Aboard the Strathcona , Red Bay, Labrador, Sept. 9, 1919. Dear Waldo : It has been great having you on board for a time. I wish you could stay and see some other sections of the work. When you joined us I hesitated at first, thinking perhaps it would be better to show you the poorer parts of our country, and not the better off—but decided to let you drop in and drop out again of the ordinary routine, and not bother to ‘show you sights.’ Still I am sorry that you did not see some other sections o

Grenfell and Labrador are names that must go down in history together. Of the man and of his sea-beaten, wind-swept “parish” it will be said, as Kipling wrote of Cecil Rhodes: “Living he was the land, and dead His soul shall be her soul.” Some folk may try to tell us that Wilfred Thomason Grenfell, C.M.G., gets more credit than is due him: but while they cavil and insinuate the Recording Angel smiles and writes down more golden deeds for this descendant of an Elizabethan sea-dog. Sir Richard Gre

That evening Dr. Grenfell spoke in the little Church of England, taking as his text the words from the twelfth chapter of John: “The spirit that is ruling in this world shall be driven out.” Across the tickle the huskies howled at the moon, and one after another took up the challenge from either bank. But one was no longer conscious of the wailful creatures, and heard only the speaker; and the kerosene lamps lighted one by one in the gloom of the church became blurred stars, and the woman sittin

Next evening found us at St. Anthony. Doctors and nurses were on the wharf to greet their chief after his absence of several weeks. Dr. Curtis showed the stranger through the clean and well-appointed hospital, with its piazza for a sun-bath and the bonny air for the T. B. patients, its X-ray apparatus and its operating room, its small museum of souvenirs of remarkable operations. I saw Dr. Andrews of San Francisco perform with singular deftness an operation for congenital cataract, with a docile

It was hard to say where the Doctor’s day began or ended. One night he rose several times to inspect wind and weather ere deciding to make a start; and at twenty minutes before five he was at the wheel himself. Mrs. Grenfell clipped from “Life” and pinned upon his tiny stateroom mirror a picture of a caterpillar showing to a class of worms the early bird eating the worm. The legend beneath it ran: “Now remember, dear children, the lesson for today—the disobedient worm that would persist in getti

Dr. Grenfell in his battles with profiteering traders has incurred their enmity, of course—but he has been the people’s friend. The favourite charge of those who fight him is that he is amassing wealth for himself by barter on the side, and collecting big sums in other lands from which he diverts a golden stream for his own uses. The infamous accusation is too pitifully lame and silly to be worth denying. The most unselfish of men, he has sometimes worked his heart out for an ingrate who bit the

As we were coming off to the Strathcona one evening, the Doctor, bareheaded, pulling at the oars with the zest of a schoolboy on a holiday, and every oar-dip making a running flame of phosphorescence, said: “At college we worshipped at the shrine of athletics. Of course that wasn’t right, but it did establish a standard—it did teach a man that he must keep his body under if he would be physically fit. I realized that if I wanted to win I couldn’t afford to lose an ounce, and so I was a rigid Spa

The Doctor admires certain of his scientific colleagues greatly: he is candidly a hero-worshipper. “I love Cushing and Finney,” he says outspokenly of the noted Harvard and Johns Hopkins surgeons. A clinic by Dr. George de Schweinitz or an operation by Dr. John B. Deaver is a rare treat to him. Sir Frederick Treves, the great English surgeon, has been among his closest friends since Grenfell served under him in a London hospital: he has leaned on him always for perceptive advice and sympathy unf

In his capacity as magistrate, the Doctor never sidesteps trouble. Law in his part of the world is a matter not merely of the letter but of the spirit—not of the statute alone but of shrewd common sense. His decisions are luminous with a Lincolnian light of acumen and sympathy at once. He lets the jot and tittle—the mint, anise-seed and cummin—take care of themselves, and considers the real significance of the situation and the essential nature of the offence. Red tape is not the important thing

In his formal addresses Dr. Grenfell exemplifies the homely, pithy eloquence that comes from speaking directly “to men’s business and bosoms” out of the fulness of the heart: but those who have heard him in the little, informal, offhand talks he gives among his own people in his own bailiwick appreciate them even more than what he has to say to a congregation of strangers in a great city far from the Labrador. It must be understood that the quotations that follow are merely extemporaneous, unrev

I should like to write a whole book about his helpers. He is not a man who seeks to shine by surrounding himself with mediocrities. He would be ready to say with Charles M. Schwab: “I want you to work not for me but with me.” His presence is quickening and engenders loyalty. It is fun to be wherever Dr. Grenfell is because something is always going on. His helpers never are given to feel that they are ciphers while he is the integer. Some of the ablest surgeons of America and of Europe have mini

In few places are the dogs so numerous and so noisy as at Forteau, and Sister Bailey’s team held the primacy for speed and condition and obedience to command—yet she ruled them by moral suasion and not by kicks and curses. That does not mean they were dog angels. Every “husky” is in part a wolf, and the gentlest and most amiable that fawns upon you will in a twinkling go from the Dr. Jekyll to the Mr. Hyde in his make-up when the breaking-point is passed. The leaders of the pack were two monster

To take the measure of the man Dr. Grenfell is and the work he does it is necessary to know something of the land and the waters round about, where he puts his life in jeopardy year after year, day unto day, to save the lives of others. There is much more to “Dr. Grenfell’s parish” than the “rock, fog and bog” of the old saying. Such observations as are here assembled are the raw material for the Doctor’s inimitable tales of life on the Labrador. The great fact of life here is the sea, and much

A typical interior gladdened by the Doctor’s presence is this on the Southern Labrador. A drudge from Nancy Jobble (Lance-au-Diable) is scrubbing the floor, for the mother is too ill to look to the ways of her household. The drudge instead of singing is chewing on something that may be tobacco, paper or gum, and as she slings the brush about heartlessly she gives furtive eyes and ears to the visitors. The walls are bestuck with staled and yellowed newspapers. There are no pictures or books. Ther