Le Petit Nord / or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour

Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and unusual spelling in the original document have been preserved.
The illustration captions, listed only at the front of the original text, have been added to the illustrations for the benefit of the reader.

An Awful Night for a Sinner
A friend from the Hub of the Universe, in a somewhat supercilious manner, not long ago informed one of our local friends that his own home was hundreds of miles to the southward. 'Deed, sir, how does you manage to live so far off? with a scarcely perceptible twinkle of one eye, was the answer.
If home is the spot on earth where one spends the larger part of one's prime, and where one's family comes into being, then for over a quarter of a century Le Petit Nord of this book has been my home. With the authors I share for it and its people the love which alone keeps us here. Necessity has compelled me to perform, however imperfectly, functions usually distributed amongst many and varied professions, and the resultant intimacy has become unusual. As, therefore, I read the amusing experiences herein narrated, I feel that the other half, who know us not, will love us better even if we are not exactly as they. That is not our fault. They should not live so far off.
The incidents told are all actual, but the name of every single person and place has been changed to afford any hypersensitive among the actors the protection which pseudonymity confers. We here who have been permitted a glimpse of these pages feel that we really owe the authors another debt beyond the love for the people to which they have testified by the more substantial offering of long and voluntary personal service.
Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D.
Labrador, 1919
Off the Narrows, St. John's June 10
Dear Joan