9 October: Boreham on Wilfrid Grenfell

A Transformation Scene
It was on October 9, 1940 that Sir Wilfrid Grenfell closed his illustrious career. When, nearly a quarter of a century ago, King George V conferred a knighthood on Grenfell, a London critic declared that it was the best deserved decoration that had ever been bestowed.[1] And now that the illustrious recipient has been 10 years in his grave, the time is opportune for a review of that generous judgment. Very seldom does it fall to the lot of any one man to revolutionise the life of a great country, bringing order out of chaos and increasing the prosperity and felicity of all its inhabitants. Yet that is exactly what Wilfred Grenfell achieved. Over a vast area of the earth's surface he literally caused the desert to blossom as the rose. As a young fellow, he fell in love with Labrador, of all places under the sun; and by the law that ordains that the object of a pure passion shall be transformed by the devotion lavished upon it, Labrador has never been the same place since.

Reared among the sands of Dee, so dear to the heart of Charles Kingsley, Grenfell spent most of his boyhood in hazarding his life in crazy craft of his own construction. His favourite boat, the "Reptile," was, significantly enough, of about the size and shape of a coffin. When the time came to choose a profession, and he found his mind a total blank on the subject, Wilfred's father, unwilling to prejudice so vital a decision, suggested a chat with an intimate friend of the family who happened to be a doctor. On being shown into the surgery, the boy found the good man examining a human brain that he had just taken from a jar of spirits. The weird object mesmerised the young visitor.

A Doctor Yields To The Lure Of Labrador
It was by a stroke of rare good fortune that Grenfell's career as a medical student should have brought him under the immediate personal influence of such masters of the craft as Sir Morel Mackenzie, who operated on the German Emperor, and Sir Frederick Treves, the Royal Physician. Indeed, it was Sir Frederick Treves who pointed the road to destiny. In 1886, three things happened. Grenfell came of age; he took his M.R.C.S. and his L.R.C.P.; and he was caught in the swirl of the movement that was sending some of England's most brilliant students and most brilliant athletes to evangelise Africa, China, and the South Sea islands. Knowing that Grenfell was toying with the idea of joining C. T. Studd, the Test cricketer, and Stanley Smith, the stroke of the Cambridge eight, in some such enterprise, Sir Frederick Treves made an alternative proposal. "The North Sea fishing fleet needs a doctor," he said. "There's a rough-and-tumble little vessel on which sick and injured men are treated, and on which evangelistic services are held. Why not join her? You're the very man." Feeling that his hour had struck, Grenfell eagerly accepted the challenge.

A few years later he was told that, on the other side of the Atlantic, there were fishing fleets operating off the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. Would he go across and establish a similar work among them? He went; saw Labrador; and capitulated instantly to its wild and rugged charm. It gripped him, and, to the end of his days, it held him. To the last, his face lit up and a wistful look crept into his eyes when he spoke of "the lure of the Labrador." He was impressed, not only by its boundless landscapes of frigid splendour, by the stark and severe simplicity of the lives that its people were compelled to live, and by the opportunities that it presented for exploration and research, but by the tragic needs of the place.

Pioneering Activities Of Every Kind
Few men have ever lived a life as colourful, as hazardous and as eventful as Grenfell lived during the 40 years that followed. His medical and surgical skill brought the dawn of a new day to thousands of lonely huts and isolated homes in which the solitary and scattered people had wrestled with the incidence of childbirth, sickness, and accident as best they could. Impressed by the reports of his work, Lord Strathcona and other wealthy and influential magnates, sprang to his assistance. Lord Strathcona presented him with a ship, and afterwards with a larger one, with which to navigate the treacherous coast. At almost every bay and inlet at which he called, Grenfell found desperate cases that had to be brought on board for treatment. At one outlandish spot he came upon a woman who had just given birth to twin girls—both blind. Grenfell nursed the mother, and, with her consent, took possession of the babies. What could blind children do on the plains of Labrador? Everywhere he was confronted by problems that could only be dealt with in some such way.

In 1908, at the age of 43, he visited England, and returning on the Mauretania, met a lady of extraordinary charm. Within a few hours, he proposed. "But you don't even know my name!" she protested. "It doesn't matter," he explained, "I know what it's going to be!" With her competent assistance, his work was more variegated than ever. He dotted the coast with a chain of well-staffed hospitals; he delivered the people from the clutches of unscrupulous traders by establishing co-operative stores; he opened schools at all vital points; he taught the people fox-farming and improved their methods of seal fishing; he imported reindeer from Lapland and soon had the plains of Labrador swarming with valuable herds. Young people were trained in all useful avocations and professions. Commerce and industry, on the most up-to-date lines, were introduced at every centre. Nobody more admired Grenfell than did King George V. On the day of his Coronation His Majesty drove from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace to press an electric button that would lay the foundation stone of Grenfell's latest institution in Labrador, and, 16 years later, he honoured him with his knighthood.

F W Boreham

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on March 3, 1951.

Image: Wilfrid Grenfell