Chapter XIII: A Few “parishioners”

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. There is a wooden bench before the linoleum-covered table, on which are loaves of bread, ill-baked. There is a stove, of the “Favourite” brand with kettle and teapot simmering. A tarnished alarm-clock from Ansonia, a mirror, a wash-stand, shelves with china, tin cans and shreds of bread, a baby’s crib, a rocking-chair and two more benches forlornly complete the inventory. There is nothing green in sight from the besmirched windows but grass and people.

A telegraph operator was reading a volume of the addresses of Russell Conwell when we entered his not overtasked laboratory. The book bore the title “How to Get Rich Honestly.” “’Fraid I’ll never get any further than reading about it!” exclaimed the man of the keys and wires. Dr. Grenfell took the book and presently became engrossed in the famous address called “Acres of Diamonds.” It seemed to him the sort of literature to fire the ambition of his neighbours under the Northern Lights, with its instances of those who made their way defiant of the odds and in spite of all opposition.

A very young minister at another Labrador watering-place said to the Doctor: “You needn’t leave any of your books here. I’m not interested in libraries. I’m only interested in the spiritual welfare of the people.”

A run of six miles by power-boat across Lewis Inlet took us to Fox Harbour and the house of Uncle George Holley. In recent years the power-boat, even with gasoline at the prevailing high prices, has become the fisherman’s taxicab or tin Lizzie, and Oh! the difference to him. He bobs and prances out over the war-dance of the waves with his barrels and boxes easily, where once it was a mighty toiling with the sweeps to make his way. The run across the inlet went swiftly and surely past an iceberg white as an angel’s wing though with the malign suggestion of the devil behind it: and there were plenty of chances to take photographs from every possible angle.

Uncle George had on the stage a skinned seal, some whalemeat, salted cod and a few barrels of salmon. His wife showed us a tiny garden with cabbages, lettuce, rhubarb, radishes and “greens.” One year, she said, she had a barrel of potatoes. Indoors she managed to raise balsam, bachelor’s buttons and nasturtiums. Nowhere in the world do flowers mean more to those that plant them. Constantly there comes to mind H. C. Brunner’s poem about a geranium upon a window-sill: for the flowers which it needs incessant care to keep from the nipping frost come to be regarded as not merely friends but members of the family. Uncle George, a fine, patriarchal type, told vividly how with a dog whip nine fathoms long the expert hand could cut off the neck of a glass bottle without upsetting the bottle, and take the bowl from a man’s pipe or the buttons off his coat. No wonder the huskies slink under the houses when they see a stranger coming.

The winter of 1918-19 was especially terrible—or “wonderful” as would be said here—because of the visitation of the “flu.” Conditions were bad enough in Newfoundland, but in Labrador the “liveyers” (those who remain the year round) fought their battles in a hopeless isolation illumined by heroic self-abnegation on the part of a tiny handful of persons.

When spring released the Labrador Coast from the grip of the ice, and the tragic tale of the winter was told, the Newfoundland Government dispatched the _Terra Nova_ (Scott’s Antarctic vessel) to the aid of the afflicted. Then news filtered out to the world of plague conditions during that terrible winter more dreadful than those which De Foe has chronicled. While reading the gruesome details, one is reminded of the long, lonely and hopeless fight of the early Jamestown colony against sickness and starvation. Throughout the bitter months the Red Death stalked its dread way up and down the Coast, with almost no doctors, nurses or medicines to check the disease. Whole families were stricken, the living were too weak to bury the dead or even to fight off the gaunt dogs that hovered hungrily about the houses; and hamlets were wiped out while neighbouring villages were unable to send aid.

A few sentences from the diary of Henry Gordon, the brave missionary at Cartwright, on Sandwich Bay, will suffice to show what a hideous winter his people passed through. Of this man Dr. Grenfell said to me: “Instead of a stick with a collar on it we have a man with a soul in him.” He is always laughing—incurably an optimist, and a great Boy Scout leader. The following are condensed excerpts.

“Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1918. Reached Cartwright 8 a.m. Mail-boat had brought ‘the great Plague’ and nearly half the population was down with it.

“Thursday, Oct. 31. Nearly everybody down now.

“Nov. 1. Whole households stretched inanimate on floors, unable even to feed themselves or keep fires going.

“Nov. 2. Feeling rotten. Head like a bladderful of wind.

“Nov. 7. Busy all a.m. arranging graves and coffins.

“Nov. 8. Gale N. E. with snow-storms.

“Nov. 17. Two of bodies too much doubled up to put in coffin.

“Nov. 21. Will Leaming in from Indian Harbour with news that ten are dead at North River still unburied and only three coffins. The rest are too sick and dismayed to help.

“Nov. 22. (At North River). Some had lain in their beds three weeks and the stench was appalling. Old Mrs. L. W., aged 71, only survivor of five, lived alone for a fortnight with four dead. No fire, no wood, only ice, which she thawed under her arms.

“Nov. 26. Number burials now totals 26. Population little over 100.

“Dec. 14. Find five little orphans living alone in a deserted house in a deserted cove, bread still frozen.

“Dec. 19. 12 dead in North River out of population of 21.

“Dec. 25. (Christmas Day). Service 10.30. Only six communicants, but considerable ‘Communion of saints.’

“Jan. 1, 1919. (At Cape Porcupine, in Herbert Emb’s one-room house). ‘A sort of damp earthy smell met one on entering, but thanks to frost, body was not so bad as expected. More like mouldering clay than anything. Right on his side was his little girl, actually frozen on to him, so that bodies came off the bunk in one piece.’

“Jan. 3. Grave-blasting.

“Jan. 8. Total deaths: Cartwright, 15; Paradise, 20; Separation Point, 7; North River, 13; Strandshore, 9; Grady, 1; Hare Islands, 4; Sandhills, 4; Boulter’s Rock, 5; North, 12.”

These do not seem large figures, but in settlements of half a dozen houses or less they represent a very large proportion of the inhabitants.

News of the armistice with Germany did not reach Mr. Gordon until January 9, which shows how far from the world was this region within a hundred miles of the summer hospital at Battle Harbour.

It is to be noted that nearly all the children who died perished of starvation, because their elders could no longer feed them and the “loaf” was too frozen to be eaten.

The Eskimo settlements suffered still more grievously. The bodies were buried at sea. Dogs were eating the bodies, and had to be shot. Sometimes the survivors were too weak to drive the dogs from the dead and the dying.

Hebron was wiped out. At Okkak 200 died of 267, and on August 15 there were four widows and two little girls left, who were waiting to be taken away. Nain was not so hard hit, but it is said that forty perished out of several hundred. Zoar and Ramah had already passed out of existence before the “flu” came. It is estimated that the resident Eskimo population on the coast, numbering 600 to 700, was cut nearly in half.

The people seem to think that Dr. Grenfell can accomplish miracles. One is reminded of the words of the sister of Lazarus, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”

“Richard Dempster, our mail-carrier,” said good Parson Richards, of Flower’s Cove, “owes his life to the Doctor. Something had infected his knee. The poison spread to his hip. He wouldn’t have lived twelve hours if the Doctor hadn’t made seven incisions in his right leg with his pocket-knife to let out the poisoned blood.

“Once when I was travelling with him, at Pine’s Cove we found a family had left because the woman had seen a ghost. The Doctor prayed with her, and offered to go and live in the house himself to prove that she was the victim of an illusion. At Eddy’s Cove there was hard glitter ice which would have cut the dog’s paws. We thought we couldn’t go on. While we debated what to do there came a snowfall that spread the ice with a glorious soft blanket, ideal for travel. That’s just the way Providence always seems to favour the Doctor when he goes abroad.

“That man never came to the parsonage and went without leaving me with the desire to do better and be better. Every single time it was the same.

“Once we were on the go with the dogs and the komatik four days from St. Anthony to Cricket (Griguet). Much of the time the Doctor had to run beside the komatik. He struck out a new way, deep in snow. ‘Don’t you ever get tired, Doctor?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know that I ever was tired in my life,’ was his answer.

“A day or two after that dreadful experience on the ice-pan which he described in a book, he was at Cricket, and I went to see him. He was still suffering from the effects of the frost-bite. ‘Will you come to the mass meeting of the churches tonight?’ I said. He didn’t hesitate a moment. ‘Yes—send a dog-team and I’ll come.’ He not merely came but delivered an address of an hour’s duration, and I never heard him speak with greater fervour. He seemed spiritualized by the experience through which he had so recently passed.”