A Labrador Doctor / The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

by Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

The deer had cost us, landed, some fifty-one dollars apiece. Three years of herding under the adverse conditions of lack of support from either Government or people had not lessened the per caput expense very materially. If we had shot some one's fifty-dollar cow, our name would have been anathema—but we lost two hundred and fifty deer one winter. In addition to this, when we moved the deer to a spot near another village on a high bluff, over a hundred died in summer, either—according to the report of the herders—from falling over the cliffs driven by dogs, or of a sickness of which we could not discover the nature, though we thought that it resembled a kind of pneumonia.

The poaching got so bad that we took every means in our power to catch the guilty parties. But it was a very difficult thing to do. A dead deer lies quiet, keeps for weeks where he falls in our winter climate, and can be surreptitiously removed by day or night. The little Lapp dogs occasionally scented them beneath the snow, and many tell-tale "paunches" showed where deer had been killed and carried off.

I had been treating the hunchback boy and only child of a fisherman for whom I had very great respect. His was the home where the Methodist minister always boarded, and he was looked upon as a pillar of piety. After a straightening by frame treatment, the boy's spine had been ankylosed by an operation; and as every one felt sorry for the little fellow, we were often able to send him gifts. One day the father came to me, evidently in great trouble, to have what proved to be a most uncommon private talk. To my utter surprise he began: "Doctor, I can no longer live and keep the secret that I shot two of your reindeer. I have brought you ninety dollars, all the cash that I have, and I want to ask your forgiveness, after all you have done for me." Needless to say, it was freely given, but it made me feel more than ever that the deer must be moved to some other country.

It was about this year that the Government for the first time granted us a resident policeman—previously we had had to be our own police. Fortunately the man sent was quite a smart fellow. A dozen or so deer had been killed along the section of our coast, and so skilfully that even though it was done under the noses of the herders no evidence to convict could be obtained. It so happened, however, that while one of the herders was eating a piece of one of the slaughtered animals which he had discovered, and that the thieves had not been able to carry off, his teeth met on a still well-formed rifle bullet of number 22 calibre. This type of rifle we knew was scarcely ever used on our coast, and the policeman at once made a round to take every one. He returned with three, which was really the whole stock.

A piece of meat was now placed at a reasonable distance, also some bags of snow, flour, etc., and a number of bullets fired into them. These bullets were then all privately marked, and shuffled up. Our own deductions were made, and a man from twenty miles away summoned, arrested, and brought up. He brought witnesses and friends, apparently to impress the court—one especially, who most vehemently protested that he knew the owner of the rifle, and that he was never out of his house at the time that the deer would have been killed. In court was a man, for twenty-seven years agent in Labrador for the Hudson Bay Company—a crack shot and a most expert hunter. He was called up, given the big pile of bullets, and told to try and sort them, by the groove marks, into those fired by the three different rifles. We then handed him the control bullet, and he put it instantly on one of the piles. It was the pile that had been fired from the rifle of the accused. This man, in testifying, in order to clear himself, had let out the fact that his rifle had not been kept in his house, but in the house of the vociferous witness—whom we now arrested, convicted, and condemned to jail for six months or two hundred dollars fine—the latter alternative being given only because we knew that he had not the necessary sum. Protesting as loudly as he had previously witnessed, he went to jail; but the rest let out threats that they were coming back with others to set him free. We had only a frame wooden jail, and a rheumatic jailer of over seventy years, hired to hobble around by day and see that the prisoners were fed and kept orderly. We announced, therefore, that our Hudson Bay friend, with his rifle loaded, would be night jailer.

A few days passed by. The prisoner did not like improving the public thoroughfare for our benefit, while those "who were just as bad as he" went free. Our old jailer took good care that he should hear what good times they were having and laughing at him for being caught. Indeed, he liked it so little that he gave the whole plot away—at least what he called the whole. This landed four more of his friends in the same honest and public-spirited occupation which he was himself pursuing; though all escaped shortly afterwards by paying fines to the Government which aggregated some eight hundred dollars—which sum was largely paid by others for them.

There was no way, however, definitely to stop the steady decrease in the numbers of the herd; and though we moved them to new pastures around the coast, and fenced them in such small mobile corrals as we could afford, they were not safe. On several occasions we found dead deer with buckshot in them, which had "fallen over the cliffs." Twice we discovered that deer had even been killed within our own corral. One had been successfully removed, and the other trussed-up carcass had been hidden until a good opportunity offered for it to follow suit. I do not wish to leave the impression on the minds of my readers that every man on this part of the coast is a poacher. Far from it. But the majority of the best men were against the reindeer experiment from the moment that the first trouble arose. A new obligation of social life was introduced. This implied restraint in such trifling things as their having to fence their tiny gardens, protect small stray hay-pooks, and discriminate into what they discharged their ubiquitous blunderbusses.

Meanwhile the steadily increasing demand for meat, especially since the war began, caused outside interest in the experiment; and both the owners of Anticosti Island, and a firm in the West who were commencing reindeer farming on a commercial basis, opened negotiations with us for the purchase of our herd. In the original outlay, however, the Canadian Dominion Government had taken an interest to the amount of five thousand dollars, so it was necessary to get their opinion on the subject. Their Department of Indian Affairs happened to be looking for some satisfactory way of helping out their Labrador Indian population. They sent down and made inquiries, and came to the conclusion that they would themselves take the matter up, as they had done with buffalo, elk, and other animals in the West.

In 1917 all preparations for transferring the deer were made, but war conditions called their steamer away and transport was delayed until 1918. Again their steamer was called off, so we decided to take the deer across ourselves in our splendid three-masted schooner, the George B. Cluett. She, alas, was delayed in America by the submarine scare, and it was the end of September instead of June when she finally arrived. It was a poor season for our dangerous North coast and a very bad time for moving the deer, whose rutting season was just beginning. My herders, too, were now much reduced in numbers. Most of them had gone to the war, and as one had been sick all summer, practically only two were available. To add to the difficulty, many small herds of reindeer were loose in the country outside the corral.

However, we felt that the venture must be attempted at all hazards, even if it delayed our beautiful ship taking a cargo of food to the Allies—as she was scheduled to do as soon as possible—and though it was a serious risk to remain anchored in the shallow open roadstead off the spot where the deer had to be taken aboard. The work was all new to us. The deer, instead of being tame as they had previously been, were wild at best, and wilder still from their breeding season. The days went by, and we succeeded in getting only a few aboard. We were all greenhorns with the lassoes and lariats which we improvised. A gale of wind came on and nothing could be done but lie up.