A Labrador Doctor / The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

by Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

In April a large meeting was held in New York to reorganize the management of the Mission. The English Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen was no longer able or willing to finance, much less to direct, affairs which had gone beyond their control, and was hoping to arrange an organization of an international character to which all the affairs of the enterprise could be turned over. This organization was formed at the house of Mr. Eugene Delano, the head of Brown Brothers, bankers, whose lifelong help has meant for Labrador more than he will ever know.

The International Grenfell Association was incorporated to comprise the Labrador branches of the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen as its English component, the Grenfell Association of America and the New England Grenfell Association to represent the American interests, the Labrador Medical Mission as the Canadian name for its Society, and the Newfoundland Grenfell Association for the Newfoundland branch. Each one of these component societies has two members in the Central Council, and together they make up the Board of Directors of the International Grenfell Association. These directors ever since have generously been giving their time and interest in the wise and efficient administration of this work. To these unselfish men Labrador and northern Newfoundland, as well as I, owe a greater debt than can ever be repaid.

On the 1st of May I was due to speak at the annual meeting of the English Mission in London, and the swift heels of the Mauretania once more stood us in good stead; for we reached England the evening before May 1, arrived in London at 2 A.M., and I spoke three times that day. After a day or so at my old home with my mother we ran about in a Ford car for a fortnight, lecturing every evening. The little motor saved endless energy otherwise lost in endeavouring to make connections, and gave us the opportunity to see numbers of old friends whom we must otherwise have missed. One day we would be at a meeting of miners at Redmuth in Cornwall, on another at Harrow or Rugby Schools. At the latter, an old college friend, who is now head master there, gave us a royal welcome. During the last fortnight at home a splendid chance was afforded me to visit daily the clinics of an old friend, Sir Robert Jones, England's famous orthopedic surgeon. He is one of the most wonderful and practical of men, and he opened our eyes to the possibility of medical mission work in the very heart of England—for if ever there was an apostle of hope for the deformed and paralyzed he certainly is the man. His Sunday morning free clinics crowded even the street opposite his office door with waiting patients of the poorest class. Equally beneficent also is the large and wonderful hospital built specially for derelict children on the heather-covered hills just above our home in Cheshire. But most unique of all was his Basschurch Hospital, constructed mostly of sheet iron, standing in the middle of a field in the country forty miles away from Liverpool. Every second Sunday, Sir Robert Jones used to motor over there and operate "in the field." No expedition have I ever enjoyed better in my life than when he was good enough to pick us up on his way, and we saw him tackle the motley collection of halt and lame, whom the lady of the hospital, herself a marvellous testimony to his skill, collected from the neighbouring town slums between his visits. The hospital was the nearest thing I know to our little "one-horse shows" scattered along the Labrador coast; and there was a homing feeling in one's heart all the time at these open-air clinics.

As commander-in-chief of the orthopedic work of the British Army in the war, I am certain that Colonel Sir Robert Jones has found the experiences of his improvised clinics among the most valuable assets he could have had. One day he has promised that he will bring his magic wand to Labrador; for he is a sportsman in the best sense of the word as well as a healer of limbs.

The quickest way back to St. John's being via Canada, we returned by the Allan Line, and lectured in the Maritime Provinces as we passed North.

It would appear that one must possess an insatiable love of lecturing. As a matter of fact, nothing is farther from the truth. But the brevity of life is an insistent fact in our existence, and the inability to do good work for lack of help that is so gladly given when the reasonableness of the expenditure is presented, makes one feel guilty if an evening is spent doing nothing. The lecturing is by far the most uncongenial task which I have been called upon to do in life, but in a mission like ours, which is not under any special church, the funds must be raised to a very great extent by voluntary donations, and in order to secure these friends must be kept informed of the progress of the work which their gifts are making possible.

For the first seven years of my work I never spent the winters in the country—nor was it my intention ever to do so. Besides the general direction of the whole, my work as superintendent has meant the raising of the necessary funds, and my special charge on the actual coast has been the hospital ship Strathcona. Naturally, owing to our frozen winter sea this is only possible during open water. Since 1902 it has been my custom when possible to spend every other winter as well as every summer in the North. The actual work and life there is a tremendous rest after the nervous and physical tax of a lecture tour. At first I used to wonder at the lack of imagination in those who would greet me, after some long, wearisome hours on the train or in a crowded lecture hall, with "What a lovely holiday you are having!" Now this oft-repeated comment only amuses me.

It was just after the first of June when again we found ourselves heading North for St. Anthony, only once more to be caught in the jaws of winter. For the heavy Arctic ice blockaded the whole of the eastern French shore, and we had to be content to be held up in small ice-bound harbours as we pushed along through the inner edge of the floe, till strong westerly winds cleared the way.

Having reached St. Anthony and looked into matters there, we once again ran south to St. John's to inspect the new venture of the Institute. To help out expenses we towed for the whole four hundred miles a schooner which had been wrecked on the Labrador coast, having run on the rocks, and knocked a hole in her bottom. She had a number of sacks of "hard bread" on board. These had been thrown into the breach and planking nailed on over them. The bread had swelled up between the two casings and become so hard again that the vessel leaked but little; and though the continual dirge of the pumps was somewhat dismal as we journeyed, we had no reason to fear that she would go to the bottom.

Flour resists water in a marvellous way. On one occasion our own vessel in the North Sea was run into by another. The latter's cutwater went through her side and deck almost to the combing of the hatch, and the water began to pour in. By immediately putting the vessel on the other tack, the rent was largely lifted out of water. A heavy topsail was hastily thrown over her side, and eventually hauled under the keel—the inrushing water keeping it there. Then sacks of flour were rammed into the breach. The ship in this condition, favoured by the wind which enabled her to continue on that tack, reached home, two hundred miles distant, with her hand-pumps keeping her comparatively free, though there was the greatest difficulty to keep her afloat directly she was towed into the harbour and lay at the wharf.