The Labrador Memoir of Dr Harry Paddon, 1912-1938 (review)

The name most closely associated with 'missionary medicine' in Newfoundland and Labrador is Sir Wilfred Grenfell. Less well known is Dr Harry Paddon, an Oxford- and London-educated physician who, aged thirty-one, passed up an English hospital career to work in Labrador. He created a memoir - 427 typed pages - drawn from twenty-six years of published articles and journal-letters. Originally submitted for publication in 1938, it has taken sixty-five years for Paddon's memoir to reach 'a wider readership' as edited by Ronald G. Rompkey.

Rompkey was born in St John's, Newfoundland and educated at Memorial University before moving to London to earn his PhD. He returned to Canada, teaching English literature at various universities in western Canada before returning home to Memorial University in St John's. This is the sixth volume he has edited. The majority of his work, including a 1991 biography of Grenfell, deals with some aspect of Maritime Canadian history.

Rompkey explains in a well-crafted introduction that Paddon's memoir should be read 'as a narrative of northern adventure experienced by an itinerant doctor going about his district in challenging circumstances.' Rompkey goes on to note, 'In the opening pages, Paddon appears before us as an innocent abroad, victimized by an unscrupulous travel agent. However, once installed in Labrador he becomes our interlocutor, ready to discourse on such varied topics as the plight of the aboriginal, the behaviour of the sled dog, the construction of the komatik (or sled), the voraciousness of the black fly, the failure of government, the dishonesty of the merchant, and, of course, the prevalence of disease.'

Paddon arrived in Labrador, a single man, in 1912. That first summer he met New Brunswick-born nurse Mina Gilchrist, who also came to work on the coast. They married the next year and their first son was born in 1914. By 1927, their family had grown to include four sons, all of whom grew up in Labrador. A year older than her husband, Mina would be his confidante, colleague, and partner until his death in 1939.

Paddon spent the bulk of his time travelling throughout Labrador by boat and by dog sled. He set up the first wooden hospital at North West River (the hub of the fur trade), carried on Grenfell's pioneering work, and journeyed each year to Boston, New York, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and London, England on speaking tours to raise funds for schools, public health initiatives, and hospitals.

This memoir, like Nigel Rusted's It's Devil Deep Down There, gives a fine account of the key issues that affected these pioneering physicians. In addition, Paddon also offers up vivid examples of life in Labrador. He notes the influenza epidemic of 1918/19 wiped out 'forty per cent of the 1,200 surviving Eskimos of Labrador.' He goes on to describe what happened when a supply ship, carrying food to starving Inuit on one of the 'outside islands,' also brought influenza: 'Within a few hours of her leaving, such is the susceptibility of the aboriginal, the whole community was stricken except one little girl of seven years of age [Martha Menzel]. There was here too a horde of wolf-like dogs, and with no one to feed them they speedily reverted to wolf-like, predatory life, tearing up and devouring bodies, perhaps hastening death in some cases. ... on cold November nights the only way to keep herself from freezing to death was by admitting these man-eating beasts to sleep on the floor of her shack and to nestle up again [sic] their shaggy bodies for warmth. For some reason, they never touched her.'

Rompkey includes, in his bibliography, a list of more than one hundred articles written by Paddon as well as a list of manuscripts and archival papers and an impressive list of published material.

In his preface, Paddon wrote, 'I can only hope that this manuscript, if it...