A Labrador Doctor / The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

by Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

I sent one day a barrel of flour and some molasses to a poor widow with seven children at Stag Islands. She was starving even in summer. She was just eating fish, which she and her eldest girl caught, and drinking water—no flour, no tea, nothing. Two winters before she and her eldest girl sawed up three thousand feet of planking to keep the wolf from the little ones. The girl managed the boat and fished in summer, drove the dogs and komatik and did the shooting for which they could afford powder in winter.

A man, having failed to catch a single salmon beyond what he was forced to eat, left in his little boat to row down to the Inlet to try for codfish. To get a meal—breakfast—and a little flour to sustain life on the way, he had to sell his anchor before he left.

The life of the sea, with all its attractions, is at best a hazardous calling, and it speaks loud in the praise of the capacity and simple faith of our people that in the midst of a trying and often perilous environment, they retain so quiet and kindly a temper of mind. During my voyage to the seal fishery I recall that one day at three o'clock the men were all called in. Four were missing. We did not find them till we had been steaming for an hour and a half. They were caught on pans some mile or so apart in couples, and were in prison. We were a little anxious about them, but the only remark which I heard, when at last they came aboard, was, "Leave the key of your box the next time, Ned."

To those who claim that Labrador is a land of plenty I would offer the following incident in refutation. At Holton on a certain Sunday morning the leader of the church services came aboard the hospital steamer and asked me for a Bible. Some sacrilegious pigs which had been brought down to fatten on the fish, driven to the verge of starvation by the scarcity of that article, had broken into the church illicitly one night, and not only destroyed the cloth, but had actually torn up and eaten the Bible. In reply to inquiry I gave it as my opinion that it would be no sin to eat the pork of the erring quadrupeds.

Once when I was cruising on the North Labrador coast I anchored one day between two desolate islands some distance out in the Atlantic, a locality which in those days was frequented by many fishing craft. My anchors were scarcely down when a boat from a small Welsh brigantine came aboard, and asked me to go at once and see a dying girl. She proved to be the only woman among a host of men, and was servant in one of the tiny summer fishing huts, cooking and mending for the men, and helping with the fish when required. I found her in a rude bunk in a dark corner of the shack. She was almost eighteen, and even by the dim light of my lantern and in contrast with the sordid surroundings, I could see that she was very pretty. A brief examination convinced me that she was dying. The tender-hearted old captain, whose aid had been called in as the only man with a doctor's box and therefore felt to be better qualified to use it than others, was heart-broken. He had pronounced the case to be typhoid, to be dangerous and contagious, and had wisely ordered the fishermen, who were handling food for human consumption, to leave him to deal with the case alone. He told me at once that he had limited his attentions to feeding her, and that though helpless for over a fortnight, and at times unconscious, the patient had not once been washed or the bed changed. The result, even with my experience, appalled me. But while there is life in a young patient there is always hope, and we at once set to work on our Augean task. By the strangest coincidence it was an inky dark night outside, with a low fog hanging over the water, and the big trap boat, with a crew of some six men, among them the skipper's sons, had been missing since morning. The skipper had stayed home out of sympathy for his servant girl, and his mind was torn asunder by the anxiety for the girl and his fear for his boys.

When night fell, the old captain and I were through with the hardest part of our work. We had new bedding on the bed and the patient clean and sleeping quietly. Still the boat and its precious complement did not come. Every few minutes the skipper would go out and listen, and stare into the darkness. The girl's heart suddenly failed, and about midnight her spirit left this world. The captain and I decided that the best thing to do was to burn everything—and in order to avoid publicity to do it at once. So having laboriously carried it all out onto the edge of the cliff, we set a light to the pile and were rewarded with a bonfire which would have made many a Guy Fawkes celebration. Quite unintentionally we were sending out great streams of light into the darkness over the waters away down below us, and actually giving the longed-for signal to the missing boat. Her crew worked their way in the fog to life and safety by means of the blazing and poor discarded "properties" of the soul preceding us to our last port.

Although our work has lain almost entirely among the white population of the Labrador and North Newfoundland coasts, still it has been our privilege occasionally to come in contact with the native races, and to render them such services, medical or otherwise, as lay within our power. Our doctor at Harrington on the Canadian Labrador is appointed by the Canadian Government as Indian Agent.

Once, when my own boat was anchored in Davis Inlet, a band of roving Indians had come to the post for barter and supplies. Our steamer was a source of great interest to them. Our steam whistle they would gladly have purchased, after they had mastered their first fears. At night we showed them some distress rockets and some red and blue port flares. The way those Indians fled from the port flares was really amusing, and no one enjoyed it more than they did, for the shouting and laughter, after they had picked themselves out of the scuppers where they had been rolling on top of one another, wakened the very hills with their echoes. Next morning one lonely-looking brave came on board, and explained to me by signs and grunts that during the entertainment a white counter, or Hudson Bay dollar, had rolled out of the lining of his hat into our woodpile. An elaborate search failed to reveal its whereabouts, but as there was no reason to doubt him, I decided to make up the loss to him out of our clothes-bag. Fortunately a gorgeous purple rowing blazer came readily to hand, and with this and a helmet, both of which he put on at once, the poor fellow was more than satisfied. Indeed, on the wharf he was the envy of the whole band.

At night they slept in the bunkhouse, and they presented a sight which one is not likely to forget—especially one lying on his back on the table, with his arms extended and his head hanging listlessly over the edge. One felt sorely tempted to put a pin into him to see if he really were alive, but we decided to abstain for prudential reasons.

We had among the garments on board three not exactly suited to the white settlers, so I told the agent to let the Indians have a rifle shooting match for them. They were a fox huntsman's red broadcloth tail-coat, with all the glory of gilt buttons, a rather dilapidated red golf blazer, and a white, cavalryman's Eton coat, with silver buttons, and the coat-of-arms on. Words fail me to paint the elation of the winner of the fox hunting coat; while the wearer of the cavalry mess jacket was not the least bit daunted by the fact that when he got it on he could hardly breathe. I must say that he wore it over a deerskin kossak, which is not the custom of cavalrymen, I am led to believe.