9 First taste of the New World
It is not my intention to recount all the melancholy privations through which the family struggled, always, by some miracle of inward solace, maintaining a fairly cheerful atmosphere. For nothing ever dampened my father’s belief in the essential business of life, which he held to be the evolution of character. Nor was my mother long cast down by tribulation. Her courage and humour was equal to almost any trial. But this first winter brought her to the point of despair.
Father, it was discovered at the hospital, had an abscess in the lower brain, caused by an injury received years before in a shipwreck. It was decided that an operation, though delicate in the extreme, might save him, but the hope held out was slight indeed. Fortunately for us, the Winnipeg Hospital, though small and under-staffed, was none the less fairly well equipped, and the tiny operating-room under a most able surgeon. In view of the difficulties under which the new hospital had had its rise, it seems fitting to mention its early beginning, and those ‘oldtimers’ who bore the brunt of its inauguration.
It was after the first Riel Rebellion that the need for hospital accommodation was first felt. Many of the volunteers had remained in Winnipeg, and new settlers kept pouring in over the newly opened Dawson trail, and by way of St. Paul. The houses of the town were soon overcrowded, and consequently when sickness broke out the necessity for some place where patients could be properly cared for became apparent.
Accordingly, in 1871 a meeting was called by Governor Archibald to deal with the problem, and among those present were Robert Cunningham, James Ross, Hon. A.G.B. Bannantyne, Hon. Alfred Boyd, and Dr. J.H. O’Donnell. At the meeting, a Board of Health was formed, and steps were taken to begin hospital work. On the 13th of December of the following year the hospital was organized, but it was not until the 14th of May 1875 that Provincial letters of incorporation were taken out—a step rendered necessary by an appeal to the Provincial Government for assistance.
At that time the board of directors consisted of Messrs. George Young, Gilbert McMicken, W. Kennedy, W.C. Clark, Thomas Lusted, G.B. Spence, George Bryce, A.G.B. Bannantyne, J.H. Ashdown, Stewart Mulvy, A.G. Jackson, J.H. O’Donnell, Joseph Royal, J.H. McTavish, and W.G. Fonseca.
The first building occupied by the hospital was owned by Mr. William Harvey, and was situated on the north-west corner of McDermot and Albert Streets, where the once-famed Marriaggi Hotel afterwards stood. This became the Winnipeg General Hospital. The accommodation here was, however, quickly exhausted, and the hospital was moved to other quarters, somewhere in the rear of the present Bank of Montreal, and shortly thereafter to yet another house on Notre Dame Avenue, owned by Dr. Shultz. From there the hospital was transferred to premises owned by Mr. John McTavish, situated on the Red River, south of Broadway Bridge. In 1875 another move was found imperative, and the choice fell on property owned by the late Hon. John Norquay, somewhere on Main Street North. And the sixth move was to a house owned by the hospital, between Bannantyne and McDermot, close to the present location, on land donated by the late A.G.B. Bannantyne. This location was selected with a view to placing the hospital in a section of the city which in time would be most central to the needs of the future. The wisdom of the choice continues unquestioned.
The building here erected accommodated sixteen public-ward patients and four private patients, and had a small operating room. But the hospital had yet another move to make before its final installation in the buildings which formed the nucleus of the present imposing structure. This new ‘flitting’ was altogether unavoidable. With the beginning of the CPR construction the sudden influx of settlers rendered the little hospital inadequate. While arrangements were being made to collect funds for the necessary extensions, the hospital was moved to the Dominion Immigration Hall on Point Douglas Common, which was purchased from the Government for five thousand dollars. In this building what was then considered a complete operating equipment was provided at a cost of seven hundred and sixty-two dollars, and private wards were improvised by screening off portions of the public wards.
The erection of the new hospital, the central portion of the present buildings, was a long and tedious undertaking. It was decided that the lot donated to the institution by the late A.G.B. Bannantyne and A. McDermot was not large enough, and this was exchanged for a block of ground west of Olivia Street, and the adjoining block was purchased from the executors of the McDermot Estate for five thousand dollars. Penelope Street, between these two blocks, was closed, and here the first buildings of the present group was erected. This decision was made in 1882, and the official opening of the Winnipeg General Hospital took place in 1884.
It was to this arduously acquired little hospital, which the old timers saw as a symbol of the height of humanitarian progress in the west, that my poor father was taken that bitter day. His case created something of a sensation. Up to that time no such operation had been attempted in the modest surgery. What was lacking in equipment was earnestly supplied by sheer ability and conscientious goodwill. Certainly no surgeon ever accomplished a more skilful operation, despite his own doubts of the experiment, and the complete scepticism of his assistants. No one, it seems, expected the patient to live. It was in the interest of science, rather than of the fever-wracked form on the operating table, that the brilliant attempt was made. But there was incredible vitality in that pale, slight frame. He not only survived the experiment, but made such a rapid recovery that, ironically enough, it inspired an almost criminal optimism which nearly cost his life. There was certainly no intentional negligence, no one in particular to blame for what happened. Father was cared for as well as the public-ward facilities permitted. But the hospital was crowded. When, therefore, in four weeks’ time, he appeared sufficiently recovered, he was discharged. It was February, and bitterly cold. With his head still swathed in bandages, and no better covering than a threadbare tweed lightcoat, he had to walk over a mile through a gathering storm. As might be expected, what should have been a joyous return, and for which my mother had celebrated with pathetic pride—setting the table with coffee and real cream and rolled Icelandic pancakes—resolved itself into overwhelming tragedy. The severe chill brought on brain fever, and for seven weeks he alternated between wild delirium and terrifying coma.
Mother could never speak of those weeks without a shudder. There was no one to whom she could turn. My aunt, who would have been a tower of strength, had moved away, having fixed upon the United States as a much more progressive country. How, then, was the little family to live? Father had to be nursed night and day, a task almost beyond the strength of one woman during those delirious hours. The landlord was willing enough to wait for his rent, but there was fuel and food and medicine to be bought. She tried to knit, which meant that, in the rare intervals when the patient was quiet and she should have slept, she forced her tired eyes to remain open by dashing cold water on them, kept herself from collapsing by drinking black coffee. As a consequence of these pathetic labours her sight was impaired to such an extent that she eventually lost the use of one eye.
Yet, however hard she drove herself, these efforts would not have kept him alive if the best of men had not come to her assistance and lent her a supply of groceries. This benefactor was a Mr. Fredrickson, an Icelandic small merchant, whom many a family remembers for similar kindness. Another Icelander, a man who worked with father in ‘The Saddlery,’ took up a subscription of fifteen dollars from those poor wage-slaves to defer medical expenses and buy a cord of wood. For these things, mother was deeply grateful, yet I think nothing ever hurt her more. She was the kind of woman who found it easy to give but extremely difficult to receive.
Father’s recovery was, of course, extremely slow. After weeks at home, the doctor decided that he must have better care, and consequently, as soon as he could be moved with safety, father went back to the hospital, this time to remain for three weary months. So soon as these arrangements had been completed mother gave up the house and took three tiny upstairs rooms for herself and the children. Now, at last, she felt free to go to work, in order to pay off those frightening, pyramiding debts. She had the will and the courage, yet how, she asked herself, could it be done, when the younger child was scarcely more than a baby? In this dilemma she was forced to accept a solution that violated her deeply maternal instincts. A dearly beloved cousin of father’s, Malfridur Borgford, offered to adopt the child. It was a cruel decision for mother to make, yet better, perhaps, than shunting the little girl back and forth among strangers who would not consider her best interests. It was a bitter concession to her own helplessness. But then, had not everything been cruelly bitter in this new country? In her despair she tried to reason that, whatever might be her innermost feelings, little Anna would fare better for the sacrifice. She would be loved and conscientiously cared for at the Borgford’s. Indeed, she would be spared the wounding privations which, instinct told her, the small son she was keeping would, perforce, have to bear.
Yes, it was highly sensible to let the child go. So she told herself again and again. It was cold comfort, however, when on the appointed day, from her bleak window she watched the little creature trot gaily away, all unsuspectingly, with her Auntie Malfridur. It was a beautiful spring morning, one of those bright prairie days when the eyes are pained by the reflected brilliance of a whitely golden sun. For the watcher at the window, whose tearful eyes were fixed upon a sturdy little figure marching bravely out into the unequivocal distance, there was no beauty in the dazzling white landscape, no light in the sky.
But grief, like everything else, was a luxury, mother told herself harshly. There was no time for tears. She had work to find—any kind of work. And how gladly she toiled! How proudly and gratefully she counted each dollar that, bit by bit, would cancel those intolerable obligations. Yet what must her feelings have been each morning, when she left to his own devices a little boy of six? A merry little fellow, whose youth was already doomed to premature age and responsibility? Poor little lad, how fortunate that, of all her children, he had the sweetest disposition and the most pliable mind. Gravely, the little boy promised to be good, oh, very, very good. Not to forget to feed the cat, nor to let it annoy the neighbours. In the evening his reward would be a story, a very thrilling story of brave men and maids. Perhaps a fairy tale or two if mamma had much mending to do.
So the months passed. When father came home at last the three rooms were very festive. There were curtains at the windows, and two brand-new chairs! The stove shone like the face of a saint, and fumes of freshly roasted coffee made a joyous incense. And, can you believe it, there were five silver spoons and three china cups on the table!
And so this chapter, which I report from hearsay (though, truth to tell, it seems odd I wasn’t there to glory in the spoons) comes to an end. For the summer was an uneventful interlude in which the invalid kept house with the little son, and gathered strength for renewed battle. In the autumn father was back at the saddlery, and mother, once more confined to the house, was finally launched upon her life-long battle for respectability.
The next year the family moved to a fairly decent brick house on Bushnell Street. And here, at midday, on the 9th of December 1890, I had the bad manners to interrupt my mother in the midst of making headcheese—and for no better reason than to be born.
