May 27, 2025

I am so interested and excited about our arrival in Newfoundland, Canada tomorrow. I am especially excited about visiting St. Anthony, a city with healthcare at its very core. For most of its history medicine in the far reaches of Newfoundland, Canada’s eastern most providence had no resemblance to what we now know as preventive care. And just like Newfoundland itself, St. Anthony was late to medical care. But all that would change with the arrival of one man who at only 27 years of age I dare say influenced a city more than any other that I am aware of. What he brought was more than just bandages, this man revolutionized healthcare in this isolated region. And he did it in a way that proved to be far more powerful than medicine alone.

Born in 1865 in Cheshire, England, Wilfred Grenfell was the sort of man who could preach a moving sermon to a congregation one day perform a difficult emergency operation the next and work on building a new schoolhouse in between. He trained to be a Physician in London, but it was his attendance at a talk by the Royal National Mission to deep sea fisherman that changed the course of his life. They needed a doctor, and he volunteered. And just like that he found himself aboard a hospital ship sailing off to the ice bound coast of Northern Newfoundland. He was there to minister to the forgotten fisherman of the North Atlantic. Now when I say hospital ship, don’t picture something sleek and shiny. Grenfell’s first medical vessel was an old, converted fishing boat. His goals were aspirational at best. What he found when he got to St. Anthony shocked him to his core.

Tiny fishing villages, cut off from the rest of the world. People living in dire poverty, suffering from untreated injuries, mass infections, routine childbirth complications, rampant disease, most notably tuberculosis and not even one healthcare provider in the entire territory. The only treatment you could find was old fashion remedies passed down by generations that often times did more harm than good.

Grenfell immediately got to work. Not with scalpels and sutures but with an entire medical mission. He trained nurses, he organized dog sled teams to reach patients in remote areas during the harsh winters, and he built a hospital! He traveled by boat, by horse, by dog sled carrying morphine and medical kits crossing frozen bays. But he didn’t stop at medicine. He established churches, schools, orphanages and cooperatives to share medical knowledge among the people. He raised funds in Britian and America, recruited volunteers and through his efforts changed healthcare on the Labrador Coast.

Today, the people of St. Anthony truly love him for having done so. His impact on this region of the world has become legendary. Let me give you two examples.

There was a time when Grenfell had to amputate a man’s arm on a wooden table on a ship in the middle of a North Atlantic storm. There was no operating theatre, no overhead lighting, no trained assistants, just Grenfell, a fisherman in agony and a ship tossing so hard that the deck became a pangolin. He administered chloroform as best as he could, remember this was in the 1890’s, and he used the ship’s galley table as his operating table. He tied up the fisherman’s arm, he made the cut, and he stitched up before the next wave could throw him against the bulkhead. And, amazingly, the man survived. The fisherman continued to work on a ship with one arm because in Newfoundland you don’t quit, you adapt.

And then there was the famous Ice Pan incident of 1908, that is both inspirational and miraculous.

Grenfell had been called out to a remote village to treat a young boy with a serious illness. It was early Spring. He was traveling by dog sled across a frozen bay. The ice gave way, and the dog sled plunged into the sea. Grenfell managed to get onto a drifting ice pan with a few of his dogs. For 48 hours he drifted into the North Atlantic exposed to hostile wind, hunger and brutal cold. To stay alive, he sacrificed and cut open two of his dogs and wrapped himself in their fur for warmth. A grim but lifesaving decision. He was eventually rescued by a fishing boat, frost bitten and half frozen. Yet as he recovered and eventually reached the village he humbly apologized for the dely. He treated the young boy who was saved from his serious illness.

I am thrilled to visit St. Anthony to learn more about this Physician, missionary, explorer and front-line responder who exemplified how medicine should be practiced.

Thanks for traveling with us.