FORWARD STEPS
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.
[Illustration: THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN WINTER]
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.