Dr. Grenfell's Parish: The Deep Sea Fisherman
Norman Duncan
Norman Duncan
Dr. Grenfell's Parish: The Deep Sea Fisherman
TO THE READER
This book pretends to no literary excellence; it has a far better reason for existence – a larger justification. Its purpose is to spread the knowledge of the work of Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell, of the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen, at work on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador; and to describe the character and condition of the folk whom he seeks to help. The man and the mission are worthy of sympathetic interest; worthy, too, of unqualified approbation, of support of every sort. Dr. Grenfell is indefatigable, devoted, heroic; he is more and even better than that – he is a sane and efficient worker. Frankly, the author believes that the reader would do a good deed by contributing to the maintenance and development of the doctor’s beneficent undertakings; and regrets that the man and his work are presented in this inadequate way and by so incapable a hand. The author is under obligation to the editors of Harper’s Magazine, of The World’s Work, and of Outing for permission to reprint the contributed papers which, in some part, go to make up the volume. He wishes also to protest that Dr. Grenfell is not the hero of a certain work of fiction dealing with life on the Labrador coast. Some unhappy misunderstanding has arisen on this point. The author wishes to make it plain that “Doctor Luke” was not drawn from Dr. Grenfell.
В В В В N. D.
College Campus,
Washington, Pennsylvania, January 25, 1905.
I – THE DOCTOR
Doctor Wilfred T. Grenfell is the young Englishman who, for the love of God, practices medicine on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. Other men have been moved to heroic deeds by the same high motive, but the professional round, I fancy, is quite out of the common; indeed, it may be that in all the world there is not another of the sort. It extends from Cape John of Newfoundland around Cape Norman and into the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Ungava Bay and Cape Chidley of the Labrador southward far into the Gulf of St. Lawrence – two thousand miles of bitterly inhospitable shore: which a man in haste must sail with his life in his hands. The folk are for the most part isolated and desperately wretched – the shore fishermen of the remoter Newfoundland coasts, the Labrador “liveyeres,” the Indians of the forbidding interior, the Esquimaux of the far north. It is to such as these that the man gives devoted and heroic service – not for gain; there is no gain to be got in those impoverished places: merely for the love of God.
I once went ashore in a little harbour of the northeast coast of Newfoundland. It was a place most unimportant – and it was just beyond the doctor’s round. The sea sullenly confronted it, hills overhung it, and a scrawny wilderness flanked the hills; the ten white cottages of the place gripped the dripping rocks as for dear life. And down the path there came an old fisherman to meet the stranger.
“Good-even, zur,” said he.
“Good-evening.”
He waited for a long time. Then, “Be you a doctor, zur?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Noa? Isn’t you? Now, I was thinkin’ maybe you might be. But you isn’t, you says?”
“Sorry – but, no; really, I’m not.”
“Well, zur,” he persisted, “I was thinkin’ you might be, when I seed you comin’ ashore. They is a doctor on this coast,” he added, “but he’s sixty mile along shore. ’Tis a wonderful expense t’ have un up. This here harbour isn’t able. An’ you isn’t a doctor, you says? Is you sure, zur?”
There was unhappily no doubt about it.
“I was thinkin’ you might be,” he went on, wistfully, “when I seed you comin’ ashore. But perhaps you might know something about doctorin’? Noa?”
“Nothing.”
“I was thinkin’, now, that you might. ’Tis my little girl that’s sick. Sure, none of us knows what’s the matter with she. Woan’t you come up an’ see she, zur? Perhaps you might do something – though yo