When the
Doctor Came to Labrador
By Annalydia Hall—Age 14.
From
Everyland magazine, October 1918, digitized by Doug Frizzle, March 2012.
A
DESCENDANT of Sir Richard Grenville! Do you wonder that Wilfred Grenfell had something implanted in his soul that made him differ
from the
common roll of men and made him feel
that there was something for him ''besides hanging out his sign in a
city where there were already
doctors and to spare"?
So
in 1892 we find Dr. Grenfell cruising about the
deep fiords and rocky islands of Labrador in his hospital-ship Albert, ministering
to the poor fishermen of that
region, bringing relief to those, who but for him would have had no intelligent
care. By these he was thought some strange, big-hearted madman. He cared nothing
for treacherous winds or unknown tides and currents. His boat was capsized,
swamped, blown on the rocks, driven
out to sea. But did that deter him for a moment?
One
of his most terrible experiences was caused by the
ice floes. Hastening over a frozen arm of the
sea on his dog sledge to bring aid to a sick lad Dr. Grenfell found himself on
a detached ice floe—adrift on an ice-pan. Soon night came on with such intense
cold that the doctor was forced to
sacrifice three of his dogs and clothe
himself in their skins. At daylight,
with the dog bones as a pole, Dr.
Grenfell raised a flag of distress—his gaily-colored shirt. At last when he was
wearied almost to death, his hands and feet frozen, and his brain befogged, he
was discovered by some rude
fishermen, who tenderly conveyed him to the
hospital. "Sure the Lord must
keep an eye on that man," declared an old skipper devoutly.
Some 30,000 men were without medical aid prior to
1892. Dr. Grenfell not only brought them
aid for hurt bodies but for stunted minds and souls as well. He established schools,
missions, churches, hospitals, orphan asylums, gymnasiums, and libraries. He
established industries such as lumbering and ship building, that the fishermen might not be ill during the cold months. He set up cooperative stores run
for the sole benefit of the fishermen. He introduced the
reindeer from Lapland and thus
greatly added to the resources of the country just as Sheldon Jackson did for Alaska.
All
in all, the seeds of the now widespread civilization of Labrador
were implanted by Dr. Wilfred Grenfell.
Over
the entrance of "his"
hospital is this motto, "Faith, hope and love abide, but the greatest of these
is love." I think this might be taken as the
motto of Dr. Grenfell's life. It was love for his fellow-man—in other words his love for Christ— that led him to
enter "that service of perfect freedom,
the service of the King of kings."
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