Labrador’s Grenfell

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 980, 24 May 1930, Page 18

Labrador’s Grenfell

A Most Romantic Englishman

LITTLE iron-grey doctor with a big and active mind, a practical ambition and a sense of humour is Sir Wilfred Gren-

fell, of Labrador, who went into that icy land 38 years ago, when it was the loneliest outpost of the Empire. Today he is suggesting harbours along that picturesque coast for the ships which will carry western Canadian grain to Europe when the harbour at Churchill opens for business. Sir Wilfred Grenfell has just been home to England on a visit and has been treated as something of a legendary hero by Eton schoolboys and as a Christopher Columbus by the business men of London. They listen to

the tales of this medical missionary and jingle the guineas in their pockets expectantly at his reports of unlimited wealth in fish, minerals and

timber waiting their enterprise in Labrador. In Labrador he is a missionary; in London lord high commissioner of trade and colonisation for his adopted land. The first doctor to go into Labrador is now regarded as an empire builder of first rank. Sir Wilfred was born near Chester, the old walled city of England, but he drew his traditions from a long line of Cornish ancestors who fought on land and sea in the storied past of Britain. So pronounced was this military flavour of his family that at the first Delhi Durbar no less than 48 of his cousins met, all military or civil officers in the administration services of India.

The lad grew up familiar with the sands of Dee and roamed about so carefree that he was eighteen before he thought about his future or his career. On the advice of a family physician he decided to go to study medicine at the London Hospital and University, feeling himself a bit of a pioneer, as there had never been a physician or surgeon in his family records.

Into the hospital came numerous fishermen from the North Sea, brought back sick or injured from the fleets in the northern mists. He was jieculilarly attracted to them and to their dangerous life. Presently Sir Frederick Treves organised a medical mission to these men and young Grenfell was offered the opportunity of accompanying it as physician. He sailed away to the fishing groups in a small schooner and there found twenty thousand men and boys afloat upon the North Sea, exiled for months at a time from their homes, facing perpetual dangers and discomforts, without even the most meagre medical protection.

The next adventure of the Deep Sea j Missions was among the fishermen of Newfoundland and Labrador. Dr. Grenfell went out with the first ship j and almost put an end to his career on that trip when he was swept overboard while playing cricket. However, as he explains, when telling the ; stom’, they saved the ball. At the fishing stations their impromptu sur- ! geries were like “a newly opened sardine can.” Over nine hundred : patients were treated on that first i trip, and on their return to Newi foundland the Governor and Governj ment appealed to the Deep Sea Misj sion to make his work permanent. | His life since then has been one of

the epics of modern time. He has taken education, civilisation, science and trade into Labrador and he has interested the business world in the untapped wealth of the countrv. For the last 20 years his companion has been his wife, who left a wealthy B ?i hom ® to share his small and comfortless home In the SL Anthony ?ntnrc S t-? ayS - Dr ’ Grenfe “ met his tuture wife on a trip to New York aboard the Mauretania. He did not l he second da y out. but ?? th * f ‘ fu ' day on their arrival in New Tork he had proposed and been accepted. Only a year previously nibride, then a student at Brvn Mawr had refused to attend a lecture bv too duli’ Gren£eU because he sounded