongst certain merchants that it proved instrumental also in obtaining for us the Government commission of inquiry sent down a few months later. After a thorough investigation of St. Anthony, Battle Harbour, Cape Charles, Forteau, Red Bay, and Flowers Cove, summoning every possible witness and tracing all rumours to their source, the commissioners’ findings were so favourable to the Mission that on their return to St. John’s our still undaunted detractors could only attribute it to supernatural agencies.

My colleague at Battle Harbour, Dr. John Grieve, who with his wife had already given us so many years’ work there, and whose interest in the cooperative effort at Cape Charles was responsible for its initial success, had worked out a plan for a winter hospital station in Lewis Bay, and had surveyed the necessary land grant. Through the resignation of our business manager, Mr. Sheard, and the selection of Dr. Grieve by the directors as his successor, only that part of the Lewis Bay scheme which enables us to give work in winter providing wood supplies has so far materialized.

In 1915 also, at a place called Northwest River, one hundred and thirty miles up Hamilton Inlet from Indian Harbour, a little cottage hospital and doctor’s house combined was built, called the “Emily Beaver Chamberlain Memorial Hospital.” Thus the work of Dr. and Mrs. Paddon has been converted into a continuous service, for formerly when Indian Harbour Hospital was closed in the fall, they had no place in which they could efficiently carry on their work during the winter months. Before Dr. Paddon came to the coast, Dr. and Mrs. Norman Stewart gave us several years of valuable service, spending their summers at Indian Harbour and returning for the winter to St. Anthony, according to my original plan when I first built St. Anthony Hospital.

An old friend and worker at St. Anthony, Mr. John Evans of Philadelphia, who had helped us with our deer and other problems, having married our head nurse, the first whom we had ever had from Newfoundland, found it essential to return and take up remunerative work at home.

The increasing number of patients seeking help at St. Anthony made it necessary to provide proportionately increasing facilities. As I have stated elsewhere, the sister of my splendid colleague, Dr. Little, in 1909 had raised the money for the new wing of the hospital for the accommodation of the summer accession of patients. The clinic which had now grown so tremendously, due to Dr. Little’s magnificent work, was maintaining a permanent house surgeon, Dr. Louis Fallen, who had faithfully served the Mission at different times at other stations. We had also regular dental and eye departments.

The summer of 1917 was saddened for us all by the loss to the work of my beloved and able colleague, Dr. John Mason Little, Jr., who had given ten years of most valuable labour to the people of this coast. He had married, some years before, our delightful and unselfish helper, Miss Ruth Keese, and they now had four little children growing up in St. Anthony. The education of his family and the call of other home ties made him feel that it had become essential for him to terminate his more intimate connection with the North, and he left us to take up medical work in Boston. The loss of them both was a very heavy one to the work and to us personally, and we are only thankful that we have been able to secure Dr. Little’s invaluable assistance and advice on our Board of Directors in Boston. This coast and this hospital owe him a tremendous debt which can never be repaid, for it was he who put this clinic in a position to hold up its head among the best of medical work, and offer to this far-off people the grade of skilled assistance which we should wish for our loved ones if they were ill or in trouble. For Dr. Little offered not only his very exceptional skill as a surgeon, but also the gift of his inspiring and devoted personality.

The winter of 1917-18 was extremely severe, not only in our North country, but in the United States and Canada also. I was lecturing during this winter in both these latter countries, though during the months of December and January travelling became very difficult owing to the continuous blizzards. I was held up for three days in Racine, Wisconsin, as neither trains, electric cars, or automobiles could make their way through the heavy drifts. Had I had my trusty dog team, however, I should not have missed three important lecture engagements. Life in the North has its compensations.

At Toronto I was unfortunate enough to contract bronchitis and pleurisy, and I understand from competent observers that I was an “impossible patient.” Be that as it may, so much pressure was brought to bear on me that at last I was forced to obey the doctors and leave for a month’s rest in a warmer climate.

Owing to ice and war conditions we did not arrive in St. Anthony until the first of July. In arriving late we were all spared a terrible shock. The previous day some of the boys from the Orphanage had gone fishing in the Devil’s Pond, about a mile away, and a favourite resort with them. Unfortunately that afternoon they were seized with the brilliant idea of kindling a fire with which to cook their trout. Greatly to the astonishment of the would-be cooks, the fire quickly got beyond the one desired for culinary purposes, and, panic-stricken, they rushed home to give the alarm. Every man ashore and afloat came and worked, and the obliteration of the place was saved by a providential change in the wind and wide fire-breaks cut through few and ill-to-be-spared trees. Everything had been taken from our house even furniture and linen and dragged to the wharf head, where terrified children, fleeing patients, and heaps of furnishings from the orphanage and elsewhere were all piled up. Schooners had been hauled in to carry off what was possible, and the patients in the hospital were got ready to be carried away at a moment’s notice. Only the most strenuous efforts saved the entire station. Now all our beautiful sky-line is blackened and charred. All day long the gravity of the debt was in our hearts, for if the wooden buildings had once had the clouds of fiery sparks settle upon them, the whole of those dependent upon us would have been homeless. Surely in a country like this, the incident of this fire puts an added emphasis upon our need of brick buildings. Gratitude for our safe return, for all God’s mercies to us, and joy over the outcome of the at one time apparently inevitable disaster, made our first day of the season a never-to-be-forgotten event.

Mr. W.R. Stirling, our Chicago director, who had personally visited the hospitals, insisted that a water supply must at all costs be secured both for hospital and orphanage. This was not only to avert the reproach of typhoid epidemics, two of which had previously occurred, but also to better our protection for so many helpless lives in old dry wooden buildings, and to economize the great expense of hauling water by dogs every winter, when our little surface reservoir was frozen to the bottom. This water supply has only just been finished; and now we cannot understand how we ever existed without it. But it is an unromantic object to which to give money, and the total cost, even doing the work ourselves, amounted to just upon ten thousand dollars. According to the Government engineer’s advice we had a stream to dam and a mile and a quarter of piping to lay six feet underground to prevent the water freezing. It is only in very few places that we boast six feet of soil at all on the rock that forms the frame of Mother Earth here. Hence there was much blasting to do. But the task was accomplished, and by our own boys, and has successfully weathered our bitter winter. The last lap was run by an intensely interesting experiment. The assistant at Emmanuel Church in Boston brought down a number of volunteer Boy Scouts to give their services on the commonplace task of digging the remainder of the trench necessary to complete the water supply. When they first arrived, our Northern outside man, after looking at their clothes of the Boston cut, remarked, “Hm. You’d better give that crowd some softer job than digging.” But they did the work, and a whole lot more besides. For their grit and jollity, and above all their readiness to tackle and see through such side tasks as unloading and stowing away some three hundred tons of coal were real “missionary” lessons.

The ever-growing demand for doctors as the war dragged on made it harder and harder to man our far-off stations. The draft in America was the last straw, doctors having already been forbidden to leave England or Canada. Dr. Charles Curtis had taken over Dr. Little’s work at St. Anthony, and stood nobly by, getting special permission to do so. Dr. West, who had succeeded our colleague, Dr. Mather Hare, at Harrington, when his wife’s breakdown had obliged him to leave us, had already given us a year over his scheduled time, for he had accepted work in India at the hands of those who had specially trained him for that purpose.

We had been having considerable trouble in the accommodation of the heavy batches of patients that came by the mail boat. They were left on the wharf when she steamed away, and only the floors of our treatment and waiting-rooms were available for their reception. For all could not possibly go into the wards, where children, and often very sick patients, were being cared for. The people around always stretched their hospitality to the limit, but this was a very undesirable method of housing sick persons temporarily. Owing to the generosity of a lady in New Bedford and other friends, we were enabled to meet the problem by the erection of a rest house, with first and second class accommodation. This was built in the spring of 1917, and has been a Godsend to many besides patients. It makes people free to come to St. Anthony and stay and benefit by whatever it has to offer, without the feeling that they have no place to which they can go. Moreover, this hostel has been entirely self-supporting from the day that it opened, and every one who goes and comes has a good word for the rest house. It is run by one of our Labrador orphan boys, whose education was finished in America, and “Johnnie,” as every one calls him, is already a feature in the life of the place.

Among the advances of the year 1918 must also be noted that more subscribers and subscriptions from local friends have been received than ever before. Our X-ray department has been added to. We have been able also to improve the roads, a thing greatly to be desired.

Look where we will, we have nothing but gratitude that in the last year of a long and exhausting war, here in this far-away section of the world, the keynote has been one of progress.