FROM AN
ONTARIO
FARM
VOLUME ONE OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A COUNTRY
DOCTOR WHO BECAME A PIONEER IN MODERN PUBLIC HEALTH
WILFORD E. PARK, M.D.

Graduation, 1927

DR. WILFORD E. PARK
Graduation, 1927
University of Toronto


WILFORD EDISON PARK, M. D.

(1901-1985)

This summary was prepared for the memorial service
for Dr. Park held at Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2, 1985.

Dr. Wilford E. Park was born on March 27, 1901 in Fair Ground, Ontario, Canada. He died on February 19, 1985 in Phoenix, Arizona and was buried in Sun City, Arizona.

He is survived by his wife, Dr. Evelyn Hartman Park, of Prescott and Sun City, Arizona; daughter Betty Ponder, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada; and sons Douglas Park, of Cupertino, California; Robert Park, of Poynette, Wisconsin; James Park, and Warren Park, both of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

He is also survived by a brother, Rev. Clifford G. Park, of London, Ontario, Canada.

His eleven grandchildren are: Linda Neilson, Jennifer Scott, Kevin Park, Renee Mahan, Donavon Park, Robin Park-Doob, Mischa Park-Doob, Ian Park, Catherine Park, Jonathan Park, and Daniel Park.

His seven great-grandchildren are: Jason Rhinelander, Leta Scott, Michael Scott, Jennifer Park, Carrie Park, Danielle Mahan, and Charise Mahan.

Dr. Park earned his medical degree from the University of Toronto in 1927. He was elected to membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honorary Medical Society in 1925.

After being in general practice in Brownsville, Ontario for thirteen years, he moved his family of 6 to Whitby, Ontario in January, 1942 and joined the medical staff at the shell filling plant at Ajax, Ontario. While there he did pioneering work in the prevention of TNT poisoning. From 1945-1949 he was Director of Health Services for the Atomic Energy Project at Chalk River and Hospital Administrator for Deep River, Ontario.

In late 1949, he moved his family (now seven in all) to Minneapolis, Minnesota and became Director of Industrial Health in the Minnesota Department of Health. From 1952 until his retirement in 1972, he served the Minneapolis Health Department first as Chief, Occupational Health Service and later as Director of Adult Health. His duties included protecting workers' health in the workplace and the evaluation and inspection of nursing homes in Minneapolis. He also served as Lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. He was one of the founders of the Minnesota Academy of Occupational Medicine and Surgery, an organization of physicians specializing in occupational medicine, serving as its first president. In 1973, he moved to Arizona with his wife, Evelyn.

Dr. Park was a member of many professional organizations and served on numerous community organizations on the city, county and state levels in Minnesota. He was listed in Who's Who in the Midwest and Who's Who in the West.


FROM AN ONTARIO FARM
Volume One of the Autobiography of Dr. Wilford E. Park

-- CONTENTS --

        Preface
Introduction

SECTION ONE         CHILDHOOD DAYS AND EARLY MANHOOD
        Chapter One FAMILY BACKGROUND AND ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING          1
Chapter Two FATHER REMEMBERS 11
Chapter Three VERY EARLY YEARS 15
Chapter Four LATER PRESCHOOL YEARS 20
Chapter Five ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YEARS 25
Chapter Six HIGH SCHOOL YEARS 41
Chapter Seven        THREE YEARS AS A FARMER 49

SECTION TWO         YEARS OF PREPARATION
        Chapter Eight          UNIVERSITY YEARS AND INTERNSHIP               61
Chapter Nine YEARS IN GENERAL PRACTICE 81

SECTION THREE         YEARS OF OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE IN CANADA
        Chapter Ten YEARS IN AJAX AND WHITBY, ONTARIO   96
Chapter Eleven        YEARS IN DEEP RIVER AND AT CANADA'S ATOMIC
ENERGY PROJECT AT CHALK RIVER, ONTARIO                        
114


PREFACE

by the author's son

After my father's death in 1985, I assumed responsibility for the publication of his autobiography. From An Ontario Farm is the first of two volumes about Dr. Park's career in medicine. It covers the period from early childhood through his adult professional life in Canada. Volume II of the autobiography, A Modern Public Health Pioneer, covers his professional career as a public health official, first at the Minnesota Department of Health and later at the Minneapolis Public Health Department. His main duties included protection of the individual's health in the work place and health care of the elderly through the maintenance of high standards in the city's nursing homes. Dr. Park's original title for his autobiography as a whole was Autobiography of a Pioneer in the Two Fields of Occupational Medicine and Active Nursing Care. "Active Nursing Care" refers to his approach to caring for the aged in nursing homes.

The reader should be aware that Dr. Park has chosen to write an account of his professional rather than personal life, with the exception of the section about his childhood and youth. Although the writing progresses chronologically, not much reference is made to specific dates. Dr. Park recounts a number of incidents from his life in the form of isolated vignettes, many beginning with "One time..." or "I remember once..." and consisting of only one or two paragraphs. These recollections, taken as a whole, present an interesting and unique capsule of life in the first half of this century.

Dr. Park has separated his account into three general sections:

Childhood and Early Manhood. This includes a colorful description of his childhood growing up on the farm.

Years of Preparation. In this section he paints a picture of life at the University of Toronto in the 1920's, and what life was like for a country doctor in rural Ontario in the 1930's (including the frustrations of the lack of effective medicines and surprisingly primitive treatments).

Years of Occupational Medicine in Canada. This includes his years as chief medical officer, first at a shell filling plant during World War II, then at Canada's first atomic energy project from the last year of the war through the end of 1949.

This memoir represents the chronicle of the achievements of an important pioneer in the field of public health. The background of his early years, college years and time as a country doctor are all preliminary preparation for the major accomplishments of his medical career in protection of worker's health and improvement of nursing home standards in the care of the elderly. Dr. Park believed in the importance of preserving a record of his life and career and hoped that his work might benefit others in the future. His writing is occasionally technical; here he is speaking mainly to his peers in the medical profession. I am pleased to enable this autobiography to reach the public.

WARREN A. PARK



INTRODUCTION

These reminiscences are being recorded chiefly for my children, other relatives and everyone else who may be interested.

They necessarily will not document all of the events and influences which have happened during my lifetime. Neither will they contain much information about other members of my family. They will essentially be relatively common experiences of a growing child and a young man in the early years of the twentieth century, followed by some possibly unique developments in adult life.

Chapter One contains an excerpt from my brother Clifford's memoirs. It is inserted, not only because of its content, but because it will give the readers some insight into his character and the precision of his diction. He was my closest companion for many years and his influence is immeasurable.

W. E. P.             


SECTION ONE

CHILDHOOD DAYS AND EARLY MANHOOD

CHAPTER ONE

FAMILY BACKGROUND AND ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING

Since I was born about one year and seven weeks after the birth of my brother Clifford, we, of course, were very close companions during our childhood days. This means that our environment and experiences in those years were essentially the same.

My brother Clifford, in the year 1980, has written his memoirs under the title, "Eighty Years of Living." So rather than write a duplicate of those years, events and settings, with his permission I am including here, in toto, that portion of his manuscript which is applicable to both of us.

It is appropriate, as he has done, to document our ancestry first. In order to make his write-up understandable, as a part of my background, it is suggested that the reader substitute, in his mind, the word our wherever the word my appears, if appropriate.


"EIGHTY YEARS OF LIVING"

by

REV. CLIFFORD G. PARK

Robert Browning - "How good is man's life, the mere living!"

What a fascinating eighty years of living have been mine! If my life is half as interesting to read about as it has been to live it, this light-hearted sketch will not have been written in vain.

Historians, to be sure, tell us that of the billions of people who have inhabited our planet, only about five thousand have accomplished enough to merit remembrance. I certainly do not belong in that select company, but I hope my career has been interesting and significant enough to make it worthwhile to pass on these memoirs to friends and members of my family.

Genealogy -

To begin with, the Park lineage can be traced as far back as the 6th Century A.D., and we can take modest pride in the fact that a tiny trickle of royal blood, derived from ancient English monarchs, still courses in our veins. This tincture of royalty, however, was derived by marriage from the female side. The direct male ancestry of the Park line is traceable back to Robert Parke of Gestingthorpe, Essex County, England, whose death is recorded in 1400 A.D. The seventh in line - Robert Parke (1580-1665) of Acton County, Suffolk, came to Boston, America on the good ship Arabella, with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630 (acting as Secretary for Governor Winthrop of Connecticut during the voyage.) Robert finally settled in Old Mystic, Connecticut. Many of the Parks of America trace their origin back to him, and in

1


1930 a bronze plaque was erected to his memory in the Old Mystic Cemetery, a cemetery now maintained by the Daughters of the American Revolution. My brother, Dr. Wilford E. Park, and his wife, Dr. Evelyn Hartman Park, visited the cemetery in 1961 and took pictures which he has preserved among his detailed and extensive records of the Park family.

The above Robert Parke married Alice Tompson, a widow with three daughters. One of these daughters, named Dorothy, married Robert Parke's son, Thomas (who was born in Hitchim, England in 1616). Dorothy Tompson had inherited a royal lineage through her mother, and it is from a son Robert, born to Dorothy and Thomas, that our descent is traced and our claim to a royal ancestry is made.

Dorothy's line of regal descent - sometimes through kings and queens, sometimes through blood relatives of reigning monarchs, provides us a background of which we can be justly proud. Her lineage is traceable back through eleven British kings to Cerdic, King of the West Saxons (519-534 A.D.). In her direct line of descent we find Egbert. first king of all England (827-836) and Alfred the Great who reigned 871-901, and of whom an historian has written, "No nobler monarch ever sat upon a throne." Through related lines, it is possible to name 69 kings and queens of England, Scotland and France with whom she possessed some blood relationship. Two examples were Malcolm 1st of Scotland (slayer of Macbeth) and the Emperor Charlemagne. Another was Eleanor of Acquitaine, wife of Louis VII of France and Henry II Plantagenet of England. Eleanor was the mother of two other kings: Richard the Lion-hearted and King John Lochland.

The 1981 - Vol. XVIII, No. 1 News Letter of The Parke Society, Incorporated in Connecticut, documents the ancestry of Diana Princess of Wales, England, back to Dorothy (3) Parke, daughter of Thomas (2) Parke, and his wife, Dorothy Tompson.

Returning to our direct descent from Thomas (2) and Dorothy Tompson, the Park line is as follows:


       Thomas Parke 2 Dorothy Tompson
Robert Parke 3 Born 1650 at New London, Conn.
Hezekiah Parke 4 Born 1695, Preston, Conn.
Silas Parke 5 Born Preston, Conn.
Amos Park 6 Born 1749 - becomes the first Canadian. After becoming a physician in Palmyra, N.Y. state, he came to Canada to Niagra-on-the-Lake in Ontario about 1780.
Halsey Park 7 Born in 1779 in Walpole, Ontario. Died 1848. Buried in Hagersville, Ontario, Canada.
Philip Bender Park Born in Lyons Creek, Ontario in 1830. Died 1917. Buried at Cultus, Ontario. He became a farmer at Fair Ground in Houghton township, married Margaret Watson (born 1836, died 1915). Had eight children of whom the youngest was Watson. Two daughters and five sons survived to maturity: Agnes, Ezra, John, Michael, Mary, Will and Watson.
Watson Park 9 Born at Fair Ground, Ontario, Canada on March 12, 1874. Died March 10th, 1956. Buried at Cultus. In 1899 he married Mary Emma Lura Cutler (Nov. 11, 1879-Dec. 31, 1935), the younger daughter of Hugh Edgar Cutler and Mehetabel Edmonds.
Clifford Gordon Park 10 Born February 5, 1900, in Fair Ground, Ontario.
Wilford Edison Park Born March 27, 1901 in Fair Ground, Ontario.
Montie Harold Park Born October 13, 1902 in Fair Ground, Ontario. Died Nov. 18, 1983. Buried at Cultus, Ontario.
Leta Gertrude Park Born August 8, 1904 in Fair Ground, Ontario. Died January 23, 1978. Buried in Utica, Michigan.
2

My Childhood

Weighing in as a "preemie" of 4-1/2 pounds on February 5th, 1900, I doubt if my birth caused much excitement, even in a hamlet as small as Fair Ground. This obscure little village in the center of Houghton township, Norfolk County, incidently, had derived its name from the fact that the township fair grounds were situated on the northwest corner of the intersection, where the annual township Fall Fair was held. Township council meetings were held in its town hall. My actual birthplace (as it was also of my brothers and sister) was the home of my grandfather, Philip Bender Park, who must have early moved to his farm a half-mile south of the main corner- perhaps a century and a quarter ago--to begin the task of establishing domicile in a wooded wilderness.

It was my good fortune to be born of sturdy stock. With a paternal grandfather of English heritage, a paternal grandmother of Irish parentage, a maternal grandfather of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, and a maternal grandmother whose parents were Scottish (whose own mother, my maternal great grandmother, could still speak a bit of Gaelic and survived into my early childhood), I was nonetheless a trueblue Canadian of the fourth generation, with my roots firmly planted in the soil of this great land where so many blood-streams have intermingled to produce a citizenry worthy to stand beside the best the world provides.

For the first eight years of my life our family lived in the northern half of my grandfather's frame house, located a half-mile south of Fair Ground. Father's elder brother John and his wife Effie and son and daughter Stanley and Vera lived in a more pretentious house on the corner farm just north of us. Stanley and Vera were to be older school mates and play-mates of mine until their removal to Brantford before I was fully grown. But my grandfather's home was a good place to spend one's early childhood. One of my greatest memories is that of looking out my grand- mother's bedroom window watching my father working on the addition which was to make our own family accommodation more adequate. As I think of it now, I realize that our bedrooms were small, but the combined living-dining room in my grandfather's part of the house was very spacious, and the big box stove in the middle of the room had a woodbox behind it which seemed positively huge to a small boy to whom early befell the duty of keeping that woodbox filled. Above this part of the house was a very low attic, a child's haunt of mystery, atrociously hot in summer and inhabited by big black hornets which were, fortunately, too sleepy and apathetic to attack anyone.

3


In his earlier days, my grandfather must have been something of an athlete. He could do a standing broad jump nine feet backwards, and on one notable occasion, he walked the fifty miles from Walpole to Fair Ground in one day, arriving ahead of the stage coach! But he was not only a man of stamina, but a pioneer of vision and resourcefulness. With five strong growing sons to help him, he cleared his land and planned his homestead wisely - building two good barns and a commodious house and planting two acres of orchard with space for a garden. I remember the well-chosen varieties of fruit trees - apple trees, which included astrachans, talman sweets, russets, greenings, kings and northern spies. And there were other fruits as well: sour red cherries, small blue plums and small peaches - all a tasty treat then, but a far cry from the big luscious varieties we know today. In season also, the garden produced black and red currants, strawberries, red and black raspberries and long black thimbleberries. I can see the thimbleberry patch yet - down beside the outdoor privy, beyond the little smoke house where hams and bacon sides were cured, and the old fire-place where my grandmother made soft soap from fats and the lye she leached from ashes. Nearer the house stood the outside cellar, the soft water cistern and the well at the back door, from which water always pure and cold could be enjoyed by anyone energetic enough to operate the pump handle. And never far away was the woodpile and its axe from which wood for the kitchen cook stove or the living room box-stove could be secured as required. Out front on the roadside stood two huge balm-of-gilead trees, redolent with the healthy odour that distinguishes their species. Across the road the little creek wound its way through a neighbour's swamp, down to the old swimming hole which we boys had created by damming up the creek, and in which we learned to swim the dog-paddle without instruction. From that swamp on warm summer evenings, the frogs would lift their voices to rival the birds in a chorus of nature that was always music to our ears.

In spite of the usual childhood diseases, we had a healthy and certainly a happy childhood. I remember how ecstatic I was as a tiny lad on Christmas morning to find that Santa Claus had left a handful of nuts and hard candies in my stocking, an orange, a top, and a whistle, as my share of his Christmas largess. We children were up early before the wood stove was alight, and our bare feet chilled on the linoleum floor - but that in no way detracted from the thrill of our Christmas morning, nor dulled our parent's delight in our happiness. I never had any sense of economic deprivation as a child.

Indeed I shall never feel so economically well-to-do as I did as a little lad of six or seven, when my father brought home to live with us an English girl from the Barnardo (?) Homes. They arrived after the usual evening meal, and mother gave her bread and milk for supper. I remember how my heart swelled with pride as I reflected how wonderful it must be to enjoy our plentiful and delicious bread and milk after the Sparten diet I assumed she had had to endure at the Home. (I still like bread and milk, especially if I am a bit under the weather.)


Actually we were not quite as well-to-do as I assumed. My grandmother found it necessary to dry apples each winter on a big screen over the kitchen stove to earn some extra cash for the store. How else could she have secured the sugar and flour for the delectable cookies which established her as a small boy's favourite grandma? President Roosevelt in one of his fireside chats, declared that "the people of America were one-third ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed." Some wag commented that "this country was founded by people who were ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-fed, and didn't know it!" To a considerable degree that applied to us, even though we ranked as one of the more affluent families. With our poorly insulated wooden houses,

4


our wood stoves and coal oil lamps, lacking both a basement and inside plumbing, we were by today's standards, ill-housed. And we had little to spend on clothes. Even at 19 years of age when I started to Albert College to train for the Christian ministry, I had only one suit and its sleeves had already started to fray and my mother had to turn in the edges of the cuffs to hide the worn spots. But we were never ill-fed, for we were active farmers producing the bulk of our own food in our own fields and gardens. For many years my father grew six or eight acres of potatoes a year - (How skillful I became in hoeing out the weeds and picking off the potato bugs with pail and paddle!) We butchered our own hogs and milked our own cows, sending the milk to the local cheese factory, shepherded our own sheep, had enough chickens and hens to keep us in eggs, and some geese and turkeys to provide a special treat for Christmas and Thanksgiving. In winter we felt no hardship to breakfast regularly on buckwheat pancakes along with fried ham or bacon, and maple syrup to top off the final helping.

Besides, food prices were unbelievably low. In 1908 the Cutlers moved to a new cement block house a stone's throw west, beside the little white Methodist Church, and my father and mother took over from them the rambling old country hotel which stood on the south-west corner of the intersection in order to board the workmen employed at the new sawmill which had been erected a quarter mile east on my uncle John's property. During that period, one butcher offered Dad all the hind-quarter beef he could use at a standard price of eight cents a pound!

But I count it part of my good fortune to have been born and reared on the farm. Not that I do not recall some anxious moments from my early childhood. For instance, there was that time I waded across the neighbouring creek when it was swollen with the melting snows of Springtime, and promptly came down with a bad case of croup. A neighbouring woman (Mrs. Mel Williams) came to sit out the night with me and administer hourly a concoction which didn't taste bad at all - anyway, I was better the next morning. Only years later did I learn the medicine was a mixture of honey and urine! At least it was harmless, but I won't try to recommend it for anyone suffering from croup today.

And then there was that day Wilford and I undertook to kill a turtle not much bigger than a watch. We found it in the creek and had heard mother say its shell would make a nice ornament, so we decided to cut its head off. After argument, I conceded Wilford the privilege of wielding the axe and he cut off the end of the first finger of my left hand! It didn't hurt much, but it bled profusely, and I pictured myself bleeding to death. I let out a yell that must have been audible a half a mile away. Just then mother was sitting on the throne in the old three-holer beyond the smokehouse. I ran to show her my bleeding hand, but wisely she tried to calm me and emerged to bandage the finger as quickly as she could. I am sure that was one day mother needed no prune juice or epsom salts! Care and Zam-buck ointment healed the wound but that first finger has always been a little shorter than its mate on the other hand.

Of course there were amusing moments too, and Dad seemed to have more than his share of them. But one that tickled us most had to do with his regular Saturday night bath. We were accustomed to heat the bath water in big kettles on the kitchen stove and pour it into the big tin tub Dad had made with a wooden

5


frame for our weekly ablutions. However, we were accustomed to tap the maple trees around the house each Spring and boil down the sap into syrup in the big pots on the stove. This particular night Dad mistook the partially boiled sap for his bath-water and used it for his bath - quite the sweetest bath he ever took, I am sure, and probably unrivaled in anyone else's experience. But maybe not an unfitting external accompaniment for the inner good nature that was so conspicuously his!

It was from the home south of Fair Ground that I started to school at six years of age. I didn't like it and came home at the first recess saying I wasn't going to go. Of course I had to go back, but I remember lying awake one night wishing for the time I would be done with school. Little did I realize then how much I would learn to love school; nor did I dream it would be twenty-one years later that I would finally graduate from theological college and be done with the class room forever.

I did not have to be long at school before I learned to enjoy reading. Having devoured the Henry and Horatio Alger books on our own shelves by ten or eleven years of age, I cast about for something of deeper interest and found it in a book in Aunt Effie's library. It was Robinson Crusoe, and the book proved so fascinating that I stole over to read it for hours at a time without telling anyone at home where I was going. This latter indiscretion led to the only real spanking I can remember my father ever giving me, and punishment did nothing to warp my ego or dampen my enthusiasm for reading, but it did teach me to be more considerate of my responsibility to others.

During the four years Dad and Mother operated the boarding house for about twenty millworkers - until the mill characteristically burned down when the available timber was exhausted - they continued their regular farming and nearly worked them selves to death trying to carry two jobs at once. Meanwhile, I continued to attend the local public school a quarter mile north of our house, and did what I could to help on the farm.

I had done rather well at public school and at twelve years of age I had passed my High School entrance exams - rather young, but then I had a father who had done it all at eleven years of age, and had come first of the twenty-six township students who had written their entrance exams.

But now with the mill gone and the boarders gone as well, and Dad able to give full time to his farming (plus some extra time spent barbering on Saturday nights, and his not too exacting responsibilities as Clerk of the Seventh Division Court of Houghton township), I could be more readily spared. So September 1912 saw me a student in the high school at Vienna, a village eight miles west of Fair Ground. Vienna high school had only about thirty pupils, but excellent teachers, and in three years I had finished high school with what was called a Normal School Entrance Certificate (one language short of matriculation). The high school arrangement had been for me to board in Vienna from Monday noon to Friday noon and return home each weekend. Incredible as it seems now, I was able to get the four nights' accomodation and thirteen meals a week for $2.00 per week, and if I remember correctly, I was paying only $2.50 a week when I finished high school In June, 1915. Inflation was not a significant problem then.

Now it was Wilford's turn to go to Vienna to high school, and when he finished, Montie's turn, then Leta's. So, it turned out that from 1915 to 1918 I was at home again, giving now all my time to working with Dad on the farm. At fifteen I was too young to enlist, and anyway, as a farm boy, I was excused from military service

6


because engagement in agriculture and food production was deemed an essential part of the war effort. In that rural setting, with radio not yet invented, without a daily newspaper, and as far as I know, none of my schoolmates in the Armed Forces, the War did not seem to touch our lives very closely. But I do vividly remember the joy of that memorable November 11th, 1918 when the whistles began to blow to announce that the Armistice had been signed and the war was over. That afternoon my father and I were shingling a new shed in our shirt sleeves, and I doubt if we have had as warm a November 11th since.

My formal education was soon to begin again, but I have never regretted the three and half year interlude in my academic career. I was at home at a time when I was sorely needed. We lived in the corner house but farmed two farms of our own, one a half-mile south and the other a half-mile west, and worked and rented land as well. Our farming was done the hard way, by hand, or by primitive horse-drawn machinery. I had as yet hardly seen a tractor or a milking machine. Corn binders and hay bailers were still a foreign curiosity belonging only to more affluent farmers, and an automobile was still out of the question. We took the cows and the horses (eight of them) down the road to pasture at night, and it was fun to ride one of the horses bare-back, set the dog on the other seven, and go down the road like a charge of cavalry. No wonder pedestrians leaped out of the way as we passed, and I am afraid the look on their faces often betrayed an emotion other than fear. But after getting tossed off on my head by the horse, I was less prepared to ride without bridle.

By chance, around Christmas, 1917, after I had finished school and Wilford was now attending High School in Vienna, Montie upset a lantern in the straw mow and the whole barn went up in flames. He was lucky to escape from the blazing inferno, and neighbours helped drive the cattle from the shed and lead the horses from their stalls so that only a sow and a colt died in the blaze. I happened to be away and was sorry to have missed the excitement, traumatic though the loss seemed at the moment. But luckily Dad had already contemplated building a new barn and it was now only necessary to hasten the project. Already Dad and I had spent two winters cutting off the seven acres of virgin bush at the rear of the west 50, bringing home the long straight timbers to be shaped into beams for the new barn, and cutting the others into logs to be taken to the mill to be sawn into lumber for sheeting and siding. Chain saws were not yet in use, and it brought my father and me very close together spending those two winters on the opposite ends of a cross-cut saw.

The third winter (1917-1918) 1 spent in Brantford working at Adams Wagon factory, and boarding with Aunt Effie, Stanley and Vera (Uncle John having died of cancer in 1916). They moved to Brantford a few years before where Stanley was a motor mechanic and Vera a school teacher.

In the Spring of 1918, 1 returned home to do the farming while Dad and an experienced carpenter worked on preparing the timbers for the barn, shaping them with a broad-axe, and mortising the ends for the raising. The raising was a big event. Neighbours gathered for miles around to lend a hand with ropes and pike-poles and their own strong backs. I was proud to have a part in it. When the frame was in place, I helped with the sheeting and shingling and painting. But never unwilling to engage in a harmless prank, I caught the neighbour's rooster who was too ardently visiting our hens without an invitation, and I painted him a brilliant red from comb to tail. Understandably, the neighbour wasn't too pleased to see his rooster so brilliantly bedecked. He complained, "The hens didn't know him!"

7


And lest readers might assume I never engaged in any other mischief, I will confess that one Halloween night, after Wilford and I had gone dutifully upstairs to bed, we climbed out our bedroom window, unbeknown to Dad and cut the chain securing a neighbour's gate - which he boasted was prank-proof, and deposited the gate in his own haymow where he found it not too long after. When someone discussed the disappearance of the gate next day, Dad remarked that his boys were innocently in bed. The other said: "Don't be too sure!", but happily nobody pressed the matter any further.

However, the legacy of my years on the farm were both great and positive. My character, my habits, and my outlook on life were shaped and matured by these years in the great outdoors. I learned to enjoy Nature, and feel at home with Nature's God. The fields, the trees, and growing things, the animals, the sun and the rain, and the open sky, the stars and the glory of the sunset made me look beyond the things that are seen to the wisdom and love of their Mighty Maker. As a farmer, dealing every day with the forces at work in our world, I was an existentialist before I had ever heard that word for Sartre's now popular philosophy. But I was a religious existentialist, convinced that behind the seen and heard, and the known, stands invisibly a wise creator and a loving God. Perhaps that is why I have always loved the hymn:

This is my Father's world, And to my listening ears All nature sings And round me rings The music of the spheres. In the rustling grass I hear him pass: He speaks to me everywhere.

I learned too, from years on the farm, that work comes before play, and I think I would have agreed with F. R. Barry who told the students of St. Andrew's University in his rectorial address - "There may be something that is more fun than hard work, but I do not know what it is." Anyway, I had plenty of it. One summer I got up at a quarter to five each morning to fetch the cows and horses from pasture, get the feeding and the milking done, and after a gargantuan breakfast, be ready for the day's work in the fields. The ability to work hard and consistently and do it happily, has stayed with me all my life, and doubtless has been a major secret of my success in life.

FAMILY BACKGROUND AND ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING (CONTINUED)

Now that you have read Clifford's description of our childhood environment, I want to add a few small details which he left out.

The little creek, which Clifford mentions in the swamp across the road, emerged from Uncle John's farm, where it adjoined grandfather's farm, at the road. The creek there crossed the road and flowed in a south-westerly direction into the adjoining farm on the south side of the swamp. It was under the bridge across this creek, on the road, where we found the small turtles mentioned by Clifford, in about two inches of water.

Clifford's reference to our swimming hole, in the creek across the road, brings to mind our improvised water wings, consisting of a couple of pieces of small logs extracted from our woodpile. Across these we had nailed a leather strap. To swim

8


we lay in the water with the strap across and under our chests. The floating wood held us up and we were free to flail with our arms in learning to swim.

The swamp across the road from grandfather's house used to have beautiful blue flowers in it, which we called flags. In later summer evenings, all over this swamp there were glittering flashes of light which we found came from fireflies. We caught some of these flying insects, and even in captivity, they would periodically cause their abdomens to glow momentarily. We experimented by crushing some of them, and we found that their tissues, when crushed and spread out, continued to glow for a time in the dark.

The ditch beside the road next to grandfather's fence grew lots of cattails. When dry, we sometimes cut some of them and dipped them in coal oil (kerosene), then lit them and paraded with the torches at night.

From the road grandfather's home property was entered through a small gate. There was a front door in the house which was seldom used, that opened immediately into the living room (which also served as the dining room). Most traffic was through the door on the south side of the house, which opened into the kitchen. Between the kitchen and the living room was a narrow pantry that took up most of the space.

Clifford has mentioned most of the buildings on the property. Behind the residential area was the barnyard, which was quite large, with a fence around it, enclosing the farm buildings. On the south of the residential property, the barnyard was connected with the road by a wide lane, with a gate at the road. Farm animals had access to this lane. This lane also contained the piles of wood used to heat the house. Some of the fruit trees, mentioned by Clifford, were on the north side behind the house and some were on the south side of the lane. Most of the garden was also on the south side of this lane.

There were a few more fruit trees which Clifford did not mention. There was a crabapple tree which supplied small apples for jelly. There was also a fall apple which was dark red in color which we called wine apples because of the color. I remember too a small, very sweet pear which was russet in color. It may have been an ancestor, or relative, of the Bosc pear. Winternellis pear appears to be identical. Every year some of the apples were taken to the cider mill where they were crushed and the apple juice brought back in barrels. Some of this cider eventually became cider vinegar.

In front of grandfather's residence was a lawn of sorts, bordered on the north by lilac trees. There was no lawn mower so the grass was kept under control with a scythe. At one point over the fence, at the road, was an elevated platform called the milkstand. On it every morning the milk cans were placed, where they were picked up by the driver of a horse-drawn wagon with a flat top, and taken along with other supplies of milk to the local cheese factory. The milk cans were later returned to the milk-stand with some whey in them, which was used for pig feed.

Grandfather's barnyard was connected with the fields on the farm by a lane which was entered through a gate on the south side of the barnyard. This lane for some distance ran along the eastern border of the garden toward the south. Later the lane turned to the east and ran all the way to the eastern limits of the farm, giving access to each field on either side. The gates to each field were kept closed

9


except for the fields used for pasturing animals. The cows when admitted into the lane at the barnyard end, found their own way to pasture, and returned by themselves to be milked, every evening. One feature about the farm in those early days was that all of the fences were either stump fences or zigzag rail fences.

I recall one time, when we were in the attic of grandfather's house, we became curious about two smooth pieces of narrow wood which were attached to the rafters with one end of each bent in a curve. Much later these pieces of wood turned up as the runners of a sleigh which Dad built for us.

Clifford in his comments on the burning down of our barn referred to the loss of a sow and a colt. On the next weekend, when I was home from school, Dad told me of seeing the sow run out of the burning barn with the grease bubbling out of her back like bacon in a frying pan. He said she was so desperate with pain that she turned around and ran back into the fire. Later in my diary I found that the date of the fire was December 18, 1917.

Later I learned that Dad had no fire insurance on the barn, but he said his neighboring farmers and friends got together a purse containing $700.00 and gave it to him.

I remember when the new barn was being built that Dad consulted us boys about a name for the barn. We suggested Golden Glow and it bore that name on its western side as long as it was standing thereafter.



10


Wilford and Clifford
Wilford Park (left) and Clifford Park (right)
photo taken in 1904

Watson Park
WATSON PARK
(1874-1956)
at about 21 years of age
(father of Clifford, Wilford,
Montie and Leta Park)


Watson, Lura and children
(back row:) Watson, Lura, Clifford
(front row:) Leta, Montie, Wilford

(note from Clifford:)
"Clifford was home on the farm at the time the picture was taken.
The color and weariness in his eyes show how hard he had been working!"

Philip Bender Park home
Fair Ground, Ontario
Home of Philip Bender Park
Birthplace of the family
of Watson and Lura Park
(Clifford, Wilford, Montie and Leta)

The house is now renovated beyond recognition. Watson's family took over the Cutler Hotel at the corner in Fair Ground in 1908 in order to board the workmen of the new sawmill.

CHAPTER TWO

FATHER REMEMBERS

It seems appropriate, at this stage, to record some family events which took place before I was born, and which were told to us by my father, Watson Park. These stories are memorable sagas, carried over from my boyhood days. No attempt will be made to record them in chronological order nor to relate them to each other,

My father was born in a shanty in one of the backward townships in Ontario, Canada. He didn't remember much about the shanty, but he was told that it served for a home for about seven years, while a house was being built to replace the one which was burned down.

My father was the youngest of the family of eight. Two circumstances stood out in his early childhood. One was when they carried his six-year old sister Auzuba away in a white casket, bearing waving plumes of white ostrich feathers. She had died of diptheria. The other event happened when he was three years old. One morning at mealtime he found himself looking at two rounded objects, each covered by a dreadful black ring, where his breakfast had always come from. With a sinking heart he turned away forever and thereafter he had to get his milk from a cup. Years afterward he learned that he had been nursed unduly long to minimize the chance of another pregnancy. He was then told that the black rings had been ink applied by his mother.

One evening my father went with his parents, Philip Bender Park and Margaret Park, to call on one of the neighbors, who had a reputation for being dirty. When they arrived they found the untidy woman of the house, lying in bed with the one-time white sheet pulled up, so that her bare feet were sticking out in the warm air. Between her toes were dried remnants of cow manure and mud from the barnyard. The wall beside the bed was covered with stains of tobacco juice, because the old lady liked to chew it in bed. She jumped out of bed, happy as a lark. She was so glad to see her friends that she sat down, in her night gown at the old organ, and played and sang for an hour. She could really sing and play too, although she couldn't read a note of music.

Boyhood days, for father, centered around the farm, the school and the church. The old frame schoolhouse was not too tightly constructed, and the Schoolmaster's eyesight was not good either. So sometimes a boy got away with the use of a knot hole, instead of going outside to the special building set aside for toilet purposes.

Father attended public school with his brother William, who was one year older. Father and his brother William tried the entrance examinations together, along with twenty-four others in the township. The two of them came out the best in the group, with my father getting the highest marks.

My father had a remarkable memory. When he wrote the examination in history, he wrote down word for word what the condensed history book contained, and the examiner certified that it wasn't copied from the book, because he stood over him and watched him do it, much to his own amazement.

11


My father's brother William went on to high school and became a public school teacher, and earned a salary of $350.00 a year, on which he lived and raised a family.

My father did not get any advanced education except a little high school work taken in Public School.

Father remembered another occasion when he demonstrated his remarkable memory. In Sunday School the pupils were engaged in a competition to see who could learn and recite the greatest number of bible verses. This competition father easily won, by reciting from memory the whole of the gospel of St. John.

When father was a baby, he had a couple of bad experiences, which of course he didn't remember, but he recalled having been told about them. His parents told him that, when he was a baby, he occasionally had fits, and got blue in the face. One day when he had one of these spells, his sister Mary picked him up from his crib and ran outside with him. In passing through the door she struck his head on the side of the door and nearly killed him. On another occasion my father was rescued from the white-faced mare which had found him out of doors lying in his crib. She had picked him up in her teeth, with a grip on the clothing in the middle of the stomach, and was swinging him back and forth.

One day father recalled that a stranger came to see my grandfather. He found my father and his brother William, as boys, standing together. He said, "Where is your father?" Father's brother Will promptly said, "He is in the backhouse." How well I remember that ancient building. Even in my day it was quite stable with accommodations for four people at once. At the sides between the upright studs were pockets for old newspapers, because toilet paper was unheard of when I was a child. There was a special compartment close to the end hole, which my grandfather always used. This compartment my grandfather used as a spittoon while he sat on the toilet chewing tobacco. I remember this compartment had a layer of dark-brown coating on it one half inch thick.

In my father's family the boys had to help do the farm work early in life. One day father and one of his brothers were driving a pair of yoked steers which were pulling a stoneboat, on which they were riding. It was early spring, with some snow still on the ground, in patches. They were unable to control the steers and they ran the stoneboat under a large stump, which was propped up by a rail. The stone- boat, with my father still on it, came up short against the rail. Fortunately the rail held in the frozen ground or the stump would have fallen and crushed him.

One time grandfather sent one of the boys to the cider mill with a load of apples. The boy drove along the strange road until he approached a jog in the road. He could see the fence across the road, in front of him, so without going farther he turned around and came back home and announced that he could not go any farther, because he came to the end of the road. Grandfather was so angry that he turned the team around and whipped the horses to a run as he tore off for the cider mill himself.

One day two of my father's brothers, when they were still boys, drove a team of horses with a wagonload of grain to the gristmill. When they reached the millpond they realized that the horses were thirsty, so they drove them to the edge of the millpond to drink. The heavy load, on the downgrade, kept pushing the horses deeper

12


into the water. Soon the horses were struggling in deep water with the heavy wagon pulling them under. The boys scrambled to shore but the horses were drowned in the millpond.

Grandfather and grandmother were faithful supporters of the little Methodist Church which was located on the corner of grandfather's farm. Grandfather for many years was class-leader in that church. Father said the congregation could not afford a janitor, so his mother cleaned the church for nothing. Many a time he said he had seen her on her hands and knees scrubbing the tobacco-juice stains off the old wooden floor. The church building was eventually moved to a new location. One of the neighbors was so angry about it that she wouldn't attend that church again.

There was one old white-haired man who was called Daddy White. He used to attend the Methodist Church and when he felt blessed by the service, he would come out of the church saying, "I'm in the ark! I'm in the ark!" One day one of the old jokesters of the day put his hand on my father's head, when he was a child, and said, "Here's old Daddy White." Father remembered that he was so alarmed he hurried home to look in the mirror to see if his hair had really turned white, like the old man's.

My father recalled that, like all boys, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. One day, when he was visiting a neighbor's for dinner, he filled his plate full of potatoes, and kept his eye on another huge one in the serving dish. He thought to himself, I'll have that one next. Without realizing it, soon he reached over and speared the big potato on his fork. When he held the prize in the air, to his horror, he looked down at his plate and found it was already so full he had no place to put it.

When father was a boy, there was a quaint character called Jim Dad Moore, who was always hard up and seldom went into the village, unless he walked. He would never come out and say "yes" when asked if he wanted something. He always answered, "I don't care if I do." One day my father was driving a team on a wagon, and overtook Jim Dad Moore walking along. Father said to him, "Do you want a ride?" Jim Dad Moore answered, "I don't care if I do." Father stepped up the horses and said, "Well if you don't care I don't either" and left the old man plodding along. After another half-mile farther father stopped the team and asked again, "Do you want a ride?" He got the same reply, "I don't care if I do." So my father said, "I don't care either" and away he went again, without giving him a ride.

Old Jim Dad Moore was a lonely man who lived alone and cooked for himself. One day, when he was having dinner with father's brother John and his wife, they offered him the supply of soup for the four of them, for him to have first helping. Jim Dad set the dish down in front of him and ate it all.

One hot day in school, my father remembered the time when one of his school mates was punished by having his hands tied together under his bent knees, and told to sit on a bench in the corner while the class continued in session. After a while the boy went to sleep in this precarious position, and fell forward and struck his head on the floor and yelled to high heaven in the middle of the class.

One time my father said he and his brother were riding with the Francis boys to church at Cultus, in their democrat wagon. There was only one seat at the time so the Park boys had to stand up and hang onto the back of the seat in front of them. For sport they made the horses run, while the boys in unison threw their weight

13


alternately from one side to the other. This caused the democrat to sway violently so that, at that speed, they threw the sand first to one side and then to the other all the way to the fences.

One day my father said he was riding home on the back of a placid and uncomplaining cow. As he passed through the village of Fair Ground and was riding by his brother John's house, his nephew, Stanley, slyly said to his dog, "Sic him Caesar." The dog slipped up behind the cow and nipped her on a leg. The cow made a sudden leap forward and my father toppled off backwards onto the ground, much to the amusement of Stanley. Fortunately my father was not hurt but he was indeed surprised and embarrassed.

On another occasion my father was riding home over the same route on the bare-back of a horse. It was twilight, after a heavy rain, and the creek close to home was in flood but not running over the plank bridge. The bridge was reasonably wide but there was no railing or barrier of any kind on either side of the bridge. During the storm the wind had blown a piece of white paper onto the bridge, where it was stuck on the wet planks on the east side of the bridge. The horse, wild-eyed at sight of the paper, began to move sideways away from it, at the same time keeping an eye on it. When my father saw what was going to happen, he slid off the horse just as the horse fell sideways off the west end of the bridge into five feet of water. The horse fell on its side and became completely submerged. The horse scrambled out without help and walked on home, very much humbled and embarrassed.

Map page:
Map of Fairground

14


CHAPTER THREE

VERY EARLY YEARS

This chapter contains some incidents which took place when I was still a very young child, and were omitted by Clifford in his write-up of those times during which we were very much together.

I was born on March 27, 1901 in my grandmother Park's house. What was most significant to her was that I was born on her birthday. On this date she was 65 years of age, so I have no recollection of my grandmother as being anything but an old woman.

Since I was born on her birthday, grandma was invited to give me a name. She chose to name me after Thomas Alva Edison who was, at that time, becoming famous as an inventor. She gave me the name Edison but my parents didn't like it well enough to use it as my first name. Rather they called me Wilford, being careful to spell it that way to make it closer to the spelling of Clifford, and at the same time definitely not like Sir Wilfrid Laurier who was Premier of Canada at that time, and a leader of the liberal element in politics, whereas my father was a staunch conservative.

My grandmother, however, would never call me Wilford, but always addressed me as Edison. She always pronounced it with a long "e" and I never learned what was the correct pronunciation until I entered high school. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that I was her favorite grandchild.

One of my earliest memories is of tin pans of milk standing in the pantry in grandmother's house. After standing overnight there was thick cream on the top which was skimmed off with a large tin scoop with holes in it, through which the milk would run but the cream would not. Of course there was no mechanical cream separator in grandma's household and this was the only way to collect cream for churning. When enough cream was collected to make butter it was churned in a churn with a dasher which was operated up and down by hand. Since there was no refrigeration in grandmother's day the butter was always made from sour cream. Many a time I have sat and watched her squeezing the buttermilk out of the clotted butter, in a large wooden bowl with a wooden paddle and after salting it, forming it into large rolls of butter.

My grandmother had a treadle-operated sewing machine, which I spent many pleasant hours playing with. The foot-plate was of metal with small holes in it which was large enough to accommodate both feet of an adult operator. The foot-plate was mounted on an axle in its middle. It provided power by the operator alternately tipping the feet so that pressure on the ball of the feet followed by pressure on the heels kept the foot plate moving. A wooden shaft from the edge of the foot-plate passed to a short crank on the side of a large fly-wheel which would spin beautifully while I pumped the pedal. Of course nothing happened to the sewing machine mechanism because, all of the time I had anything to do with it, the sewing machine head was packed away in its recess, and the round leather belt from it to the fly-wheel was so slack that no power was transmitted to it.

15


Another mechanical hand-operated machine in grandma's house which intrigued me was a machine for peeling apples. It was attached near the end of a narrow board upon which the operator sat to hold it steady. The operator turned a small crank with the right hand, which was attached to a circular cogwheel with the cogs on its circumference on the side of the wheel away from the crank. The axle of the cog-wheel extended to the left where it terminated in a four pronged instrument on which the apple was spitted at its stem end, when the machine's peeler was automatically positioned well out of the way. The peeler consisted of a sharp knife fixed on the end of a curved spring-pressured shaft which, when the crank was turned and the apple spinning, came down slowly onto the blossom end of the apple and moved slowly over the spinning apple until it had covered the whole surface and lifted off again, at the stem end of the apple. The knife was attached to the shaft with a guard on the end so that a slot about 3/4 of an inch wide was created. During the peeling of each apple a continuous strip of apple peeling came through the slot so that the collecting pail beneath the machine contained many strips of apple peelings about three feet long. What fun I had with those long strips of apple peeling, sometimes even eating them without their breaking.

Grandma had a high-backed rocking chair which she kept near the wood-fueled cooking-range in the kitchen. One day I was standing up in her rocking chair, with my back to the stove, having a glorious time rocking briskly in the rocking chair, while hanging onto the back of the chair to maintain my standing position. Suddenly I rocked so hard that I went over backwards taking the rocker with me. Of course the back of my head struck the iron edge of the stove and cut a wound about 3/4 of an inch long all the way through my scalp. It bled profusely and I still carry the scar on the back of my head.

In grandma's large living room over the large dining table, in the center of the room, was a beautiful lamp which hung from the ceiling. It had a large porcelain shade on it which was decorated in interesting flower-like colors. It also had a metallic perforated gold-colored rim which helped to support the porcelain lamp shade. The lamp was suspended by a counter-weighted contraption which allowed the lamp to be raised or lowered by simply pulling it down or pushing it up. It was so well balanced that it would stay in any position one wished to put it. It was, of course, a kerosene lamp, but it was both beautiful and efficient and a marvel to a small child.

In grandfather's house near the head of the narrow stairway in the attic was a small mysterious room which had no light in it. It was frightening to me because it was so dark in there, and hanging from the ceiling was a collection of smoked and sugar-cured hams. It served well its intended purpose but to me it was a place to be avoided.

Grandma Park was very religious. She read scarcely anything except her bible, and her songs were always hymns. She liked to sing and I learned to like many of the hymns she sang. She had a favorite farewell goodbye message which she frequently used when leaving friends or relatives. It was the words, "Meet me in heaven". Obviously she believed in the life hereafter and expected to meet and know people there.

Many of my early childhood memories are associated with grandfather's farm animals. I remember so well the strutting gobbler, with his beautiful tail unfurled and showing off for his adoring females. I was impressed with the size of the goose

16


eggs, so clean and white, much larger than hen's eggs and longer in shape. The turkey eggs looked huge to me, with their brown spots on them.

I was somewhat afraid of the flock's gander. He like to hiss at me and chase me, although he never actually attacked me.

Grandfather's flock of sheep were mild mannered and tolerant of us children. The ram, however, although not vicious, used to take pleasure in pushing me over and doing it again whenever I stood around among them.

I remember one time Clifford and I had a luxurious time lying in the warm straw in the sow's pen under the barn. When we eventually tired of it and went into the house and told mother about it, she was horrified and immediately set about ridding us of the fleas we had collected.

I remember the time mother had quite a time with all of us sick at once with scarlet fever. Fortunately we all recovered with no serious effects. While on the subject of illness I should mention mother's favorite medicine for anything. It was a tiny vial of a black concoction called medicumentum. She always served a few drops to us on a spoonful of sugar. I do not recall that it ever did us any good nor did it ever do us any harm.

I remember that when a small child Clifford and I were always around together. Some of our friends thought I was slow in learning to talk. The trouble was not that I couldn't talk but that I didn't need to. Whenever there was any communication with anybody Clifford was always ready to give all the answers and I got along very well without having to say anything.

Our mother was an expert seamstress and made all of our clothes for us. One time she dressed both Clifford and me in little suits with plaid skirts and took us to Tillsonburg where we were photographed by a professional. I still have a copy of that picture. It really is a nice picture but I am obviously too fat in it. I don't know why our mother wanted to dress us in skirts but maybe she secretly, at that time, was hoping for a daughter or perhaps she had a desire to see her boys in kilts because of her Scottish ancestry.

I remember one hot summer day Clifford and I were on our way to grandfather Cutler's house on the corner in Fair Ground. That day we were strolling along with nothing on but our short pants, held up by suspenders, which we called braces. I got too hot so I took my pants off and carried them by the braces over my shoulder. When we were about to pass Sol Smith's place a couple of doors from grandpa Cut ler's house, he stopped us and jollied me about walking without my pants on. It was Sol's custom to call us Pat and Mike. Pat meant Clifford and I was Mike. He treated us like two inseparable Irishmen. Maybe he wasn't so far off at that, because our grandmother Park was Irish.

The general store in Fair Ground, in those early days, was operated by W. B. Gates. He and his family lived next door on the south side, in a fine house. My earliest remembrance of being in the store was associated with the presence of the Gates' huge black Newfoundland dog. He strolled harmlessly about the store dragging his long toenails on the wooden floor at every step.

17


Right next to the general store on the side next to grandpa Cutler's property was a small shop where Mr. Lindsay, Mrs. Gate's father, made shoes and boots. They were all custom made from a piece of leather. It was a fascinating shop to a small boy.

I remember one time, in the winter after a snow storm, Clifford and I were proposing to walk up to grandpa Cutler's. My father discouraged us because he said he didn't think the road was broke. I didn't know what he meant, but I pictured a dangerous crack in the road which we might fall into.

I remember one Sunday grandma Park was dressed to go visiting and she appeared on the lawn, in front of her house, wearing a huge hooped skirt. I think it was the first time I had ever seen a hooped skirt. It reached all the way to the ground and I could not even see her feet.

One time I recall ~ found myself looking anxiously through grandfather's fence at the road where a huge puffing steam engine was passing by, hauling a threshing machine. The engine was one of those early models which had a huge funnel-shaped Smoke-stack never seen in later models.

One of the scary things I remember is looking down into grandfather's cistern for the first time. This was once when he had the cover off. That big tank of black water down in the concrete hole frightened me.

One time Clifford and I climbed on top of the fence behind grandpa's root and fruit cellar, which was a low building with the room built down into the ground. From the fence we were able to crawl through a small opening 8 or 10 inches square into the attic of the building. Here we lay comfortably on the sawdust covering the lath and ceiling of the room below, not realizing that the ceiling might give way and drop us down into the room below. Fortunately the ceiling held and nothing happened to us.

One of the interesting small buildings on grandfather's property was the Smoke house. This building was kept locked and we never got into it except when some adult opened it. It was a room wherein the walls were blackened by much smoke. It was used to smoke hams to give them a special flavor. Controlled smoke was admitted to the building for a definite period of time to get the meat treated long enough to attain the desired flavor.

One time I had done something wrong. I don't remember what, but my father had to punish me for it. For the purpose he wanted to use a switch. So he gave me his knife and made me go to some growing lilac bushes and cut my own switch. I don't remember the extent of the punishment but I do remember having to bring my own switch for the purpose.

I don't remember much about my brother Montie's early days. He seemed to cry a lot. I don't know whether he was unwell or not but Clifford and I were always busy with our own affairs and didn't contribute much in looking after him. I remember one time after Mama had cleaned him up and arranged his hair in long up-and-down rolls of curls she put him in a little wagon and we pulled him around the yard. Maybe Mama wanted to pretend that he was a girl for she kept his hair long and arranged in curls like a girl. Later my sister Leta was born.

18


I recall one winter we had a severe snow-storm when great banks of snow gathered and leaned high upon the walls of grandfather's farm buildings and almost completely hid the fences. Then the storm changed to sleet. When we awoke the next morning we found our undulating world of snow banks covered with a glistening cover of ice, which was strong enough to hold us up. We played and slid around on the glossy slopes. Then we found we could, with shovels, break through the crust and dig tunnels and caves under it where we played with a roof over our heads.

One bright sunny day in summer I accompanied my father and some other men as they drove grandfather's sheep down the road about a half a mile to a place where the creek curved right out to the road. Here the men stripped to the waist and took the sheep one by one into the water and washed their wool thoroughly in the running water. The sheep could not touch bottom but floated easily and their heads were kept well above the water.

A day or two later the sheep were sheared on the floor of grandfather's barn. The animals were thrown onto their sides, and the head held down by one man while another cut off the wool with huge shears that were kept very sharp. Great fleeces of wool were gathered up. When a sheep was sheared and set free she was unharmed, but she sure looked naked.

One fall Clifford and I were taken by our parents to the agricultural fair in Guelph, Ontario. We started out early one morning in a one-horse buggy. Clifford and I sat on a little bench with our backs to the dashboard and facing our parents on the seat. We were warmly dressed and comfortable but still sleepy. When we were a few miles from Courtland on Talbot Road, where we were to take the train, my father realized that we were late, and likely to miss the train. So he took out his whip and made the horse take the last mile or so on the run. Anyway, we made it. The horse was left in the livery stable and we boarded the train. I don't remember much about the fair, but my father, being a farmer, had much to learn because Guelph was the center of Ontario's farm industry, and they had an agricultural college there. I do remember the antics of some clowns and the horse-races. When it was time to eat, great numbers of people sat on the grass and opened their food baskets and had their picnic lunches. When looking at the farm animals we came to a high enclosure which contained a huge bull. I remember standing on the railing of the cage and looking up at an enormous animal which seemed to tower over me.

I didn't see much of my Uncle John, who owned and operated the farm north of Grandpa Park's. He was a good farmer and took pride in his fine horses. He was much bigger than my father, as I particularly noted when he pulled a baby tooth for me with dental forceps.

One story about Uncle John which I remember hearing indicated how strong he was. A number of men were having a competition of strength on the wharf at Pt. Burwell, with Uncle John among them. They finally came to a ships anchor which weighed 700 pounds. My Uncle John was the only one who could lift it free of the floor.

One time when visiting at Grandpa Cutler's I remember standing by a small iron gate which was covered with hoarfrost. I thought it would be nice to lick it off with my tongue. At the first touch of my tongue it froze fast to the iron gate. It took a little while for my body heat to warm the iron sufficiently to free my tongue.

19


CHAPTER FOUR

LATER PRESCHOOL YEARS

When I was still too young to go to school we moved from grandfather Park's farm into the corner house in Fair Ground, where my grandfather Cutler had been living. By this time grandfather Cutler had built a concrete block house for himself a few hundred feet to the west, next to the Methodist Church, where he and grand mother Cutler now lived. Grandmother Cutler was suffering from heart trouble and was no longer able to take care of the corner house, which served as a stopping place for the few travelers who came through Fair Ground.

After we moved in, I remember visiting grandma and grandpa Cutler in their new home. It was very comfortable and pleasant. Grandma Cutler was a stoutish woman and not very tall. At that time her own mother, my great grandmother Edmonds was with her. She too was built like her daughter, my grandmother Cutler. There was a piano at one end of the room, and over the piano was a huge picture of grandfather and grandmother Cutler. I don't remember much about my grandmother Cutler. I suppose because she was not well I didn't see much of her. She died of heart trouble at 56 years of age.

My grandmother Cutler had a sister Mary who was married to Ben Purdy. They lived about two miles west of Fair Ground. She was my mother's Aunt Mary and we also called her Aunt Mary. She was not well either, but she was a fine Christian woman and a member of the Free Methodist Church, which was near to her house. Her husband Ben, however, was somewhat shady in his dealings, although he too was a Free Methodist.

Grandmother Cutler's brother George Edmonds was the youngest of her family. He lived on the Edmonds homestead a few miles away, north of Kinglake. His home was in a pine forest. He was my mother's Uncle George and we also called him Uncle George. He had a small mill where he made pumps, using the pine trees of his forest. These of course were wooden pumps but they functioned very well, and he had a good business selling and installing them around the country. When he passed through Fair Ground he always stopped and stayed overnight at our place. He was a pleasant bald-headed man. He was nice to us children, and we were always much amused at the way he would wiggle his ears for us. George Edmonds had three children, Cora, Orlaf and Allie. Orlaf was quite deaf. We used to see these cousins of mother's occasionally.

Our home on the corner was quite a sizable structure. It had a concrete area about eight feet wide which went across the whole north side of the house. ft was up about two feet off the ground, to accommodate the traveling clientele with horse- drawn buggies and democrats. There was a central doorway opening into a hall, and stairwell leading to the upstairs. At the eastern side of the hall entrance was a small room where travelers could sit together and talk and smoke. Behind this was my father's and mother's bedroom. On the opposite side of the hallway entrance was a large dining room where the guests and boarders were fed. Upstairs there were four bedrooms and a comfortable sitting room, chiefly for the female guests. At the head of the stairs, on the second floor, was a considerable space which my

20


father used for his barbershop. From this area a door opened onto an upstairs porch which was about eight by ten feet in size with a railing around it. It was supported on the roadside by two sturdy posts, which went down to the concrete platform below. All of the above mentioned area was for the use of paying guests.

The rest of the house extending backwards toward the south was our family living quarters. The first was a large room, in which there was a large wood-burning cookstove. This room also served as a dining room for the family. Behind this large room was another bedroom and a pantry. Upstairs in this part, with its own stairway, were three bedrooms with a hallway large enough for a fourth bed. Up here is where we four children slept and also the hired girl whom my mother used.

One intriguing place for us children was a large clothes closet under the front stairway. It was dark and narrow and opened only into our living quarters. From our kitchen-living room, another building was attached to the house, on the west side. This was a large poorly-constructed building, which was more of a woodshed than living quarters. However, it was used in the summer time for cooking and our eating of meals.

Just to the west of the above building-complex was another separate large two-story building, which was used as rented quarters for families or boarders. During the days when the sawmill was operating full blast, all of these accommodations were occupied, mostly by people working at the mill. Most of them were served in the large dining room where two long tables went the full length of the room. You can visualize how busy my mother was cooking for all of these people.

There was no inside plumbing but there were two outside toilet buildings on the property. There was a good well just outside of the fence, actually on the road, with its trough for watering horses. There was also a large cistern close to the main house, where water was collected off the roofs of the large buildings. Mother had a big sink where she could wash vegetables and dishes with the water running through a large drainage system into the sandy soil.

The large rooms had their own wood stoves. The upstairs rooms were mostly unheated but did get some heat from the rooms below through doorways or openings in the floor through the ceiling of rooms below. In our early days there, the only source of light, at night, were kerosene lamps.

There was no electricity and no refrigeration. Mother did, however, have a cold box which was kept cold by huge chunks of ice which my father brought in regularly from his winter hoard of ice blocks, buried in sawdust in his ice house.

Potatoes and some other vegetables were kept in an underground root-cellar. There were large bins of them in this huge dark place, entered by stairs leading down into it through a heavy insulated door. This whole grotto was covered over by a large mound of earth about 50 feet to the south of other buildings. This home, on the corner, was where I lived from four or five years of age until I started to university at age 20.

Corner house floor plan

When we first moved into this property, my grandfather Cutler still maintained, on the back of the lot, about six or eight beehives. We of course were wisely kept away from the bees. But we liked to look at them, as they went on their busy lives

21


of going and coming in huge numbers, as they gathered honey. We watched too when they swarmed. At this time they hung in a huge clump, usually. on a low branch of a nearby tree. The clump of bees clinging to each other was about five inches across at the branch level, and hung down in a cluster of bees about six or seven inches deep. To keep them from getting away, grandpa Cutler dressed himself in thick clothing, with a straw hat on his head. Over his hat and his face down around his shoulders, he had on a large piece of fine net, which the bees could not get through. Over his hands he had heavy gloves, with ties around his wrists so the bees could not get inside his clothing. Dressed like this, he calmly and slowly approached the clump of bees, carrying a new empty hive, open at the top, and carefully shook the bees down into it. When all of the bees were in it, he put on the cover and placed it with the other hives. So long as the queen bee was with them the bees stayed together. When the queen bee found herself in a new spacious hive, she promptly set up housekeeping, and the other bees started to gather more honey.

In the process of gathering the honey from the hives, grandfather dressed as above and forced smoke from a gadget into the hive, and when the bees were stupefied by it he took out the full honey sections and supplied the bees with new foundations, on which they could build more honeycombs.

To the west of the houses on the corner already mentioned and east of grand father Cutler's new house farther to the west was a large barn. The ground floor of this barn opened directly onto the road, because it served as a livery stable. There were several stalls for the horses of traveler-guests and shelter for their vehicles. Above, and attached on the south side of it, were mows for hay and straw. There was also a granary on the ground floor which contained oats for the horses. Farther back on the ground-floor level was space for farm cows and pigs and a larger granary. There was also a fenced-in space for the cattle and pigs which allowed them to be outside.

Between our houses and the barn was a row of black currant bushes and a red cherry tree. The soil was sandy and weeds were plentiful, among them catnip, horehound, burdock and hemp. My father allowed his fattening pigs to have the run of this area. I remember, on one hot summer day, one of these fat pigs was not as lively as the others, so it was easy for me to climb onto its back. For a little while I rode around thus, with the pig puffing from the heat. After I tired of it, the pig lay down in the sand next to the house. The next morning that pig was found there dead.

When the cherries were red in the cherry tree, one day Clifford and I were up in the tree stuffing ourselves. While there, I discovered it was no trouble to swallow the cherry pit. From that day on I had no trouble swallowing pills.

During those boyhood days we needed some simple toys to amuse us, so my father made us some tops. They were fashioned out of empty spools, which were plentiful in those days and had deeper flanges than in modern days. From one empty spool he made two tops by cutting it in two and fitting short pieces of wood into the holes, and shaping the inside end of the sticks and spools to a point. We spent long hours spinning them. He also made us fine spinning wheels, by threading strong cord through two of the holes in large coat buttons. We learned to wind these up in the center of the double cords and made them spin so fast that they would wind themselves up for a reverse spin when we pulled the ends apart and relaxed and pulled them alternately.

22


Every once in a while a peddler would come along with his heavy suitcase packed with things to sell. We were always on hand to look at his fascinating wares. They included such things as thread, needles, pins, combs, buttons, eye glasses, all kinds of trinkets and cheap jewelry, etc.

Another kind of peddler, whom Mother was always glad to see, was the fishman. He came from Pt. Burwell, with a flat wagon pulled by one horse. The wagon was covered by a wet tarpaulin and water was dripping through the floor boards. Under the tarpaulin were chunks of ice and among them a large assortment of fresh-water fish, of all sizes, from Lake Erie. We had never seen such large fish before. Mother always bought some, often pieces of the large fish.

When the sawmill was operating there were always a lot of men-boarders standing around, and sitting on the concrete in front of our house after the evening meal was over. They frequently wanted some amusement, so when one of my playmates, Billy Sutherland, was there, they egged us on into a fight. Billy was a little bigger than I, and was in favor of it, because he knew he would always win. I didn't want to fight, but I could hardly get out of it when he attacked me. So many times I took a beating, but was never seriously hurt. Even so perhaps it helped to toughen me.

Another form of sport which we boys enjoyed was playing with a hoop. We found either wooden hoops or iron ones, which had fallen off discarded barrels. These we rolled along at top speed, keeping up with them and propelling them farther along with a short stick.

Another place where we were allowed to play was behind the Gates General Store where there was always a collection of empty packing boxes. We pushed these around and crawled into them and fashioned pretend houses, etc.

Another favorite play area was in the lumber yard on Frank Williams' farm, across from the mill. This was a fine place for hide-and-seek because there were many piles of lumber in many directions, so that we could not see far anywhere. Furthermore, because the lumber was of different lengths, there were many crevices at one end of each pile, where we could crawl into and hide.

The saw mill itself had interesting features, among them the puffing of the steam engine, and the movement of the logs into the huge spinning saw with a board falling off each time when the saw reached the end of the log. Another interesting process was the cutting of the barrel staves from the long blocks of wood which had been softened by soaking in hot water. The huge knife came down and cut them off, one at a time, like slicing through cheese.

Another process, which we liked to watch, was the making of barrels in the mill cooper-shop. The barrel staves and heads were held in place mechanically, while the men applied the hoops and tacked them into place.

Jack Robbins and his family lived near the cooper shop. They had a small barn, where they kept a goat. The goat had horns but was mild-mannered and cooperative, so the Robbins' children had a harness made and had the goat trained to pull them around on a wagon. We children joined in the fun and followed the goat around too. Sometimes they even came as far as our corner with the goat.

23


It was in Fair Ground that I saw my first automobile. It was one of those open ones with a straight up-and-down windshield with much brass all over it. Brass was on the sides of the windshield, on the front of the engine hood, on the elegant head lights and on the lamps at the side of the seat. The seat was open, with no side doors and no top over it. This novelty was an attraction to everybody, but it didn't move fast. It had bare white tires and wooden spoked wheels. The horn was a brass gadget which was sounded by squeezing a large rubber bulb.

A lot of the mill workers and the boarders were quite heavy drinkers of liquor, which they got somewhere, but certainly not at our house. Sometimes some of them even came to dinner too drunk to behave themselves. On one occasion some of them got in an argument and started a fight right in the dining room. The result was upset tables with the floor covered with food and broken dishes. The dinner was broken up and nobody had a chance to finish the meal. We children were home, and heard it going on, but were not allowed to look in, until all of the boarders had gone out. Then we saw the mess which my mother and father were left to clean up. I don't know whether or not the men got together a purse to pay for the damage, but I suppose they did.

One of the regular roomers, who lived in one of the rooms upstairs in our main building, was a nice Dutchman by the name of Krause. He had to fight the drinking urge all of the time. Usually he held out for a month or more at a stretch, but when he started to drink he couldn't stop. In these bouts, he stayed in his room and kept drinking as long as he had any liquor, and would eat nothing. At these times, the only way my mother and father could help him was, if possible, to keep him from getting more liquor. At one of these times, a long-legged young man by the name of Long was determined to get more whiskey to Krause. My mother had the doors locked so he couldn't get in. But after banging around at all doors and mother refusing to let him in, he thought he might put one over on her by climbing one of the posts supporting the veranda, and get to Krause through the upstairs door from the veranda. The door was actually unlocked at that time, but through the window, we saw him climbing up there. So mother sent Clifford and me upstairs to lock that door. We ran upstairs and turned the key in the lock before he reached it. So Mr. Long was foiled in all his attempts and eventually went away.

One of the last things I remember of my preschool days was being awakened at night, and standing at our upstairs bedroom window, watching the fire as the sawmill burned down. The loss of the sawmill brought an end to father and mother's boom days. All of the roomers and boarders left and Fair Ground reverted to the small quiet hamlet it always was. The residents of our large rooming house all moved away, and the main building again was supported only by traveling people going through.


24


CHAPTER FIVE

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YEARS

I started elementary school late because, as a child, I had frequent illnesses. One of my problems was earache, with infection in the right middle ear. I sometimes had pus draining from the right ear. I also had frequent bouts of rheumatic fever, which kept me in bed with a physician in attendance and supplying medicines. As a result of these frequent absences, I did not finish elementary school by passing my high school entrance examination until I was past my 14th birthday.

Montie slept in the hallway at the top of the back stairway. This room was largely over the kitchen stove in the room below. There was an eight-inch opening in the floor which had no stove pipe in it. This allowed heat to move up from the room below. One night Montie dreamed that he fell through this hole. Of course he didn't, because he was too big to get through, but he continued to believe that he had fallen through in the night.

There was a large two-seater swing on the corner of our lot where it was in the shade of a large maple tree. I believe my father built the swing and painted it red, however I don't remember when it was built. It had four sturdy legs spread well apart at the ground level. At the top they formed the four corners of a rectangular wooden frame, which was very strongly built. Going through the four posts near the top, on opposite sides, were strong iron rods. From these iron rods, near their outside ends, hung four vertical wooden pieces, which at the bottom, well off the ground, had other similar iron rods passing across between them, in the same way as at the top. At the bottom, these iron rods also passed through the ends of a strong piece of wood on each side which supported a platform with strong slats across it. Above this foot platform, and facing each other were comfortable bench-like seats, fastened to the upright stringers on each side. When people sitting in the seats pushed alternately with their feet, they kept the swing going forwards and backwards at whatever speed they wished. Of course the seats were really steady, but the movement of the floor below gave the feeling that the seats tipped alternately, which they did, and changed again when the extreme of each swing was reached. This swing was much used and enjoyed by all of the family. It was large enough to hold two adults and a child on each seat at once, or as many as four children on each side at once.

Sometime after the mill burned, and closed up, father bought the company's dry kiln. It was a large heavily insulated building covered by an external surface of sheet metal so it did not catch afire. The building was about 18 ft. wide and 70 or 80 ft. long. It was about 9 ft. high on the high side and about 7 ft. high on the low side with a flat sloping roof. The ends of the building had large heavy slide doors, each hung on a track. Father turned one end of this building into a chicken house, with a roost and boxes built along one side for nests. The rest of the building he turned into several pig pens with openings on the low side into a large pig yard. Here he went into raising hogs in a big way. He kept a walk way on the inside of the higher wall where he kept feed for the chickens and pigs. I didn't see the building being moved but it must have been quite a project.

25


I remember one spring we went picking flowers in the woods just west of the Township Fairgrounds. Among them, we found hepatica which we called May flowers, yellow cowslips, red and white trilliums and even some lady's slippers. Another time we found lots of wild strawberries which we ate heartily.

One time I recall mama made two glasses of lemon-ade which was a special treat for us. Clifford got to it first and I arrived just after he was finishing my glass too. He did it to tease me and I was nearly heart-broken. Of course I cried and Clifford assured me that mama would make more for me. But mama couldn't because she had no more lemons. To quiet me she made me a glass of water with vinegar and sugar in it. It was not equal to lemon-ade but it had to do. This drink my grandpa Park called 'bull's milk'.

Of course we were not always as well behaved as we should be. We readily found cigar stubs lying around, so one time, we boys went behind the store, lit them and tried them out. It didn't take long for us to find out that we didn't like them, and decided not to smoke.

One day Clifford played a dirty trick on Grandpa Park, when he was getting quite old and couldn't see very well. Grandpa was still living in his own house on the farm, south of the village. He came in through the gate from his wood pile, on his way to dinner. Clifford saw him place his cud of tobacco on the top of the gate post, with the intention of chewing it some more after eating. Clifford threw the cud of tobacco away and in its place put a piece of something of the same size. After the meal we watched grandpa pick it up and start chewing again, on what he thought was his cud of tobacco. After a while Clifford asked him how he liked it. Grandpa said it wasn't much good. It was some of that cheap American tobacco and wouldn't 'gether.' By which he meant it wouldn't hold together. After a while he spit it out and took a fresh bite out of his plug of tobacco. Of course we never told him what had happened.

We had an organ in our house which mother played from time to time. It had to be pumped by foot pedals. Mother could play quite well but she didn't have much time for it. However, when she found I liked music, she taught me how to play on the organ, and how to read music. Of course I wasn't very good, but I spent many hours at the organ playing hymns from the hymn book, mostly the soprano notes only, but sometimes both soprano and alto with my right hand only.

About this time we discovered that Clifford couldn't carry a tune. However later, when he became a preacher, I believe his wife, Aleta, coached him so that he was able to go through the motions along with the congregation.

Sometimes a neighbor girl, Lottie Baron, would play for us and our family would gather around the organ and sing hymns.

Father had a small violin which he made himself, with nothing but the wood and a jackknife to work with. It was quite a good instrument and he played on it frequently evenings. He played everything by ear and most of his music was dance music because he used to play his violin at dances. After my father died, his violin went to my son Robert because his second name was Watson after his grandfather.

26


Our father taught us how to make water-pistols, darts and bows and arrows, so we made our own and played with them when we had time. The water-pistols we made out of sections of bamboo. We got as long a section as we could and cut it across just below one joint to get a long open cavity at one end. Then we cut again just below the next joint thereby getting a closed end. Then we bored a small hole through the center of the closed end for the stream of water to come through. We made a plunger to push up and down, inside of the bamboo. We wound cloth tightly around the insert end of the plunger and secured it well with a cord. With a tight plunger we could draw water up into the water-gun and push it out in a small strong stream, at the other end. We had lots of fun with these in mock battles, and to surprise cats and chickens.

We made darts out of narrow pieces of new shingles with a point at the thick end and a flat wing at the thin end of the shingle. Near the center of the narrow shaft of the dart, we cut a notch in which we hooked a cord, with a knot in its end. The other end of the cord was attached to the end of a flexible piece of straight limb. By holding the stick in the right hand and the flat end of the dart between the finger and thumb of the left hand with the string taut, we could achieve a swing ing whip-like movement which would propel the dart high into the air.

To make a bow, we preferred strong straight pieces of red willow. We notched the ends and strung strong bowstrings on the bows with the bows suitably bent. The arrows we made of straight pieces of wood, usually pine. Usually we put a small nail in the forward end of the arrow to give it better stability. We notched the other end of the arrow to take the bowstring. We had much fun with these in target practice.

In our community we had a few handicapped people. One of them was George Howser who lived with Sol and Mrs. Smith. He was quite deaf but a nice young fellow. Another was Webber Lucas. He had no use of his legs to walk on and got around only on crutches. Another young fellow was Lawrence Crawford who was paralyzed in both arms and had no use of his hands. He managed to get along using his head with the help of friends. However, he turned his talents to some shady deals, which he put over largely in Pt. Burwell.

Living so close to country, water and swamps, naturally we encountered many insects, snakes and interesting birds and animals. The dragon flies were plentiful. They were interesting to watch. They could maneuver so beautifully. They could hover in mid-air and look at you with their big eyes. Then in a flash they would dash off and be looking at something else or alight on a water plant. Sometimes we would see a water snake swimming in the ditch or creek. One time we found hair snakes swimming in shallow water. These were tiny things not much thicker than the hair of a horse's tail, but about six inches long. They were crawling on the surface of the water, with all the movements of snakes to move around. One time we encountered a black snake about six feet long. It was anxious to get away and we didn't stop it.

There were lots of grey squirrels and black squirrels. One time we caught a flying squirrel in the woods. It was a small animal about half the size of a small red squirrel. It was reddish on top but light colored on its under-body. It would move from tree to tree by climbing like an ordinary squirrel but when it wanted to 'fly' it spread out its four legs as widely as they would go and jumped down from a tree

27


to the ground, or to a lower limb on an adjoining tree. It could not fly like a bird, but it could soar and land lightly at considerable distances away. When we had it in our hands and examined it, we found that its skin-coat had great folds of skin and fur attached to the inside of its legs close to the little feet. In reality it could flatten itself out and become a little parachute, which it could maneuver to rise a little with its momentum, or change direction in downward flight. ft seemed a harmless animal and did not try to bite us.

There were lots of blackbirds and black crows. Sometimes we would see two small birds attacking one crow in flight. They would actually pounce on it in flight and the crow would falter in its course. They would keep this up until the crow was driven well away from their nesting place.

One time father took Clifford and me with him to hunt partridges. We saw some but we didn't kill any. We had our dog Carlo along and he probably scared them away too soon. When we were coming back we saw a large raccoon up in a tree. We couldn't get up to shake it off but father shot at it with his rifle. He may have nicked it because it dropped to the ground. As soon as it hit the ground Carlo was upon it trying to kill it. But the raccoon was still full of fight. They struggled together until both were nearly exhausted with neither the winner. Then father finished off the raccoon with a club. We took it home and father skinned it for its pelt.

Sometime during these years the Gates family sold the town store to a man by the name of Scidmore. The Gates family moved to Hamilton where the children Grant and Jean continued their education and entered their life work. Soon afterward my Uncle John and his family sold his farm and moved to Brantford. There, their children completed their education and went to work. Stanley became an expert auto- mobile mechanic and Vera became a school teacher. After a number of years working in Brantford with his team of horses, doing dangerous work, Uncle John received an injury. Not long afterward a malignant sarcoma started in the site of the injury and he died of it.

About this time my mother's sister, my aunt Edith, got married to Stephen S. McDonald, a prosperous farmer who lived several miles north of Fair Ground. My Aunt Edith was several years older than my mother. The two of them were the only children of my grandfather Cutler. It was quite an elegant wedding for those days.

Grandpa Cutler was left alone since my grandma Cutler had died. He needed someone to keep house for him, so he hired a big unattractive woman named Maggie. She apparently got the work done, but no one ever saw a woman who moved more slowly. She did not seem to be ill, but she was called 'slow Maggie' because the name described her perfectly.

Mr. Scidmore, who operated the general store and post office, was the first one in the village to have a radio. It wasn't much good, because most of the sounds were distorted and unrecognizable, but the reception of sounds from space without connecting wires was in itself a novelty.

There was a sandy hill on the Fulton farm to the south of us, which was largely blow-sand, but on it we found Indian artifacts such as pieces of pottery, and large and small flint arrowheads, which indicated that the hill had been used by Indians.

28


One time, when I was exploring this hill, I found a nest of round soft-shelled turtle eggs. The hill was not far from the creek so apparently the turtles found the warm sand a suitable place to lay their eggs. Here they would hatch by themselves, and the little turtles could find their own way to the water. One time when I was on this sand hill again, I found an adult turtle, which I assumed to be a female, with her tail pointing down into the sand, where she was moving round and round in a circle, apparently boring a hole with her tail. I assumed she was preparing a place in the sand to lay her eggs, but I wondered why she didn't dig with her front feet.

My father and mother saw to it that we children attended Sunday School and church regularly. One of the joys of the Sunday School was the annual picnic which was usually held at the Sand Hills about 3 miles away on the shore of Lake Erie. Sometimes we used the Big Sand Hills and sometimes the little Sand Hills. They were about I mile apart. Both were great piles of sand blown up by the wind from the lake shore below. One time I must have sat in some poison ivy which was plentiful, particularly at the little sand hills. A few days later my whole bottom was one mass of swollen skin with water blisters that were oozing copiously. I was disabled for several days but recovered completely eventually.

One time at school, when I was batter-up in a baseball game, I was struck on the head by the hard baseball and found myself crawling around on my hands and knees. I recovered without any complications.

On another occasion, when I was attending a baseball game being played by adults in the evening on the fairground, instead of watching the game I climbed up on the railing around the race-track for horses. I was proudly walking along on the narrow rails about four feet off the ground, when I fell off and struck the ground in such a way that it knocked the wind out of me, and I could not breathe for a minute or two. It was both distressing and frightening because I didn't know, at that time, that this is the result of a blow to the solar plexus in the stomach region.

I didn't do well at elementary school for some reason. I particularly found it difficult to spell, so I have always been a poor speller, and I still am. Even at this writing, I have before me a small spelling book which I have to refer to frequently, and if the word I want isn't there, I have to refer to my big dictionary for the correct spelling.

One good thing I did learn at school was the little ditty - "Whatever you do, do with your might. Things done by halves are never done right." A simple little thing, but one which I am sure has guided me through much of my adult life.

Always a momentous occasion, at school, was when the school inspector Frank Cook walked in. He simply opened the door and walked in unannounced. It was probably a strain on the teacher, but she went on with her teaching. He was a big bald- headed man, but kindly and mild-mannered. Sometimes when he wanted to show the teacher how it should be done, he took over the class and taught it himself.

Mr. Cook rode a motorcycle and stayed overnight at our small hotel. I remember one time he was telling my father about the discovery of some wonderful things called vitamins. He pronounced it with a short i as in it, but he was enthusiastic about the discovery because of the potential the future held for the health of man kind.

29


One time I was with some other boys at Mr. Fulton's place south of Fair Ground. When in the barnyard with Mr. Fulton, who was an old bearded man, he noticed that I had a big wart on one of my fingers. He said he would charm it off for me. So he spit on his fingers and rubbed it into my wart. I was not much im pressed and forgot all about it. A few weeks later I was surprised to find that my wart was gone.

One of the chores we boys enjoyed doing in the fall was gathering chestnuts. They were only available after a frosty night or two which caused the green chestnut burrs, with their long sharp spines, to open up. Then when the sun came out, the brown chestnuts would rain down onto the ground. The insides of the burrs were lined with white soft tissue which felt much like soft velvet. We picked up many quarts of chestnuts from under our own trees on the back of father's farm, and often also from under the trees of neighboring farmers who didn't want to bother with them. We sold them to the owner of the general store, who in turn sold them to the public. One morning I was barefooted picking up chestnuts near the road, on Sol Smith's property just south of our corner. Before I was finished there came a great flurry of snow and I had to walk in bare feet, about 500 yards, through 1/2 inch of snow to get home.

We children liked to celebrate Halloween in the fall. One time Mama fixed us up with dough-faces. She made these much like the way she rolled out pastry for pie crusts. She made them large enough to cover our faces. She cut slits in the dough for our eyes, nose and mouth and stuck them on our faces. The outside of the dough-faces were covered with white flour. So we were a ghastly sight. Then she put hats on our heads and short clay pipes in our mouths. Looking like this we paraded on the - porch in front of the general store. One of the young fellows there was Webber Piet. He was several years older than I. I don't know whatever possessed him, but he pushed me right in the face with the palm of his hand so hard, that he broke the stem of my clay pipe and drove it back so that it tore a gash in the back of my throat, which bled copiously and ended our night of fun.

One time, on the morning after Halloween, we looked across the road and there on the nearly flat roof of one of the fair buildings was a buggy. We don't know how it got there, but it wasn't ours and it wasn't taken away for a few days.

At school, we liked the coming of winter because it caused the water in the pond on the school grounds and in ditches beside the road outside the school ground to freeze over. Often the ice on the small school pond was quite thin and not strong enough to support a child. At these times by running and sliding quickly across we could reach the other side safely. At these times the ice was flexible, what we called rubbery ice. We had great fun with it until it eventually gave way and someone got his feet wet.

It was on the ice in the ditches, outside of the school grounds, that I learned to skate. We were supplied by our parents with skates, which by proper fitting could be clamped onto the heavy soles of our shoes. They could be easily taken off by reversing the clamping lever, and carried without the shoes. It was a long time before we had any other type of skates.

In these early years at school the room was heated by a sizable woodstove near the back door. The wood was stored in the entry and in a large wood-box inside of the school.

30


In the winter, at home in the evenings, we often sat around the warm stove and shared fresh-made popcorn. All of us became efficient at popping corn. We even strung popcorn on a string or thread to decorate our fresh-cut green Christmas tree. But for us children, the Christmas surprises were found in our stockings the morning of Christmas. What we got was simple and inexpensive, but we enjoyed and appreciated everything. To us an orange and some imported nuts were a great treat.

Mother was an excellent cook and we always had plenty to eat of simple foods. She especially liked to make lemon pies. She first of all baked the crust which was always rich and flakey. Then she poured in the lemon filling which she made from corn starch and real lemon juice. On the top she spread well-whipped white of egg. Then she put it in the oven to lightly brown the top frosting. She also liked to make rich lemon biscuits which were flat and cut into oblong shapes. I don't remember having any made like it since.

Mother and father had good relationships with each other. I don't mean that they always agreed on everything. Sometimes Mother wanted something different and father listened to her but didn't always agree with her. If she persisted, and he wouldn't go for it, he would tell her off quite brusquely. Then they would both laugh and drop the subject, and there would be no hard feelings.

One of my early experiences was watching father kill a fat hog and dress it. He started off by hitting it on the head in front hard enough to stun it. Then he rolled it over on its back and with a swift slit in the neck he pushed in a long butch er knife. When he withdrew it blood was gushing out. By this time the pig was generally sufficiently recovered to get up on its feet and stand more or less still while the blood flowed out freely. When the pig toppled over dead, father hauled it up on the cleaning board, at one end of which was a barrel of scalding hot water. With a strong rope attached to its hind legs, the hog was then dunked in the hot water several times, until the hairs were loosened. Then with the carcass on the cleaning board the scraping of the skin began. In the scraping a thin surface of the skin was removed, and with it all of the hair. When this was finished the hog looked white and clean. Then a strong piece of wood was used to suspend the carcass by its hind legs by thrusting the ends through between the strong heel tendon and the bones near the feet. In this way the carcass was hanging down with its head near the floor and the hind legs spread apart. Then father proceeded to slit open the belly of the carcass and remove the entrails and all of the internal organs.

Another thing I remember is watching father help a cow to deliver her calf. She was straining hard and suffering much, without much progress. The forelegs how ever were visible and sticking out. Father tied a rope around the forelegs and pulled on the rope in coordination with the strainings of the cow. After some time the nose of the calf appeared and a little later the whole head was delivered. After that, delivery of the rest of the body was comparatively easy. It wasn't long before both the mother and the calf were on their feet.

One of the common diversions on Sundays was the arrival of Uncle Ezra and his family from Brantford, Ontario. Uncle Ezra was my father's eldest brother. His wife was Aunt Lottie. He had only one child, a daughter Maud, who always came with them with her husband Jimmy Baker. The Bakers had no children so Uncle Ezra had no grandchildren. Sometimes they took us for a ride in their touring car which we children liked.

31


When I was about eleven years old, father took over the janitor work at the school house and at the church. Of course, we boys were quickly pushed into this work. At the school I recall that I always wanted to get the sweeping done as soon as possible after school. This was annoying to the teacher, because she often wanted to do some work at her desk after school. I always started at the front of the school and swept all of the dirt toward the back. This immediately raised a cloud of dust, because we had no absorbing compound to use on the floor. The dust of course settled on the desks and seats during the night. I was supposed to do the dusting in the morning before school. But I was usually so late that only a very cursory job was done.

The janitor work at the church was only done once a week but we were taught to do a pretty good job. It also involved filling the kerosene lamps and cleaning the lamp chimneys.

In the early days the church was heated by a wood stove. We had to start the fire there early on winter mornings. We did so by arranging the wood carefully, with some quick burning pine kindling under the main wooden chunks. Then we threw in a small amount of kerosene. When a match was thrown in, the kerosene ignited first and thereafter the pine kindling got going well.

We had a telephone which was on the wall in our parents' bedroom. It of course was a party-line, which meant that anyone who wished could take down her telephone receiver and listen to any conversation going on. It also meant that every ring on the phone registered in every house where there was a phone. So every phone had to have an identifying ring. Ours was two longs followed by two short rings. Every phone customer had a directory giving the ring identification of each telephone customer. So any listener, before she picked up the telephone receiver, knew by the ring who was being called. If there was an emergency, and a person had to call someone, such as a doctor or other help immediately, she had to ask the people gossiping on the line to please get off so that the emergency call could be made. Usually people were cooperative but sometimes they refused to get off the line right away.

Our telephone was of the old wall-type. That is, it was quite a large box longer up and down than from side to side. The speaker talked into a mouthpiece which stuck out in front about 9 or 10 inches. There was a black funnel-shaped mouth-piece which directed the voice into the end. The mouth-piece metal projection could be moved up and down to allow for accommodation to users of different heights. The receiver was at the end of a covered wire-cord which was held in the left hand to the left ear, during a conversation. When not in use it hung on a receiving hook on the left side of the instrument. When the receiver was placed on the hook its weight caused the hook to move downward which disconnected the current. There was a small crank on the right side of the phone-box which when turned rapidly caused the twin bells on the upper front of the phone box to ring merrily. The ringing of the bells was duplicated on every phone on the party-line. After ringing, the caller took down the receiver and listened for the one being called to come on the line. After an appropriate wait, if there was no answer, the process was repeated a few times. Then if there was no response the caller gave up.

Above the telephone-box, where the wires came into the phone, there was a switch which was supposed to be opened to cut off the electric power during a thunderstorm. One time while mother and I were in her bedroom, during a severe thunder storm and before the cut-off switch was activated, there was a tremendous lightning

32


flash. A flash of fire came out of the telephone mouth-piece about six inches long. Fortunately neither of us was standing close to the phone and no one was hurt. The telephone was not damaged by the flash either.

When I was big enough, I also had to help Mama around the house. One frequent assignment was, of course, washing dishes. There was no dishwasher and all dishes had to be washed and dried by hand. It was a job I never learned to like.

Another job I was called upon to do was churn the cream to make butter. This was interesting because of the satisfying results. Much of the time however we bought butter from neighbors who churned instead of making our own.

One feat I was able to do which so far as I remember no one else could, was to climb up an open door-way simply by pressure of my bare hands and feet sideways onto the door-frame.

One of my chores was to go and get the cows from the pasture field nearly 1/2 mile away on my mother's 25 acre farm. Sometimes I was able to get out of it because of a headache. I don't remember whether they were all real or not, but because of their recurrence at that time, father called them cow-headaches.

In getting the cows I always took our dog Carlo with me. He was a mixture of dog breeds but a nice-mannered dog, with short hair and a sturdy body. When I got to the pasture field the herd of cows was usually far back in the field, possibly over 1/4 mile away. Instead of going for them, I got up on a fence post with Carlo in my arms, pointed them out to Carlo, and told him to go and get them. Carlo would look where I was pointing and then he would whimper anxiously, which meant "I see them". Then, when I put him down, he took off immediately and rounded them up and brought them to the gate, usually on the run.

One of Carlo's favorite pastimes was stalking woodchucks which were rather plentiful. Without anyone teaching him he learned to run to the hole where a wood chuck had just scrambled in. Then instead of waiting where the pile of sand was, where he could look directly into the hole, he placed himself close to the hole on the side opposite to the pile of sand, and waited for the woodchuck to come out to reconnoiter. The woodchuck, in doing so, came out cautiously and looked in all directions except toward the place where Carlo was positioned, or perhaps he couldn't see in that direction without turning around. At any rate Carlo waited until he was far enough out so that he could pounce on him. By then it was too late, and Carlo soon killed the woodchuck by crushing his head in his jaws. Then Carlo proceeded immediately to tear open the animal's abdomen and begin his eating with the liver.

One time during the summer, when we had our meals in the wood-shed building, my sister Leta forgot to feed Carlo for perhaps a couple of days. He was so hungry that when no one was around he helped himself to a good-sized part of a ham which was on the table. He had never done such a thing before, and of course he was punished for it. But what hurt me most was that Carlo had been so hungry that he was driven to it.

One time when father had a good wood fire going in our living room, which was formerly the dining room when we had mill-boarders, the soot which had accumulated in the chimney caught fire and flames were shooting out of the brick chimney on top of the house. In the bedroom upstairs the stove pipe came up through the

33


floor and after rising about five and a half feet, went horizontally into the chimney. The fire in the chimney extended also to involve the soot in the stovepipe. The stove pipe, where it came through the bedroom floor, was so hot that it started a fire in the floor around the pipe. The fire burning fiercely inside the brick chimney was not the primary problem, because the bricks could contain the fire until it burned out. So father attacked the fire starting in the bedroom floor. As I watched, he chopped out the floor around the hot chimney exposing the laths in the ceiling of the room below. When the burning wood was exposed and accessible, father soon had the fire out. He continued to watch it until the fire in the chimney had burned itself out, and all danger was past.

Father had a hired man who worked for 75 cents a day. He ordinarily slept in the rooming house a few feet to the west of our woodshed building and went home for the weekends. His home was about 3 1/2 miles away. Father with Bill Taylor's help had made an excavation in the ground just to the south of the southern door of our woodshed. Here they had built a cellar with a fresh concrete floor and walls. They had also built a roof over it. There was a drop of 4 feet or more from the ground level to the floor of the cellar. At the time of this incident, they did not yet have a door on the entrance to the cellar nor did they have any steps built down into the cellar. Since father wanted to hasten the drying of the concrete in the cellar, he had put a temporary small stove in the empty cellar with a stovepipe coming out through the doorway. He had Bill Taylor sleeping on an improvised cot in the cellar, with wood beside him, to keep the fire going during the night.

Another feature of this picture was that just to the west of the joint entrance way to the cellar and the woodshed was the well-established position of a large swillbarrel, into which left-over food and slops from the kitchen and cooking utensils were thrown to supplement the pig feed. Also sitting around this barrel were pails which were coated inside with food particles which were attractive to pigs.

One night, Bill Taylor was awakened from his sleep in the cellar by a terrible banging around outside, followed by a heavy object landing on the cellar floor. Bill Taylor could think of nothing else but that the Devil was after him. So he lost no time in scrambling out of there, and running to his usual lodging in the building where he spent the rest of the night. The next morning when my father and Bill Taylor explored the situation, they found the sow in the cellar with a swill pail over her head, with the bail of the pail behind her ears so that she couldn't get it off. The sow had somehow got out of her pen, and was exploring the tasty offerings of the swill pail, when she found she couldn't get if off. In her blind efforts to free herself from the pail, she thrashed around and fell through the doorway into the empty cellar, which probably knocked the wind out of her at the same time, so that she was not only scared but totally unable to make a sound for a while.

After the cellar was finished the excess dirt had to be disposed of. So father built a concrete retaining wall on his property, inside of the sidewalk, running from our corner south to the front of the general store. Then he leveled up the ground behind the wall and cut down a small hill on our property to make a level lawn which soon was well established. At the same time he retained a small apple tree, just to the south of the new cellar, which was already well started. This retaining wall made it possible to keep the sidewalk clean which formerly was often half covered by drifting mud.

34


About this time an exploratory drilling on a farm about a mile to the east of Fair Ground struck some good quality natural gas. The gas pocket was not great enough, nor with high enough pressure, to justify piping it far away. But it was enough to warrant piping to the people in the small hamlet itself and to the farm houses along the road. This was a great help to us. We had it piped into our house for cooking and lighting and heating. It also was piped into the school house for heating and into the church for heating and lighting.

To get a satisfactory light with natural gas required a special shaped mantle which was made of some white loosely woven material which had been saturated with some chemical or salt which gave it some firmness and produced a white ash when the original fabric was burned by lighting it with a match. The gas became ignited when turned on with properly controlled size of flame and pressure which kept the gas flame inside the mantle. This produced a brilliant sustained white light which was ever so much better than kerosene lamps.

For heating, proper gas burners were required. To work properly they had to have the proper mixture of gas and air. When correctly installed it was easy to light them and turn them off and regulate them for heating and cooking.

One time I found an iron wheel, which at one time must have been on a wheel barrow. We had no wheelbarrow so, starting with the wheel, I made a very satisfactory wheelbarrow.

Another time I constructed something of a hammock by fastening together barrel staves. I used wire to secure them and connect them at their ends. It worked fairly satisfactorily but was tricky to use because it tipped over very readily.

Sometimes mother used Bill Taylor's wife to help her in the house. After several of those occasions mother could not find several things which seemed to be gone. She suspected that they had been stolen by Mrs. Taylor. To look for them my father obtained a search warrant and with the sheriff, they searched Bill Taylor's house. They found the missing items hidden under a kitchen floor board which could be pried up.

Another person who gave my father trouble from time to time was mother's Uncle Ben Purdy. Father made a deal with him to get a heifer in exchange for a sow. Ben Purdy took the sow home but never came through with the heifer. So one night, father, with the help of Bill Taylor, went over and got the sow and brought her home.

Sometime before World War I started it was reported that there was a machine in Pt. Burwell that could fly. They called it an airplane but no one had any idea of how it worked. Some wondered if it flapped its wings like a bird. Many people went the twelve miles to Pt. Burwell to see it, but no one from our family went. We heard later how it worked. It was one of the wonders of the age at that time.

Mother and father had given us children a beautiful wagon with wooden spoked wheels which had iron tires on it, like a large wagon. It would hold two of us at once and it had a handle which turned back so that the rider could steer it while sitting in the wagon. With this arrangement, and the down grade of the sidewalk from our corner past the general store, we could send each other flying down the

35


sidewalk. The only drawback was that, with the regular cracks in the sidewalk and the iron tires, each trip made a terrible noise. After putting up with this for a year or more, Mr. Scidmore finally saw his opportunity to terminate this nuisance. So after a traction engine hauling a threshing machine had gone through, our wagon was found crushed on the road.

One time mother had a cat she wanted disposed of, so I undertook to kill it. To do so I loaded our 1825 vintage musket with powder, packing and a ball bearing for a bullet. It was a muzzle-loader, and a firing cap had to be used. I didn't want to hold the heavy gun, so I placed it on the ground with the unsuspecting cat's head in front of the gun and pulled the trigger. The cat was of course killed instantly.

My father's brother Michael was a dentist who lived and practiced in Toledo, Ohio. One summer he and Aunt Ella were visiting us. They had come in their open- topped automobile and had parked it on the road between our barn and our house. Clifford and I were curious about the car and were sitting in it enjoying the experience. Then Clifford noticed that the ignition key was in the car. So he turned the key and stepped on the starter. The motor sprang to life, but he turned it off right away and did not engage any gears.

On this occasion Uncle Michael brought along some dental equipment so he could fill the cavities in our teeth. To do the drilling he had a drill which was driven by a foot pedal, which he operated himself while manipulating the drill with his hand.

Uncle Michael's wife Ella was a sister of Uncle John's wife Effie. They were both Gale girls. So Uncle John's children Stanley and Vera Park were double cousins of Uncle Michael's children, Ila, Harley and Aline Park.

The Methodist Church was west of our corner but on our side of the road. There was need to have a sidewalk built from the church to the corner to make walking easier to Sunday services instead of walking on the loose sand. So the church people promoted an entertainment to raise money to build it. The money obtained was not in itself sufficient, so the farmers each hauled a load of gravel for the project. Our family, and many others, wanted the sidewalk built on the south side of the road from the corner to the church. But a few others, led by Frank Williams and his wife, wanted it built on the north side of the road. Our faction won, and it was built on the south side of the road. But the Williams family, ever afterward, refused to walk on it until they were past our livery barn. They even went so far as to build another sidewalk, part way to the church, on the north side of the road. This they always walked on.

Many years later Ben Purdy thought the concrete blocks in the sidewalk on the North side would be more useful to him at his home than on the road where they were. So one night he took them up and hauled them home. Afterwards, I understand that the Williams family made him pay for them.

My father, besides being a farmer, served as the local barber, often cutting hair in the evenings, at 25 cents each. He eventually taught me to cut hair too. He was also clerk of the Circuit Civil Court. The judge lived in the County seat which was Simcoe, but he held court in the Fair Ground Town Hall at regular intervals. Between court sessions father handled the paper work, such as issuing summons and suing people for unpaid debts, etc. He had these legal papers served by a part-time Sheriff.

36


Houghton Fair, in the fall, was always a busy time for all of us. Mother, with hired help, usually fed about 400 people at dinner that day at 25 cents each. Father provided stalls and feed for horses all around our barnyard fences. And we boys operated a safety place, in the two-story building, where we tied up people's robes and whips, and placed them on the floor for safe keeping. Each tied-up bundle had a number on it and the owner carried a duplicate number. All of this was done at a small price, but it tied us up all day, and we couldn't go to the fair across the road until it was practically over. The income from all of these projects was consider able, but practically all of it went, the next day, to pay off the grocery bill at the general store which had accumulated during the previous year. Early in the morn ing after the fair, we children combed the fairground over carefully looking for lost coins. Often we found as much as $2.00 worth of silver coins.

There are some features about people outside of our family which may be worthy of note because of the smallness of our community. There was a middle-aged bachelor who still lived with his parents a little over 1/2 mile south of our corner. He was a rather ornery fellow who kept two large dogs tied up in his barn. One was a vicious brute. We nicknamed this man "Rarin' Brindle." Sometimes we called him that when we were far enough away that we knew he couldn't catch us. When he heard it he always burst forth in a string of curses and vile words.

Farther south on the same road on the former Fulton place, at this time, lived our hired man and his family by the name of Underhill. His oldest son, Don, was definitely not very bright. One time when we had been sharpening knives on a grind stone, we would cautiously feel of the sharp edge with a thumb to see if it was sharp enough. Don wanted to test it too, which we allowed him to do, and he promptly cut a gash in his thumb. His brother Percy, who was younger and seemed under nourished, was playing around the corncrib with us boys. We were hanging onto the slats of this structure a little way off the ground. Percy joined us in the fun, but couldn't hang on very long and there was no way to get a foothold. Percy was obliged to let go and fall about two feet from the bottom of his feet to the ground. When he did so he let out a loud yell, and it was found that he had broken his leg. Ordinarily a fall of that distance would not even hurt an ordinary child, but Percy must have had very fragile bones.

Jack Lucas was a farmer who lived on the next road about 1 1/2 miles to the south-west of our place. Jack had a voice timbre which made it carry long distances. Often, soon after 5 P.M., we could hear him yell, "Bring out the milk pails."

One time Clifford and I were firing a 22 caliber rifle at a target set up on the sand mound over our root cellar. We were firing in the direction of Finch's barn which was 300 or 400 yards away. One time, after this, a friend of ours, by the name of Earle Finch, said he heard a bullet whistle by his ear while walking in his barnyard.

One time the preacher at the Methodist Church wanted to pep up the music at the church by having several people play musical instruments together in the choir area at the front of the church. It so happened that the only one in the community who could play the violin was a business man who was known to be having an affair with his female assistant, who was not his wife. When the preacher told my father that this character was going to play the violin in the church next Sunday, father advised him not to have this man in the group. Well, the next Sunday when the orchestra assembled on the platform just prior to opening of the church service, the

37


above mentioned gentleman was among them with his violin. So, at father's signal, the whole family of us rose from the seat, which we filled, and walked out as a public protest. Since there were two adults and four children it was quite a procession.

We lived in southern Ontario which is farther south than most parts of Canada. Besides having all of the usual Canadian trees there were a few species which were uncommon that far north. On the Isaac Piett farm, in the orchard, there was a mulberry tree where we often enjoyed eating the purple berries. About 2 miles east of Fair Ground, on the roadside, was a large tulip tree which had large white flowers on it in the spring. About 4 miles away to the south there was a farm which had a lane lined with a lot of catalpa trees with their long bean-shaped seed pods.

In our part of the country there were lots of birds. To mention a few, there were many meadowlarks, American goldfinches, red-winged blackbirds, bluejays, bobolinks, cow birds, red-headed woodpeckers, and Baltimore orioles with their beautiful hanging nests. We even saw a screech-owl and a whip-poor-will. It was always interesting to watch the V-shaped flight of high flying geese at the change of seasons.

I remember a couple of incidents of communications between animals which were of interest to me, as a boy. One day I happened to be looking at a herd of cattle in a field nearby. One of the cows walked up to another one and stopped and maneuvered her head in a certain way. The second animal responded by licking the shoulder of the first cow at a point which was too close to the first cow's neck for her to be able to turn and lick it herself. The first cow stood quietly in obvious enjoyment. After awhile the second animal got tired of licking and turned away. Immediately the first cow turned on her benefactor and bunted her, as much as to say, that isn't enough. So the second animal turned again and continued licking awhile longer in the same place.

At our house, in those days, all toilet facilities were in an outhouse. There of course was no such thing as toilet paper either. So a tidy box of folded newspapers was maintained at one end of the seat. One of our hens had chosen this spot as the ideal place to lay her eggs. Every day we found a fresh egg there. One day, when I was working at something in full view of the area, the hen entered the small building and settled in the box to lay her egg. A little later someone went in the outhouse and immediately the hen scrambled out. When the person came out and left the door open the hen crept back in and again settled in the box. Before she had time to lay her egg, again somebody else went into the building, and again the hen was scared off. This even happened a third time in the next few minutes. The hen was obviously so mad she started stalking around and making a great fuss. She seemed to be saying "I'm not going back," "I'm not going back," and on and on. Then our white rooster took over. He herded the hen round and round and forced her to go back into the nesting box. Then he perched on the seat beside the box, and stood there steadily. He seemed to be telling the hen, "I'll keep everybody away." After a little while the hen and rooster came out, and the hen went around boasting about laying an egg, as hens usually do. And sure enough, when I went in to see, there was a fresh warm egg.

By 1914 or 1915 father had extended his farming operations extensively from the original 25 acres he owned and the 25 acres which my mother owned. He rented the Fulton farm of 100 acres, of which about 70 acres were under cultivation. He also rented about 75 acres of land which he worked, or used for pasture, on other people's property. This meant that we boys had lots to do in chores and other farm

38


work. And with the first World War already underway, there was much demand for farm products. At the same time strong and healthy young men who could be hired were becoming more and more scarce.

Often Clifford and I were working together and sometimes, to amuse ourselves, we carried on some kind of physical contest between us. Sometimes this took the form of pinching fights. That is we pinched each other until one of us gave up. Of course it left black and blue marks afterwards. Sometimes we attacked each other with cornstalks or small switches. Often in this type of contest I was the winner, not because I hit him harder and hurt him, but because I could put on a more convincing demonstration of fierceness.

One time Clifford and I and our father had finished loading a load of grain which was in sheaves, and we were riding home on it with father driving. Suddenly Clifford said, "There's a snake on the load." It was a harmless garter snake and was crawling back under the sheaves. While I bent over to look for it, Clifford grabbed a pitchfork, jabbed it into a sheaf and pulled upward on it. The fork caught in the binder twine which was around the sheaf. Suddenly the fork slipped past the twine and one of the tines came up into my face and pierced the left side of my nose all the way to the septum. Fortunately there was no other injury. If it had struck my eye, about 1 1/2 inches away, I would have been blinded in my left eye.

One year many of the farms to the south of us were devastated by army worms. I remember when we went to the lake for our annual Sunday School picnic that year, we passed by whole fields where everything had been eaten right down to the ground, including small green-leaved trees. In one field I saw where a furrow had been plowed all around the field in hope of containing the worms. But it didn't do any good. The furrow was filled with army worms crawling up the sides and well on their way. They seemed bent on all going in the same direction like an invading army.

In the summers, when the evenings were long, we sometimes had time to play a game of croquet on our home lawn. Many Saturday evenings in the hot summers, we made a freezer full of ice cream. To do this we had to get a chunk of ice of sufficient size from our ice shed, where it was hidden under sawdust. Then it had to be cleaned up and broken up into small pieces. Mother always prepared the creamy mixture which when frozen became the ice cream. This was put into the metal container, which had a stirring mechanism in it, operated mechanically through its lid. Then we packed the chipped ice into the wooden tub around the metal container and added salt to the ice. Then we attached the cranking mechanism onto the tub and its central container. From there on it was necessary to turn the crank and add more ice as necessary. As the ice melted, the water ran out a hole through one side of the wooden tub, leaving room for more salted ice. We knew the ice cream was ready when turning of the crank became very difficult. During the turning the metal container rotated inside of the ice blanket about it. When the ice cream was ready the loungers at the general store were told about it, and they came and bought dishes full to eat for 5 cents each. If all of the ice cream was not sold, we members of the family had a chance to finish it up. It was delicious and we always hoped it would not be sold out.

In looking back on those days perhaps I should mention the existence of two touted health gadgets. One was a boxed instrument called a violet-ray machine. It was owned by our minister's family. It probably was powered by a battery. It had wires leading into a closed glass tube with a bulb at the end. When the juice was

39


turned on a violet glow appeared in the tube. It was impressive but I never heard of anyone being benefitted by its treatment. The other was an instrument called an oxypathor, owned by my Aunt Edith. It consisted of a heavy solid cylinder with wires attached at each end. The covered wires led to metal plates to be attached to each wrist or ankle. Then when the cylinder was immersed in the ice or cold water some thing beneficial was supposed to flow through the person's system. It was tried on me once, when I was ill. I felt nothing and received no benefit. Undoubtedly it was purely a quack gadget.




40


Family member, 1918
PARK FAMILY MEMBERS, 1918

(left to right, back row:) Clifford, Effie and Lura
(second row:) Montie, Watson
(front row:) Stanley, Wilford.
Watson and Lura are the parents of
Clifford, Wilford, Montie and Leta
(Effie and Stanley are family cousins)

Wilford at 17
Wilford Park at age 17
(photo taken 1918)

Montie with his dog
The Fair Ground Home
(Montie doing a trick with his dog)

This residence was built by Mr. Cutler when Watson acquired the Cutler Hotel on the corner in 1908 in order to provide room and board for the workers at the new Southern-Innes saw mill (built a quarter mile east on the corner of John Park's farm). Watson acquired the house from Mr. Cutler around 1928 and it was his home with his wife Lura (who died at the end of 1935) and with his second wife, Jessie, until Watson's death in 1956. This house is the only building on the Fair Ground corner section still standing and in use.

CHAPTER SIX

HIGH SCHOOL YEARS

Mother and father wanted all of us to get at least a high school education. Father wanted all three of his boys to grow up to be farmers, and in our early days to be helping him on the farm. I don't remember our mother discouraging him in that prospect, but she definitely expected us to be something better than our contemporary children who lived around us. Since Clifford had done so well in high school, I know mother was harboring great expectations for him.

In June 1915 Clifford had finished his three years of high school and I, at the age of 14, had just graduated from elementary school. So I was destined to start attending the High School at Vienna in the fall of 1915 where Clifford had attended. So father had only one of us in high school at the same time, and had Clifford to help him on the farm while I was at school.

There was no way I could get to and from Vienna, which was 7 miles from Fair Ground, except to walk. So that is the way I got to and from Vienna. It meant that I had to get up in the morning every Monday at 5 o'clock and walk to school, and then walk home every Friday after school. From Monday through Friday I lived and boarded at the home of the Pratt's, not far from the school. The family consisted of an elderly gentleman and his unmarried middle-aged daughter and son. My board and room for these short weeks was $3.00 per week.

My high school days were relatively uneventful. In my first year I managed as well as my fellow students in most subjects. In French I seemed to catch on fairly rapidly, so that it wasn't long before I was taking French reading along with the second year class in French.

Vienna High School was two rooms on the second floor of the same building where elementary students were taught, on the ground floor. There were only two teachers and they both taught several subjects. Miss Foster, a woman of about 50 years of age, was the High School Principal. She boarded at the same Pratt's home where I did. Both teachers were well qualified and capable.

I did play a little baseball at school but I didn't have much time to play because I had so much homework to do and so little time to do it. In reality the only times I had to study were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, because it was out of the question to carry books the 7 miles to Fair Ground and back, which I had to walk. Furthermore my father kept me so busy weekends on the farm that there was never any time for study at home.

My Grandma Park died in 1915 while I was at school. She left me a few personal things of hers. One item was a small glass mirror which would stand up on my dresser. I still had that mirror when Clifford and I roomed together in Toronto during my second year at University. Sometime during that year Clifford dropped my mirror on the floor and broke it.

Another thing which Grandma Park left me was a set of 3 toilet boxes, one

41


of which I still have. They were fragile things with Chinese pictures painted on them. The only survivor is a round box about 5 inches high which has a lid on it. The box is for men's collars, which in those days were white celluloid. They were stiff but had a hole for a back collar button behind, and holes in front where they were held on by one front collar button. In the center of the box, on a fixed pedestal, is a little circular box with its own lid, which has its own central knob to lift it up. This little receptacle is for the collar buttons, both of which, front and back, were detachable. For many years I wore this type of collar because celluloid is washable and non-absorbent. All I had to do to get a clean collar was to wash it in soap and water.

One place in Vienna which I enjoyed visiting, when I was out for a walk, was the dam over the Otter River, which ran through Vienna on its way to Lake Erie at Pt. Burwell. The dam was there to provide waterpower for the grist mill. The water at one side of the dam was channeled through a millrace, where it flowed downgrade rapidly to a huge water-wheel which drove the mill machinery.

The water below the dam was deep. In the spring it was interesting to watch the fishermen hauling in huge catches of suckers, a kind of fish with a small mouth which looks as if it is built for suction. The fish in the spring come up the Otter River from Lake Erie in large numbers. Since they could not get past the dam they were found in large numbers below it. The nets were about 10 or 12 feet square and at their corners attached to four small limbs which hung down from the end of a larger limb about 30 ft. long. This constituted something of a catch basket. The long pole was suspended on an upright post on the shore close to the water so that when it was swung out over the water the weighted net dropped to the bottom of the water. The shorter heavier end of the long pole had a rope tied to the end of it. The rope was used to manipulate the long pole which swivelled on the upright post. The net was left lying on the bottom of the deep water for a few minutes to allow the unsuspecting fish to swim over it. Then a stout pull down on the rope lifted the net with its haul of fish out of the water. Then the net was swivelled around and the entrapped fish transferred to a box on the shore.

One day at school we were informed that a battalion of foot soldiers were marching into town and would bivouac for the night in a field behind the high school. School was dismissed for the afternoon so that we might go down town to watch the army arrive. When I got outside into the school yard, the senior girls were already in an excited giggling group, whispering among themselves. We soon joined the crowd of spectators on main street. It wasn't long before the company of Canadian soldiers came swinging along in uniform and precise marching order. They were cheered by the crowd, but it was sad to see so many fine young men on their way to war.

One spring when I was in Vienna, the ice which had been covering the millpond above the dam broke up into huge sections which came tumbling over the dam and on down the Otter River, as it flowed through the town of Vienna. A little below the main part of the town, the ice caught on the abutments of the lower bridge and built up an ice jam about 8 ft. high. This obstruction interfered with the flow of water, so that the whole downtown area was flooded. The water became about 2-1/2 feet deep on Vienna's main business street. Some of the buildings were just above this mark on concrete basements, such as George Williams' Grocery and General Store on one corner and the Post Office on the opposite corner of Main Street. However, many small buildings and homes on the flats were flooded by water two or three feet deep. It left quite a mess, but after a few hours the ice jam broke away, and the flood subsided.

42


One shop on Main Street which I enjoyed visiting was the Blacksmith's Shop. Here a coke or coal fire was always burning in its open hearth with a good fireproof bunker around it and a huge brick chimney to carry off the smoke and fumes. There was also a huge compressible leather air bag which the blacksmith could operate manually, to blow air into the coal fire from below. A few blasts of air would bring the idling red fire up to a glowing white heat which brought horseshoes of iron stuck into it up to a malleable temperature so that the blacksmith, on his anvil, with hammer and tongs, could mold the hot metal into any shape or thickness that he wanted. It was an exhibition of knowledge, skill and human brawn which was a delight to watch.

It was during my first year at high school that I came to grips with religion in a personal way. I did a lot of soul-searching of myself and my own selfishness. I attended some group discussions along with other students who met with a Mr. Lane, who cared about the commitments of young people to good and bad influences. I can't say that these times were crucial, but they had some influence, as did the lives and faithfulness of a multitude of other people. Among other people who had an effect on my thinking were, of course, both of my parents, my grandmother and grandfather Park, my grandfather Cutler and many other ordinary people who fought for what was right and upright. Also, no doubt, even the evil and underhandedness of people, who showed me the results of sin and corruption, turned me away from drifting in that direction.

However, I think the most potent influences which helped to guide me in the right direction were the study of the Holy Scriptures, which I did daily and privately, and the reading of good books by dedicated authors. I enjoyed reading, particularly about the personal experiences of people who came to grips with temptation and won. Among the good books I read at home are the following titles: For the Temple, Sam's Chance, Struggling Upward, Try and Trust, Pilgrim's Progress. At home I did a good deal of reading and thinking during the summer vacation between my first and second years at high school.

Much of the work I did on the farm in the summer of 1916 was solitary work with horses and machinery. It was during these working hours that I began to feel communion with God, and made my commitment to Jesus Christ, and experienced the cleansing effect of accepted forgiveness. On November 3, 1916, at a revival meeting in Cultus, I went forward with others to make public my decision, but that was not the actual time nor point of the decision. Ever since those days my life has been committed to and directed by the principles of Christianity.

One time, when I was walking from home on the way to school on a street in Vienna, I was carrying a beautiful apple which I very much wanted for myself. Just then I encountered a bedraggled looking child and I gave her the apple, the only one I had. She accepted it gratefully, and as I walked on I experienced a joy of unselfish giving which I will never forget.

At home for weekends, and all during vacations from school, I attended church and Sunday School regularly during my high school days.

During the winter months of January and February 1917, I was sick with colds and sore throats frequently but continued to attend school, walking the seven miles going and coming twice a week, with occasional rides part way when people stopped to pick me up. In the spring it often meant walking through mud and rain but I

43


lived through it. In spite of the winter cold, I slept nights in Vienna with my window open. One night after sleeping this way, in the middle of February 1917, I awoke in the morning with some snow drifted in, and the end of my nose covered by a greyish yellow substance, where my nose was frozen. This outer layer of skin peeled off and for several days thereafter my nose was red and sore.

Grandpa Park, as I remember him, always wore a short beard. I don't think he was ever bald-headed. He was considerably older than his wife, but she died first. I remember that Grandpa Park was very much round-shouldered, which seemed to make him smaller than he was when younger. For a few months after grandma died he continued to live alone, in his usual home. During that time we boys took turns sleeping in his house, so that he would never be alone at night. Then he went to Delhi, where he spent the rest of his days with his son William.

On February 19, 1917 Grandpa Park died in Delhi. He died quickly of a stroke. He was brought back to Fair Ground for burial in his family plot in Cultus. I heard about the death and funeral plans while at school, so I walked home after school on February 20th, to be at the funeral the next day. On that walk home, the ground was covered with fresh sleet. Grandpa was 87 years old when he died.

After the funeral Uncle Will read Grandpa's will to the whole family. In it grandpa left to Clifford his gold pocket-watch, which he received, and to Clifford and me $50.00 each. The $50.00 each was given to our father to transfer to us later. However, neither one of us specifically received that money, unless it was counted among the money expended on our education.

At home, when our chores were all done, we often played checkers, which I was quite good at. Very often we enjoyed a pail full of freshly-popped corn together.

Sometimes on weekends I helped Mother with the washing of clothes, but most of the time my duties took me out of doors, even in the winter time. There was always need to cut and haul wood for the several wood stoves, and this kind of work had to be done in the winter cold, while the soil was frozen. Other winter work was hauling out manure, and spreading it on the frozen fields. Frequently in the winter, we brought loads of corn stalks from the shocks in the frozen fields to feed the cattle in the barn. Also we often had to bring a load of hay, from a barn where it was stored, to the barn where we had the horses and cattle for the winter.

Meanwhile World War I was dragging on. Ernie Smith and his brother John had been drafted into the army. The four boys from the West family, living about three miles from us, who had enlisted early, had already been killed in France. Many other farmer boys, who were less well known to us, had been reported killed or missing, and still no end to the war was in sight.

On Friday, March 16th, I walked to Aunt Edith McDonald's house for the weekend instead of going home because I had been informed that someone had the mumps at home, and it was hoped that I would not be exposed to it. But on Sunday morning, when I woke up I too was developing the mumps. That afternoon my brother Montie drove over in the buggy and took me home to be sick there. At home Clifford was in bed with the mumps, so I joined him in bed, where we both stayed until we recovered. We both developed the complication of orchitis, which is quite common with mumps. Since the quarantine period for mumps is quite long, I was away from school at that time for about a month.

44


That spring I had a cocoon just outside my bedroom window at the Pratts. I was watching it every day to see if a butterfly would come out of it. One day when I was home it was obvious that something was happening. The cocoon split open and slowly something began to emerge. It had a black head and began to free itself from the cocoon. After a while it seemed to extend in length, and extend it legs. Then the crumpled wings began slowly to unfold. It wasn't long before the two beautiful yellow and black-spotted wings were fully opened and a living butterfly was born before my eyes. I left it there untouched as darkness fell. In the morning it was gone.

One day at the high school I was standing near the boys entrance on the west side of the school idly listening to some senior class boys, who were just talking and not paying any attention to me. They were boasting of how brave they were, and were proposing to climb out of the upper story window in front of the school and slide down the flag pole which stood about 3 or 4 ft. away from the window. I did not join in the conversation nor comment. Then I noticed that the decoration pattern of the brick building, at the corner, consisted of groups of bricks, which were set about 1-1/2 inches out from the wall on each side of the corner. These projections were about 16 inches high, and 16 inches wide. They were also separated from each other vertically, by about 16 inches of blank brick wall. These looked to me like an ideal arrangement for a person to climb, because there was a foothold, and a handhold about 32 inches above it, on each side of the corner. Furthermore these were not on the same level on each side of the corner, but conveniently alternating about every 16 inches. So by moving the right hand and the right foot up at the same time, and placing them on the appropriate projections, and then moving the left hand and the left foot to the higher steps on the other side of the corner, one could climb quite easily. Without saying a word, I stepped up to the corner and proceeded to climb all the way up the two-story building, and then I came down the same way, by reversing the process. Climbing up was easier than coming down, because in coming down I had to find the supporting projections by feeling and not by seeing. When I arrived down safely, I walked away without saying a word, and the boys who saw me walked off in the opposite direction without saying a word either. I am sure they never mentioned it to anybody, and I never spoke of it either. I don't know what possessed me to do it. I know it was a preposterous thing for me to do. I might well have fallen and killed myself. Even now, whenever I think about it, it still scares me.

In 1917, I was given a metal pin identifying me as a member of the Farm Service Corp. I was busy with all kinds of farm work during the summer of 1917. Much of it was hoeing potatoes because father always grew many acres of potatoes. Haying and harvesting the grain seemed to follow each other closely.

One diversion during the summer was fighting a brush and grass fire on the Fulton farm which we had rented. We didn't know how it got started.

In those days automobiles were extremely rare and the horses were all afraid of them. One time I was driving in a buggy alone and saw a car coming. I got out and took the horse well off the road and hung onto her bridle tightly. When the car went noisily by I could hardly hold the horse. Repeatedly she lifted me off my feet in her effort to get away and run.

In our flock of hens that summer I noticed one that was so weak she could

45


scarcely stand. When I caught her and picked her up she was extremely light in weight and only skin and bones and feathers. When I looked at her I saw what the trouble was. Her upper bill had grown very long and hooked down outside of the lower bill. This made it impossible for her to grasp anything in her mouth and she was obviously starving to death.

That fall, just before school opened, father bought me a used bicycle to ride to school. It didn't matter that it was a lady's bicycle so long as it worked. For the first time I had some means of transportation other than my own sturdy legs.

On Sept. 16th, 1917, I received my first suit of clothes with long pants. Previously I had always worn knickers.

On Nov. 1, 1917, Joe King, a nearby farmer, married his 4th wife, 3 months after his 3rd wife died. We boys were home and joined in the shivaree a few nights later. It was an assemblage of quite a number of young people with all kinds of noise makers such as horns, drums, kazoos and fire crackers. One of the most effective noise makers was an old large steel buzz saw, carried on an iron rod through the hole in its center by two boys, with the third man pounding the saw with a hammer. Joe and his wife took the serenade amiably and supplied some treats for the group.

In November that year our whole family was out one night when the northern lights were putting on a most spectacular display. It was a marvelous sight with the flashes of light shifting about in the sky.

One evening in Fair Ground there was a big oyster supper held in the town hall. Everybody for miles around attended. It was an informal affair and we young people had a good time making our own fun. Oysters were new to me, and even though I didn't like them very much I managed to eat some.

I was quite skillful in using my bicycle, but in the winter time I couldn't use it in the snow and slush. One time when the weather was good, I was riding it on the sidewalk in Vienna on the way down to the post office. I had a large parcel on the handle bars with me, and as I usually did when going down an easy grade, I was riding along without having hold of the handles. I soon found that I was going too fast, and wanted to apply my brakes, but I found that when I put pressure on the pedal to slow up it threw the bicycle off balance. I couldn't keep the bicycle steady with the brake on. My problem was that the big box was so in my way, and directly under my chin, that I couldn't reach the handle bars. Therefore I could only apply the brake gently and intermittently without running off the sidewalk, with the result that I couldn't stop at the corner where I wanted to, but continued on past the end of the sidewalk over a drop-off into the road. Of course I was thrown off, but with no damage to myself nor the bicycle nor my package.

On Dec. 1, 1917, I cut my father's hair for the first time. It was satisfactory because I had already had some experience cutting other people's hair under his supervision and instruction.

Sometime during the winter of 1917-18 I began teaching a Sunday School class in Fair Ground.

46


Grandpa Cutler, as long as I can remember, wore a medium length beard. I never remember having seen him when his beard wasn't grey. He was a mild mannered man who stood by his Christian principles and beliefs. He was troubled because he was born out of wedlock. His mother was a school teacher so must have had some education, probably more than was common at that time. His father, he was told, was a traveling salesman with ancestry going back to the Pennsylvania Dutch. Grandpa's mother later married into the Downs family which lived for years west of Fair Ground. Grandpa had a half brother whose last name was Downs. I remember that this half brother, in his later years, was not well and Grandpa Cutler took care of him in his home until he died. There was a member of a younger generation by the name of Clarence Downs who obtained some advanced education, and worked at the University of Toronto as a chemist. I used to see him occasionally while I was attending the University later. He called my grandfather Uncle Edgar.

In the fall of 1917 Grandpa Cutler had married again and lived with his new wife on her farm, somewhat south and east of Pt. Burwell. One time I walked from Vienna to that farm to visit him and his new wife. She was a big woman and to me not very attractive, but she was kind and good to me. I presume they were happy together but it didn't last very long because she died and Grandpa returned to spend the rest of his days in the home of his daughter, my Aunt Edith McDonald. When my grandfather died he was buried in his cemetery plot in the churchyard at Kinglake, Ontario.

When I awoke on the morning of Monday, Dec. 10th, 1917, and prepared to be on my way to school in Vienna, I found we had had a severe snow storm during the night, and the roads were impassable to any kind of traffic. So I didn't start out until the afternoon. In the afternoon I walked all the way to Vienna through snow drifts without encountering any animal traffic. The walk took me 3-1/2 hours but I made it safely, and was at school the next morning.

In the latter part of the year 1917 I was already in my last year of high school studies. I know I studied hard, usually about 6 hours every night while in Vienna, and I never got to bed until midnight. However, I never missed my reading of a chapter in the bible before I went to sleep.

My persistent pursuit of learning was apparently beginning to pay off because at Christmas examinations in 1917 my score of marks was as follows - Ancient History, 61%; British History, 83%; Literature, 76%; Geometry, 81%; Algebra, 91%; Chemistry,78%; Physics, 92%.

During the year 1917, 1 kept a detailed account of my expenditures. Included in this total was every cent I handled during the year, which paid for my school expenses, my room and board, my personal expenditures, cost of repair of my bicycle, etc. The total for the whole year was $136.00.

During my years at High School in Vienna, Ontario, there was no inside plumbing in the school house nor at the Pratt home where I was a roomer and boarder. There was a custodian who took care of the school, the lawn and out-buildings and they were always in a decent condition. The out-building for the girls was widely separated from the boys' facility, at the opposite corner of the school lot. There was also a high board fence which separated the boy's space behind the school house from the girls portion of the school yard.

47


I did not have many close friends at the High School. There was one classmate, however, that I was with a good deal. He was Everett McCurdy. He had difficulty walking because of an attack of poliomyelitis.

In my day, no one at high school had a car and very few had bicycles.

I continued to study hard during the spring term at school, sometimes not going home for the weekend at all. Anyway, I finished my three years at high school by passing successfully, in June, 1918, the Normal Entrance Examination which qualified me to enter Normal School, if I wanted to become a school teacher. I also passed my Junior Matriculation Examination, which at that time was all that was required to register at any Canadian University for more advanced education. However, at that time, I had no idea of what sort of career I wanted in life, so it was natural that I should fall in line with the wishes of my father to make a farmer of me.





48


CHAPTER SEVEN

THREE YEARS AS A FARMER

My years of helping my father on the farm began after my school examinations were over in June 1918. I was then about 3 months past the age of seventeen. At that time, Clifford was also home for the summer.

Although all of us worked hard during that summer, nevertheless we, as active boys, had some time to romp and play on our house lawn in the evenings after work. One common kind of contest between us was wrestling. After working at it most evenings during the summer, Clifford and I both became quite good at it. Even some of the neighboring young people learned to have considerable respect for our prowess. From experience I developed a hip roll which, if I could combine it with a certain grip on the arms, gave me a method of throwing which was practically invincible. So on the whole I think I was a little better than Clifford.

Because of our youth and constantly using our muscles in all kinds of hard farm work, we both developed strong physiques and considerable stamina. As a result, I became able to perform a test of strength that I think few people could do. Everyone is familiar with the usual push-ups, by which the body is completely raised off the ground with only the toes touching and the hands and arms in the vertical position under the shoulders. I was able to do a much more difficult variation of this. Instead of placing my hands under me, I could lie on my stomach with my arms fully extended, in the horizontal position, beyond my head, and grasping the front rung of a chair, which was horizontal and about 4 or 5 inches off the floor, I could still come up on my hands and toes as cleanly as any push-up.

A little later, inside a small new barn Dad had built on the site where the large barn had burned down, there was a concrete floor which we turned into a boxing arena. We somehow got enough money to buy boxing gloves for two people. Clifford and I played around with them. We enjoyed the experience and exercise. One time Clifford induced our father to put on a pair, and do a little boxing with him. He was reluctant to do so, but finally consented. It wasn't long before Clifford accidentally and unintentionally struck him on the nose. Dad terminated his boxing right there, hurriedly tore off the gloves and never put them on again.

One time when we were at our annual Sunday School picnic, at the Small Sand Hills, we were down at the lake swimming in the surf and playing on the beach. We discovered in a small inlet, a few feet away from the beach, a small pond of shallow water with weeds growing in it. In the shallow water were several large catfish swimming lazily around. They were so sluggish we could almost handle them. Most of them were about two feet long. We didn't know whether they had been trapped there when high water ran back into the lake or whether they were kept there by a fisherman for later sale.

In the evenings we had time for reading good books, and often we had some fun playing crokinole. Crokinole was a game which could be played by two or by four. Among the books we had in our bookcase at home were the following titles: Phil the Fiddler, Paul the Peddler, From Jest to Ernest, Never Beaten, Dora Deane, John Knox, Boer War, Wreck of the Titanic, The Lady of the Lake, Ben-Hur, The Mistress of Shenstone, Julius Caesar, Self Knowledge, The Rise of Roscoe Paine and others, many of them Boy Scout books.

49


One time, I was riding bare-back on an errand to the next crossroad. I was galloping along, and about to pass a farm gate where we had some land rented. The horse, of course, didn't know that I wanted to go farther, so she turned in where she had often come before, and in stopping quickly as she turned, she threw me off her back. I caught myself by hanging onto her neck and landed safely on my feet.

Another time when I was riding a horse I had a funny experience. On this occasion, I was taking a team with me to attach to a farm implement, which was already in the field. They wore their harnesses, and were connected to each other by a line running from the inside of the bit of each to a ring on the harness on the back of the other horse. I was riding on the back of the horse on the left side of the team. It looked like it might rain, so I had an umbrella along with me. The umbrella was not open and the horses were sauntering along. I foolishly began playing with the umbrella, but did not need it to protect me from the rain because it was not then raining. I pointed the umbrella forward and downward between the two horses and started to open it. Both horses saw this strange thing (out of the corner of their eyes) expanding between them, and both, at the same time, moved quickly sideways to get away from it. In doing so they didn't look where they were going, and broke themselves apart. I promptly closed the umbrella, but the horse I was riding was already falling flat on his side on the road. I stepped off the horse before he struck the ground, and was free and unhurt with the closed umbrella still in my hand. The frightened horse picked himself up, and hastily looked around wild-eyed to see what had frightened him. When he couldn't see anything to be frightened of, he hung his head and walked on, with the most embarrassed expression ever seen on an animal.

One spring Dad sent me to the grist mill in Vienna with a load of grain to be ground up into pig feed. On that trip I drove a team of horses consisting of a bay horse on the left side and a black horse on the right side. The black horse was called Prince. He was rather a favorite or ours, because we could pinch him playfully and he would put on a show of fighting back, but he never really hurt us. He was really an intelligent horse, but he turned his energies toward shirking his work. For instance, if he were not watched he would hang back behind his mate until his end of the double-tree was resting on something behind it. In that position all of the work was being done by his mate, and he was merely walking along, with his traces taut, pretending to be pulling his share.

On our trip to the grist mill we had a fairly heavy load of grain. The road was dry, and I never thought of such a thing as encountering ice. When we got to the valley just outside of Vienna, I turned the team down a rather steep short grade on a short-cut road I always used when I went to school in Vienna. To my surprise, no sooner were we on the downgrade when I found that the thin layer of sand hid an icy surface, which was still there because it was sheltered so that the sun could not get at it. I tried to slow the team but the grade was too steep and the horses shoes were already dull. They tried to slow the heavy load, but the bay horse's hind feet slid forward under him, spread widely apart, and he was sliding down the hill on his backside. He was still able to hold up his end of the neck yoke by walking on his front legs, but he could do nothing to hold back the load, nor even help in steering the wagon. I remained seated on the wagon, and kept a firm hold on the reins to guide the horses, as they were forced down the hill and around the curves in it. Black Prince took over full responsibility, and with my help in guiding him, he was able to keep on his feet, and alone he kept that load on the icy road steering both the wagon and the sliding horse safely down the hill until it leveled out, so

50


that his mate was able to regain his feet. We proceeded to the mill and got the grain ground, and needless to say, we came back onto our home-bound road by another route.

One night Clifford and I were driving home in a buggy from some meeting we had been attending. Suddenly there was a screeching noise, and sparks were flying on the right side of the buggy, which seemed to be in the vicinity of the seat. The horse got scared and began to go faster. Clifford was driving and he managed to stop the horse. This was during wartime, and we both thought that the sparks meant a fuse was burning to set off a bomb under our seat. When the horse was stopped the sparks and noise also stopped, but in trepidation we got out to look for a bomb.

We soon found that it was not a bomb. We found that during the recent storm a telephone line had fallen down and lay on the road so that the right back wheel of the buggy had run over it, but not the front wheel. At the point where the sparks started to fly, the telephone wire was already rising from the road toward the next telephone pole. In those days telephone lines were bare steel wires, and the buggy had steel tires on the wheels. The sparks and noise were caused by the revolving wheel of the buggy rubbing on the tight wire of the telephone system. We soon got the telephone wire out from under the buggy and continued on home without further incident.

The first winter as a farmer I spent working in Brantford, Ontario, where I boarded with Aunt Effie and cousins Stanley and Vera Park. My first job was a cold and unpleasant one, digging a ditch for a water line for the city. I carried my lunch, which was quite adequate. When I sat down to eat it, I was joined by another young man, who was of some foreign ancestry. He could scarcely speak any English. I noticed that his whole lunch consisted of a raw cucumber and a large piece of raw cabbage.

I did not work long outside, but soon got a job with the Massey-Harris Company, which was assembling farm machinery, chiefly binders. My job was supplying the workmen with the machine parts. To do this I had a heavy two-wheeled truck, which I pushed around like a wheel barrow. I picked up the cog-wheels and other small parts in the storeroom and moved them to the bins near the workmen.

One Sunday, Stanley drove me in his car to visit the famous landmark of the vicinity, the historic Mohawk Church. The inscription on the church was: "St. Paul's, His Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks. Erected by King George III, 1785. The first church built in Ontario." Adjoining the church was Joseph Brant's Tomb bearing the following inscription: "This tomb is erected to the memory of THAYENDANEGEA or Capt. Joseph Brant, principal chief and warrior of the six nation indians, by his fellow subjects and admirers of his fidelity, and attachment to the British Crown. Born on the banks of the Ohio river 1742, died at Wellington Square, Upper Canada, 1807." It also contains the remains of his son AHYOUWAIGHS or Capt. John Brant, who succeeded his father as TEKARIHOGEA, and distinguished himself in the war of 1812-15. Born at Mohawk Village U.C. 1794. Died at the same place 1832.

One early spring, Dad hired Ben Purdy to dig a long ditch for him on Mother's farm, almost the whole length of the farm, to carry water to a large ditch which flowed across the back part of the property. He did a good job. The ditch was about 4 ft. wide at the bottom and about 2 ft. deep.

51


Later Dad and I buried tile across the fields to carry water into that ditch. About the same time Dad and I built a wire fence across the front of the farm, giving me experience in digging postholes and fixing them securely, particularly at the ends and corners, where they had to be braced. The fence had to be stretched tightly, by the use of a stretcher mechanism, and nailed securely by the use of staples.

I often worked alone in the fields with a team of horses. I recall that I was particularly proud of my ploughing with a one furrow plough. I had never been to a ploughing match in competition with other farmers in ploughing, but I think I would have shown up well, because my furrows were so straight across a ten acre field, that you could shoot a rifle bullet in a furrow the whole length and not hit either side of the dirt.

Another thing I practiced doing when out in the fields alone was reading the time of day by the position of the sun. I carried a pocket watch and after much practice I could, at any time of the day, estimate the time within 5 minutes of the correct time.

Working alone on the farm also gave me the opportunity to dwell on my relation ship to God and ponder my purpose in life. I found myself wanting to do something for other young people, so I became the regular teacher of the boys class in Sunday School at the Methodist Church in Fair Ground. We wanted to make our class more private than others in the church, so we obtained permission to use 3 or 4 seats in one back corner of the church. There I fashioned a light post which could be attached to the outside of the seat in front of our section. From this post we strung a small rope to the adjacent wall on which we hung a curtain. This we could easily set up and take down after the class session.

In addition to the Sunday sessions, we thought we could further benefit by getting together one other evening each week. This we did, and formed what was called The Tuxis Boys. It was something like a boy scout group but more oriented to spiritual things. We began those evening meetings with a selected scripture reading and a short prayer. Then we gathered around the church organ and sang hymns, with me playing the organ with my right hand only, and pumping the pedals with my feet. Of course I was not very good, but good enough that we could sing lustily together. Perhaps the familiar hymns, with their religious sentiments, did more to direct the thinking of the boys along more spiritual lines, than anything I said.

Perhaps by mentioning some of our favorite hymns, you will remember something of their spiritual impact. Some titles were -
                  "My Hope is Built on Nothing Less Than Jesus Blood and Righteousness"
"Yield Not to Temptation"
"Just As I Am Without One Plea"
"Jesus Saviour, Pilot Me"
"He Leadeth Me"
"Jesus Keep Me Near The Cross"
"I Am Thine, 0 Lord I Have Heard Thy Voice"
"I Need Thee Every Hour"
"Nearer, My God, To Thee"

52


                  "I Love To Tell The Story, Of Jesus and His Love"
"Take the Name of Jesus With You"
"There's A Land That is Fairer Than Day"
"When He Cometh, When He Cometh, To Make Up His Jewels"

One time I attended a Tuxis Boys Conference which further deepened my interest in the program. We of course studied many other things in nature such as birds, animals and flowers, but one of the fields which was most intriguing was study of the skies. On clear nights we could identify many of the constellations and some of the planets.

One time we needed some money for books or some other purposes, so we prepared a program of entertainment and put it on in the Town Hall one evening. We had quite a good turnout of the generous people who wanted to encourage us. I don't remember the nature of the program, but I remember one of the features included some firework sparklers which we hung on the curtain wire across the front of the stage. I remember I was master of ceremonies, standing there within easy reach of one of the sparklers, which threatened to set fire to the nearby curtain. I sensed that the audience was getting uneasy, so I calmly reached up and smothered the burning sparkler in my bare hand. Panic was averted, at the trivial cost of my mildly burned hand.

I remember preaching once at our church when the minister was away. I am sure I made a pretty poor showing because my talents didn't run in that direction.

During the entire First World War period, from when it began in 1914 and dragged on until November II, 1919, the day the Armistice was signed, I worked with my father. At the close of the war, I was still too young to be drafted into the armed forces, but perhaps, for the record, it might be useful to give some details of the Militia Act of 1917 which authorized the drafting of young Canadians into the army.

The Act authorized the call up of men, when their ages and conditions fell into the following classes, if the need for men warranted it. The ages mentioned mean the age of the man on the date the act was passed in 1917 -

                  Class I - Ages 20 to 23 - Unmarried with no children

Class 2 - Ages 23 to 28 - Unmarried with no children

Class 3 - Ages 28 to 34 - Unmarried with no children

Class 4 - Ages 20 to 23 - Married with children

Class 5 - Ages 23 to 28 - Married with children

Class 6 - Ages 28 to 34 - Married with children

Class 7 - Ages 35 to 41 - Unmarried with no children

Class 8 - Ages 41 to 45 - Unmarried with no children

Class 9 - Ages 41 to 45 - Married with children

53


                  Exempted - Clergy, Ministers of religion, Doukhobors and Mennonites.

The Service medals which might be awarded to Canadians were -

                  I.S.M. - Imperial Service Medal

D.S.O. - Distinguished Service Order

D.S.M. - Distinguished Service Medal

D.C.M. - Distinguished Conduct Medal

V.C. - Victoria Cross

My experience on the farm included a great many things. There was lots of work associated with farm animals. The horses had to be fed and watered, groomed, put out to pasture and brought back. The stable had to be cleaned and fresh straw put in for bedding. Their harnesses frequently were in need of repair. They had to be taken to a blacksmith to have worn shoes replaced, and sometimes pressure sores needed treatment.

The cows required attention in many respects like the horses, but their feed included silage, which meant growing corn for that purpose, silo filling and getting silage out of the silo every day. The cows had to be milked by hand, since we had no mechanical milking machine. The milk had to be readied for the cheese factory. Some milk was put through our hand-operated cream separator to provide cream for cooking and for making butter. The work involved animal breeding, attending birth of calves, and later weaning of calves.

The weaning process involved teaching calves to drink, because after the period of suckling, they did not know how to drink. This was accomplished by placing a pail of milk in front of the calf. After wetting my fingers in the milk and letting the calf taste it, I kept my fingers in the calf's mouth, and then with the other hand on the back of its head, pushed its mouth down into the milk in the pail. By holding the head down, and keeping my fingers in the calf's mouth and submerged in the milk, the calf would continue to suck up milk. By gradually removing my fingers, the calf would continue to suck up milk so long as the head was held down. After a few similar experiences, the calf would ultimately learn that the milk was in the pail, and that it could drink without having anything to suckle.

Caring for pigs was associated mainly with feeding them, cleaning their pens and taking them to market. Some were slaughtered at home to provide pork for our own use. Additional work included rendering of certain tissues to obtain lard. The carcass was then cut up into the usual butcher's segments. Then the process of salting and sugar-curing was undertaken, and some parts were smoked. This was necessary to preserve the meat because in those days we had no refrigeration.

Caring for chickens was not too difficult, because we did not have many, and they had free range of the barnyard. It was easy to tell when a hen wanted to set on her nest to hatch out some chickens. When this time arrived, we would provide

54


her with a suitable number of eggs, and she would settle down on them to keep them warm for the three weeks or so necessary to reach the hatching stage. When the little ones were hatched, we provided her with a confined space for her brood, while she sheltered them under her feathers and taught them to eat and drink.

We killed only enough young chickens, usually roosters, to provide us with chicken meat. The smaller fluffier feathers were plucked off dry to use for stuffing our bed pillows. The larger feathers were usually removed after dunking the dead chickens in scalding hot water, which loosened them.

One thing I disliked most about farming was handling the manure. During the last year I was on the farm, my father purchased a used horse-drawn manure spreader. It was equipped with a seat at the front where I could sit and drive the team. There was a lever there to throw the mechanism into gear. The turning of the back wheels caused the apron, which constituted the bottom of the wagon, to move slowly backward. At the back end was a spinning cylinder with an open framework which revolved rapidly and scattered the manure widely out behind in small pieces. It took care of some of the work, but the vehicle itself had to be loaded by hand, using a dung fork.

I learned to use all kinds of horse-drawn farm machinery. In my time on the farm, we never had a tractor nor any kind of power source. Preparing the land began with ploughing, followed by discing, cultivating and harrowing. For grain crops, this was followed by seeding, either by hand or by a horse-drawn drill, which dropped the seeds into channels dug into the soil at a controlled rate.

Spreading of very small seeds, such as various grasses for pasture or hay, was done by a hand-carried sack, which was secured around the neck. It had a finely controlled aperture in the bottom that dropped the seeds into a spinning fan, which threw the seeds in all directions. To use it, the operator walked along at a steady pace, and at the same time cranked by hand the spinning mechanism. The small seeds did not need to be buried in the ground, because rain drove them down sufficiently, so that when they sprouted, the roots found their own way into the soil.

Corn for silage could be planted in rows by a drill, because having the seeds close together in the row was OK, for what was wanted was a vigorous growth of corn stalks, rather than ears of grain.

Planting of corn for its big ears of corn for animal feed, and sweet corn for table use, had to planted by hand, in order to space the hills a proper distance apart. To do this we used a hand-operated planter. It consisted of two slabs of light wood attached to each other near the lower end by a narrow hinge on each side, which held the two slabs about two inches apart. There was flexible canvas attached, on both edges of the two wooden slabs, so that it provided a kind of stocking leading from near the top down to the ground end. At the ground end the wooden slabs ended in metal plates which came together firmly, when the slabs were spread apart at the top. At the top on each slab, sticking out sideways, was a firm handle for the hands of the operator to grasp. On one side of the planter was a metal container which held about a quart and a half of seed corn at a time. On the inside of the planter's other slab was a wooden piece, which projected across the space between the slabs and into the bottom of the metal container carrying the seeds. When the top ends of the planter were pushed together, the wooden projection, mentioned above, moved into the seed container and captured about four kernels of corn in the hole in its center. When the slabs of the mechanism were pulled apart at the top, the

55


seeds caught in the hole were released in the stocking-like contraption, and dropped into its bottom. Planting hills of corn, with this planter, involved lifting it out of the ground with the top ends pushed together. In this position the bottom end was open, with the kernels released into the ground. As the planter was pulled out of the ground, the seeds were stepped on to cover them. At the same time, the bottom of the planter was swung forward and pushed into the ground on the next hill. During this swing in the air, the planter was pulled apart at the top, which automatically closed the opening at the bottom, and at the same time, dropped seeds to the bottom of the planter. In this position, the bottom of the planter was jabbed into the ground on the hill ahead and the kernels released into the ground, by pushing the top ends together before lifting it. It was a very satisfactory planter when the operator became accustomed to synchronizing the repetitive movements required.

The rows for planting were marked out, in advance, by pulling a light-weight contraption along by hand, which was equipped with sleigh runners fixed to it about 3 feet apart.

Harvesting hay began early in the summer, when it was still green, in order to make good quality hay. I operated the mower drawn by a team of horses. The wheels operated the cutting knife which ran back and forth in a slotted iron beam which moved along the ground. The cutting knife with its triangular teeth had to be sharpened on a grind stone every day or so. In fine weather the hay was left on the ground, as it was cut, to cure. If it got rained on, we had to go over it with the hay tedder, which tossed it in the air and loosened it up to hasten drying.

When the hay was ready we raked it up with a large horse-operated rake. When the rake was filled it was tripped by stepping on a pedal. In doing this the hay was gathered into long rows. Then we had to gather the hay into piles which we called haycocks. This had to be done by hand with pitchforks.

When the hay was taken into the barn we pitched it onto the wagon load, with our individual pitchforks, with another person on the load arranging it for safe transportation. In the barn we used mechanical unloading.

In the barn there was a strong wooden track hanging in the peak which ran the whole length of the barn and passed over the center floor where unloading took place. On this track was a four-wheeled iron carrier called a trolley which could be connected so that it ran over the mow on either side. For unloading hay a huge iron fork was used. This fork was connected by a rope and pullies by way of the above trolley to a team of horses outside of the barn. To unload hay, this fork was released and pulled down from the trolley in the middle of the barn track, with its hoisting rope attached. The fork was then driven deeply into the load of hay by standing on it. Then the movable sharp points of the fork were secured in a horizontal position by shifting a trip handle on the fork. This held the large bundle of hay on the fork. There was a light trip rope attached to the trip lever on the fork, which the man unloading payed out as the load was hauled up by the horses pulling on a thick rope that ran through a pulley in the large post at the side of the barn door. When the forkful of hay reached the dolly, in the center of the barn, it locked into it and was then pulled along the track above the mow. When the load reached the desired position the horses were stopped and a pull on the trip rope, by the man holding it, released the hay so that it fell down into the mow. The hay had to be arranged in the mow by a man with a pitchfork. After the team had re turned to the starting place and released the tension on the large rope to which

56


they were hitched, the man doing the unloading pulled the large fork back for reuse by pulling on the trip rope.

Harvesting grain was done by a binder which cut with a knife similar to that on the hay mower. A revolving paddle wheel made the grain lie down on a moving canvas apron, with the heads of the grain all lying in the same direction. The cut grain was then carried up by other moving canvas aprons to a compactor which packed it into sheaves. When the sheaf reached a certain size, a large metal needle automatically fed the binder twine around the sheaf, automatically tied it and afterward kicked the completed sheaf out onto the ground. Other workers followed along and arranged the sheaves of grain in groups with their heads up, so that the grain on the tops of the straw would not be on the ground.

When the harvested grain was dry enough, it was hauled in wagon loads into the barn where it was handled, a sheaf at a time, by pitchforks. Each kind of grain was kept by itself in the mow, and when threshed, run through the threshing machine separately.

Threshing of grain was always a big job, but it was done by farmers joining together and helping each other at their various barns. It was a dusty job, particularly for the person who had to work in the straw as it was blown into the mow from the long spout of the big metal pipe at the back of the machine. I was usually the one assigned to that job at our barn, and I was invariably sick afterwards, with a fever, from inhaling so much dust.

On threshing days the wives had to provide huge meals for the hungry men. They too helped each other in their various homes on threshing days.

One year my father had eleven acres of white beans. These, when harvested, were also put through a threshing machine. That winter we had a great part of the floor in our adjoining one-time boarding house covered by beans. Every evening, practically all winter, we spent looking over beans in our house to find and remove the bad ones. The beans sold fairly well to farmers all around who came to buy a bag full or so each time. I think father found it too much work and never grew beans again.

In harvesting of corn for its ears, the stalks were cut by hand with a sharp short-handled hoe. The cut stalks were stood on end in large circular piles and tied around the top to keep them in place.

Later, when thoroughly dry, the corn was husked out in the field. This was a sitting down job with a gadget attached to the thumb to make it easier to tear off the husks, and to accumulate the bare ears into piles.

Silo corn was harvested by a corn binder, which cut off the stalks as it was pulled along a row by the horses. The corn stalks were kept standing in the machine until they were tied into sheaves, and kicked out onto the ground. They were usually left lying on the ground until they were gathered up in a few days by a gang of men, put through a cutting machine, and blown into the top of our silo through a long pipe. I usually worked in the silo, spreading the ensilage around and trampling it down.

57


My dad always grew a lot of potatoes, so a lot of my time was spent in this area. In planting, Dad marked out where the rows were to be with a wooden frame work holding four short sleigh-like runners, which was also used for corn. It left distinct marks on the soft soil. Then he plowed a shallow furrow by following the mark. When he plowed the adjoining furrow in the opposite direction, it threw the soil toward that of the adjoining furrow. In this way a ridge of soil was piled up between the two rows. We dropped pieces of potato in the furrows, with proper spacing, until both furrows were completely planted. Then, to cover the pieces of potato, a two-winged implement was pulled along the ridge by a team, which pushed the loose dirt both ways at the same time, back into the open planted furrows.

When the potato plants came up, there frequently was an early infestation of potato bugs. The adult beatles had yellowish white stripes on their hard back covers, but the slugs had soft red bodies and a black head. The slugs were the most voracious eaters, and could soon eat up a potato plant.

We had to deal with pests promptly. We did so by going over the whole potato patch with a pail and a paddle made from a shingle, to knock the bugs off the plants and into the pail. We had to keep banging the pail to keep the bugs from crawling up the sides and escaping. The bugs were killed by flooding them with kerosene.

Another problem was blight. This was combatted by spraying the plants with a chemical concoction diluted in water. For this purpose we had a horse-drawn sprayer which sprayed four rows at once. The pressure was kept up by continually pumping the handle of a pump, which forced the liquid out of the storage barrel on the center of the vehicle.

The potatoes developed underground, and were ready to harvest when the plants had largely died down in the fall. To dig the potatoes we had a horse-drawn machine which sloped down under the hills of potatoes in the row and brought potatoes and dirt up together onto an iron apron system which shook the dirt through it and dumped the potatoes onto the ground surface behind the machine.

Because of the enormous quantity of potatoes, they had to be stored, originally, in the fields. For this purpose an area was smoothed out on the ground about 10 feet in diameter. It was then covered with straw a few inches deep. We picked up the potatoes by hand in pails, and emptied them in a pile on the center of the straw. When the mound of potatoes was two or three feet deep, the whole mound of potatoes was covered with a layer of straw, and then the straw in turn was buried in several inches of soil piled on top of it. This protection was necessary because of frost at nights, and potatoes must not be long exposed to the sun, or they will turn green from sunburn.

When preparing to plant potatoes, we always had to cut up the seed potatoes into pieces with paring knives. We had to make sure that each piece had at least two eyes on it, which would sprout into plants. These pieces had to be kept from drying out before planting, so this work had to be coordinated with planting.

Dad always produced high quality potatoes. This was achieved by strictly adhering to two dicta. He planted only certified seed potatoes, and he planted his potatoes in a different field every year. The importance of these features was brought home to me many years later when, living in Prescott, Arizona, I planted potatoes in my

58


garden. I bought potatoes to plant from a man in Prescott Valley who was advertising them for sale at seed time. When I bought them I asked him if they were certified. He said nothing but took a certified ticket off a nail and showed it to me. So I inferred from that, that they were certified. When I harvested my crop of potatoes they were diseased, and the man who had sold the seed potatoes to me had gone away. Forever after that, when I again planted good potatoes in my Prescott garden, the harvested potatoes also turned out to be diseased.

One feature of life on the farm was that none of our beds had mattresses. Instead we slept on what was called a straw tick. They were large bed-size bags made of strong cotton fabric. When threshing was over we emptied the old straw out of the ticks and replaced it with fresh, clean straw, usually oat straw because it was finer and softer.

Sometime during the winter of 1919, the whole family was sick at once with Spanish influenza which was rampant at that time. We managed to drag around and get enough to eat and drink in spite of it, and we all recovered.

My three years of work on the farm were without pay, but I did get a few dollars to spend occasionally. During the last year I was allowed the use of a horse and buggy, which I used to drive to church gatherings and a few parties. I did not have much to do with girls but associated with them in groups at parties.

One time, I recall that I made a date to see the school teacher at Guysboro after church. I drove to the church and sat through the service. Afterward I drove up to the church stoop, and she hastily got in the buggy and we drove off. Only later did I learn there was some excitement at the church, because she had come to the church with some other young man.

In winding up this chapter on my participation in my father's farm work, it might be of interest to note that in those days the farmers in Houghton Township kept their taxes down by banding together each year and doing a stint of road maintenance themselves. In this capacity, I represented my father in doing his share. What I was assigned to do was hauling gravel to be deposited on the road and spread around by other farmers.

Toward the end of my three years on the farm I became interested in medicine from reading a book called The Doctor. Having experienced quite a lot of illness myself, and seeing my mother ill quite frequently, I was drawn to medicine by a desire to help others. This was crystallized in my wish to become a medical missionary. My three years as a farmer taught me many things to do with my life but after some considerable time I reached the conclusion that I did not want to be a farmer all my life.

I don't think I actually planned to become a doctor, but there seemed to be a force greater than my own intentions drawing me in that direction. When I now look back on the changes which have taken place in my life and the things I have accomplished, I realize that I didn't plan it that way. It seems that I can't put my finger on any plans which I myself made and carried through to their ultimate completion. Rather I must admit that there seemed to be some supernatural power which was leading me and the end result was not of my making. It leads me to ponder,

59


with wonder, the words of St. Paul in Romans 8, verse 28 of the King James version. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God". Even the vicissitudes in my life seem to fall into place, as contributing their part to what turned out to be something better. So I can only think of my undertaking to become a doctor as an act of faith.

As I look at it now, it looked on the surface to be an impossible undertaking. Six university years of difficult education were required, and one year thereafter as a hospital intern. I had no money, and my parents could not possibly see me through, for financial reasons. In spite of all this, I submitted my application and was accepted, mainly because of my age. My father managed to help me to the extent of $300.00. This was only enough to see me part way through the first year. By borrowing another $300.00 from grandpa Cutler, I was assured of being able to manage the first year, and no more.





60


SECTION TWO

YEARS OF PREPARATION

CHAPTER EIGHT

UNIVERSITY YEARS AND INTERNSHIP

Late in September of 1921, I was on my way to the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My wardrobe was very limited. Aside from under garments, I had two or three shirts, my only best suit and a new pair of cheap pants. Billy Stevenson, a somewhat handicapped man who operated a small store in Fair Ground, gave me a presentable but used overcoat to take with me.

At the railroad station in Courtland, I was joined by another young man whose home was in Guysboro, Ontario. He too was on his way to the University of Toronto for the first time. His last name was Graham, and he was starting his first year in Engineering. We had planned to room together at the University and we did so during the first year.

When I registered at the Office of the Medical School, the day after arriving in Toronto, I learned that I was not really qualified to undertake the study of medicine. During the three years I was farming, after finishing high school, the entrance requirements for the study of medicine had been raised from Junior Matriculation to Senior Matriculation. However, in reviewing the applications, somehow special consideration was given to me. I was told that my age was a factor, and apparently there was a consensus of opinion that I should be given a chance.

So I found myself at the University and entered in the first year of the new six-year course which had been instituted for medical students. It was designed to provide the desirable premedical subjects as well as those specifically required for the preparation of doctors.

When I started classes I found that I was ill-prepared to study medicine. I had not been studying for three years and was out of the habit of studying. Also I found that instruction was proceeding on the assumption that the students had experienced an additional year of high school preparation which I had not had. Furthermore I found that a fair number of my fellow students were undertaking the medical courses with already a B.A. degree behind them.

So, in order to even survive the instruction being given in classes, I had to acquire and study high school books more advanced than I had ever seen. This I did, and studied intensively by myself, in addition to attending all classes. By doing so, I found that, by Christmas, I had caught up to my fellow students. There were two factors involved here. One was my hard work, and the other was my observation that, during this same interval, most of my fellow students were loafing along and not giving much attention to their education. They were too much involved in their new university and social experiences.

My familiarity with the text books paid off handsomely at the physics examination just before Christmas. The professor gave the class a paper with ten questions on it, wherein each question, if correctly answered, was awarded ten points. In order

61


to give the students an additional chance to show what they knew, he added a bonus question, also worth ten points. Furthermore, he told us, before the examination, that we could bring our text books to the examination with us and refer to them if we wanted to. I took my physics book along, as many others did. I was so familiar with the book, because of my intensive and recent studies, that I had no difficulty with any of the questions and knew right away where to find them in the book. The result was that I answered every question readily and correctly and also took time to answer the bonus question. When my marked paper was returned to me, it bore the credits of 110%.

Early in the first year at the university, there were political jockeyings among the students for election of the officers in the class; that is, Class President, Class Secretary, etc. I took no interest in it, but noted later that the knowledgeable people who were elected were repeaters; that is, students who had failed to pass their first year of medicine the previous year and were therefore repeating their first year.

In comparison with other students in my first year at the university, I was poorly dressed and not asked to join any of the school fraternities until quite late in the year. Even then I declined the invitation because I could not afford the expenditure of either time or money which would be necessary

My clothing during the first year included white shirts with a white detachable collar. The collar was made of celluloid which I kept clean by washing it in soap and water, and drying it with a towel. My underwear and socks I washed myself and dried them in my room. My white shirts I also washed and pressed myself. Occasionally, to really refresh my shirts I took them to a Chinese laundry, where they were done cheaply.

Mr. Graham and I lived in a rented room on the third floor of an old but respectable house within walking distance of the university. For breakfast we always had freshly cooked rolled oats and milk and a few things which we prepared for ourselves. In the evenings we had a more substantial meal in our room, where we had a gas burner to cook on. We peeled and cooked potatoes and other vegetables, and had some fruit. Occasionally my mother sent me a roasted chicken which we enjoyed very much. We often had cheese and eggs. Very rarely, we ate supper at an inexpensive Chinese restaurant nearby.

At noon my mid-day snack was always the same. At a small store I bought one banana and a half pint of milk which I drank from the carton. This was the cheapest way of getting some nourishment. This austere pattern of living persisted throughout my first year at university.

Of course I had to buy all of my textbooks, because the university did not supply us with any. Fortunately there was a very good book store near the medical school which carried a good stock of both new and used books. Because of my limited finances, all the books I bought were used, but up-to-date.

The scheduled classes in the Medical School, consisting of both lectures and laboratory sessions, were very heavy. Later I learned that they demanded about three times as many hours per week as for the B.A. courses.

In my first year the subjects dealt with were: Biology, Mammalian Anatomy, Practical Biology, Inorganic Chemistry, Practical Chemistry, Physics, Practical Physics, English Expression, and an optional subject, which in my case was French.

62


In spite of the heavy schedule, throughout all of my university years, as well as at high school, I clung to my early resolution never to study on Sunday. Two other resolutions, made at the same time early in life, were never to use tobacco, either to smoke or chew, and never to drink alcoholic beverages. These vows I have kept throughout my lifetime.

During the first year my introduction to anatomy began with dissection of the skate, which was a flat fish and easy to work on. Later it was dissection of a rabbit.

In my second year my study of anatomy began in earnest. For dissection of the human body, two of us were assigned to one body and each continued to work on his own side of the body. Of course, when working on areas where only one organ was involved, we worked together. Our subject was a black woman. The bodies were preserved in some kind of fluid in large tanks. The odor of the preservative was quite powerful, but it kept the bodies from deteriorating.

I have already detailed the first year, so here I will continue with the second.

Second Year Session, 1922-1923

        1)    Anatomy
Practical Anatomy
2) Histology
Embryology
3) Organic Chemistry
4) Chemistry
5) French (my option)

Third Year Session, 1923-1924

        1)    Physiology including Psychology
2) Biochemistry
3) Anatomy
4) Bacteriology
5) Physiology (my option)
6) Anatomy (my option)

Fourth Year Session, 1924-1925

        1)    Medicine
Clinical Medicine
2) Surgery
Clinical Surgery
3) Pathology
Practical Pathology
4) Pathological Chemistry
5) Pharmacology
6) Physiology (my option)

63


Fifth Year Session, 1925-1926

        1)    Medicine
Clinical Medicine
Paediatrics
Infectious Diseases
2) Surgery
Clinical Surgery
3) Obstetrics and Gynaecology
4) Ophthalmology
5) Oto-Laryngology
6) Psychiatry
7) Therapeutics
8) Pathology
9) Pathological Chemistry
10) Hygiene and Preventive Medicine
11) Medical Jurisprudence
12) Toxicology
13) Anatomy (my option)

The Six Year Session, 1926-1927

This year's work was almost entirely spent in getting practical experience. My record showed that I -

        1)    Conducted at least twenty labors under the supervision of the Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
2)    Acquired proficiency in vaccination under the supervision of the Head of the Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine.
3)    Attended fifteen autopsies under the supervision of the Department of Pathology.
4)    Administered anaesthetics on six occasions under the supervision of the Head of the Department of Therapeutics.

While I admit that I am not much interested in poetry, nevertheless, over the years I have saved a number of clippings which have meant much to me, because of the sentiments contained therein. I am recording two of them here because they may give the reader some insight into the kind of person that I am.

        1)     Written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

"Good-bye" I said to my conscience,
"Good-bye, for aye and aye!"
And I put her hands off harshly
And I turned my face away;
And conscience, smitten sorely,
Returned not from that day.
But a Time came when my spirit
Grew weary of its pace,

64


            And I cried, "Come back, my conscience,
I long to see thy face!"
But conscience cried, "I cannot,
Remorse sits in my place."

2)    Evening Prayer - by C. Maud Battersby.

If I have wounded any soul today
If I have caused one foot to go astray,
If I have walked in my own wilful way -
       Good Lord, forgive!

If I have uttered idle words or vain,
If I have turned aside from want or pain,
Lest I myself should suffer through the strain -
       Good Lord, forgive!

If I have craved for joys that are not mine,
If I have let my wayward heart repine,
Dwelling on things of earth, not things divine -
       Good Lord, forgive!

If I have been perverse, or hard, or cold,
If I have longer sheltered in Thy fold,
When Thou hast given me some part to hold -
       Good Lord, forgive!

Forgive the sins I have confessed to Thee,
Forgive the secret sins I do not see,
That which I know not, Father, teach Thou me
       Help me to live.

In the fall of 1922, at the beginning of my second year at the University of Toronto, my brother Clifford was registered at Victoria College, on the same campus, on his way to a Master of Arts degree and thereafter to take his theological training. So we rented an attic room at 18 Grosvenor Street, which was even closer to the university than my room of the previous year. Here Clifford and I lived together and pursued our separate studies until the summer recess of 1926.

The room was sparsely furnished and had one window at the end which looked out on Grosvenor Street. We had a work table and a cheap double bed with a thin mattress. There was also a small open bookcase where we kept our books. There were also two padded chairs for us to use and a small wardrobe. There was no bath room nor sink in our room. We had access to a bathroom down the hall which was shared by other people and where we had to go to wash. At the inner end of the room was a small cabinet with a couple of drawers, where we kept our few dishes and spoons, knives and forks, etc. On top of this low cabinet was a gas burner, and in the lower part of the cabinet we kept a slop pail. Beside the cabinet, on a chair, we kept a pail of water handy, to avoid running to the bathroom every time we needed water for cooking and drinking. On the wall behind the cabinet we hung the

65


few kitchen utensils we used for boiling, stewing and frying. We did our own cooking and ate out only occasionally.

Not all of my time at the university was spent in studying. I had to take some exercise so I walked a good deal. I explored the large university campus and became familiar with its various college buildings and sports arenas. I sometimes watched games being played such as rugby, tennis and baseball but I never took part in them. One of my classmates, Warren Snyder, became a famous rugby player, but he was not a very good student.

One of the much-used buildings on the university grounds was Hart House. In it were many rooms which were available to students for meetings large and small. Hart House had a large room devoted largely to basketball. Hart House also had a well developed and equipped gymnasium. In here I spent quite a lot of time exercising on the various equipment facilities.

One time when I was in the gymnasium exercising my arm muscles, while pulling on ropes along the wall which lifted weights, I had an accident. At this time I was facing the machine which had handles on the ends of the ropes and flexing my biceps by alternately bending and extending my arms at the elbows. In this maneuver it was necessary to pull the rope handles toward my face. At one point the handle in my right hand became detached from the rope end, and the metal part swivelled on the wooden hand-grip which I was holding, struck the top of one of my middle upper incisor teeth and broke a piece completely off it. Of course I had to get it fixed promptly, so I went to the Dental College on the campus where I was able to get the work done free, as a practice subject for a dental student in the senior class.

Hart House had a running track, which I used for running exercise. There was also, of course, a swimming pool with its shower rooms, both of which I used.

Another interesting area was the handball courts. These had galleries where spectators could watch, which I did from time to time, but I never tried the game myself. One time when Edward, Prince of Wales, from England visited the university, a classmate of mine was privileged to play handball with him in one of these courts.

Already having some prowess in wrestling, it was only natural that I should continue my interest at the University. So I joined an instruction class at Hart House and had some tutoring by a wrestling instructor. I learned a number of things I didn't know and further strengthened certain muscles. In competition I even got to the semifinals. In that particular contest I did not do well at all. I was easily thrown three times by my competitor. I didn't seem to have my usual zest for the game. The next day I learned why. I found I was running a fever and coming down with another of my frequent attacks of mild rheumatic fever. At any rate, I decided that was the time for me to give up wrestling.

Hart House was used every month or so for a gathering of medical students in one of the smaller rooms, for what they called a Smoker. The subject was usually of interest in the field of medicine and I attended sometimes to hear the speaker. But it was always a severe trial for me because the room was so blue with tobacco smoke that I could hardly stand it.

66


The brothers at college
College men of the mid-1920's.

Wilford, left; Clifford, right, at #18 Grosvenor, Toronto.
Our home for four years was in a third floor room here --rent was $3.25 a week.

Room at #18 Grosvenor
College years, 1922-26.
This third floor room at #18 Grosvenor, Toronto was home to Clifford and Wilford.

Graduation day
Graduation Day
University of Toronto
June 9, 1927


One time, I think it was in my second year at the university, when Clifford and I were together in our attic room at 18 Grosvenor Street, I suddenly developed a very rapid heart beat which is called paroxysmal tachycardia. I had never had it before and it alarmed me. My pulse rate was about twice as fast as it should be, but regular at that rate. We called in a general practitioner, who had an office nearby. He was kind and sympathetic but had never seen such a condition before and was unable to help me. After about six hours lying in bed it suddenly reverted to its normal rate and again I felt OK. In later years I learned what the condition was. I also learned that my mother from time to time had similar attacks. I continued to have attacks of this kind for many years, and there were never any lasting, or known, aftereffects. Sometime in the 1950's, when I was working at the Minneapolis Health Department and taking my usual cup of black coffee in the building's cafeteria, it occurred to me that maybe coffee was the cause of my recurrent tachycardia. Anyway I decided to stop drinking coffee for a while to find out. Right away I be came free of my paroxysmal tachycardia and have, to all intents and purposes, not had an attack since. That is why I always refuse coffee now.

Hart House had a tiny chapel with a capacity for about 8 or 10 people at once. It had a pulpit and padded seats. I found it a comfortable place for private meditations. Sometimes, I believe, it was even used for very private weddings.

Since I never studied on Sundays I always had time to attend a church service, or other religious activity, on that day. For variety Clifford and I often went walking on the Boardwalk along Toronto's shore line. Occasionally we took the ferry over to the Island in the Bay and roamed over the park lands there or observed the gala things going on there in the amusement park. Very rarely, on a Saturday evening, we took in a moving picture show at a small theatre, where we could get a seat high up ("in the Gods") for 25 cents.

As time went on, I accompanied Clifford sometimes at his social functions at the Victoria College. There I became acquainted with some very fine young people, both male and female. Some of these were preparing for the Christian ministry and other church work. Some of them were preparing to go to foreign fields as missionaries. One of them was Robert McClure, who married one of the Service girls and I believe later went to India. I liked them both.

Clifford got to know some of the girls who were getting special education at a Deaconess Training School. One of these was Aleta Brody who eventually became his wife. I also got to know a few of the girls there and associated with them a little.

We also became members of the young peoples group at a church not far from the university. Here we met other students whom we got to know quite well. The kind of activities carried on were not only spiritually uplifting, but intellectually stimulating and socially satisfying. There I got to know quite well two sisters, Carrie and Ella. Also in our group was a likeable law student called Ernie Livermore. I believe Ella married a dentist and they settled somewhere in British Columbia. Carrie, after graduation, married Ernie Livermore. They settled in Aylmer, Ontario, where Ernie developed a good law practice and eventually became a judge. Aylmer was

67


not very far from Brownsville, Ontario, where in later years I carried on as the local physician. Ernie and Carrie were occasionally our guests in Brownsville.

One classmate that I studied with quite a good deal at the university was Louis Kazdan. He was Jewish and a very fine fellow with a strong moral character. He too had to struggle financially to get his education. He eventually became a Certified Specialist in Ophthalmology and practiced in Toronto, Ontario. In later years, he and his wife Anna visited me and my family in Brownsville, Ontario, and also in Whitby, Ontario.

Another classmate I was familiar with at the university was F. D. Linton. Doug was already married and had some small children when he undertook to become a doctor. When he graduated he set up a practice in the vicinity of Windsor, Ontario.

During my university years I had neither time nor interest in developing a close relationship with any girls, although I met with them at times in groups.

There was a distant relative of mine at the university whom I saw occasionally. He worked as a chemist in the Pharmacology Department at the Medical School. His name was Clarence Downs and he called my grandfather Cutler, Uncle Edgar. He too had his origin in Fair Ground and his younger sister was a senior in the public school in Fair Ground when I attended there as a youngster.

Since I had entered the university with intent to become a Medical missionary, I retained my relationship with others at the university who were like-minded. At 60 Grosvenor Street there was a well-kept residence for girls who were interested in becoming missionaries. It was the center for the university's Student Volunteer Movement. I got to know several of the young women there very well and often attended group meetings there with other young men who were students interested in the Movement. One or two of the girls in my undergraduate class lived there. This group, and the young men who were deeply interested in mission and religious things, met together regularly once a week for a religious discussion, in an assigned small room in Knox College. I was a regular participant.

When it was near graduation time for us medical-student members of this group in 1927, a special farewell gathering was held for us. Each of us was presented with a hand-made embossed folder, with the enlarged emblem of the class of 1927 on the outside. On the inside, in fancy gold and black lettering, were the names of the seven members of the group from my class who were graduating. They were:

        Grace Ada Campbell
        Bonny Oak Choi
        Ilo Myrtle Fraser
        Wilford Edison Park
        Ronald Steele Saddington
        Alec Mervyn Skinner
        David Arnold Wyke

On the next two pages were the names of the other members who were present at the party. There were 30 such signatures.

On the back of the folder, which I still have, are the names of the executives of the group for the year 1926-27.

68


                President -W. Gordon Brown
Vice President -Grace A. Campbell
Secretary -Margaret Smith
Treasurer -David A. Wyke
Corresponding Secretary    -Stella P. Abidh
Extension Secretary -Hartley Grafton
Poster Convenor -Fred A. Clift
Librarian -Isabel Menzies

Throughout my whole university career, I was associated with another religiously-oriented group called The Student Christian Movement. It was a group which had representatives from many different faculties of the university. They had discussion courses led by distinguished religious counselors and teachers. I attended most of them. During the last five of my six school years, I was the official representative of the Medical School to this group. And during my Sixth year, I was the President of The Student Christian Movement for the whole University of Toronto, which at that time had about forty thousand students.

During my last year, the group's most important meeting of the year was held at Hart House. About five hundred students attended. I had arranged the meeting and obtained the speaker who was Professor J. P. McMurrich, Head of the Anatomy Department. I acted as Chairman at the meeting. His talk was well received and he said nothing disparaging about religion.

In January 1925, my classmate Ilo Fraser and I were sent to Washington, D.C. to a conference, as representatives of the Medical School student body, with our expenses paid. We went by train, and on the train we met other students on their way to the same conference. Among them were Wilfrid Hiltz and Agnes Mitchel from other faculties of the University of Toronto and Margaret Gibson from Queens University.

We got acquainted on the train, and after the meetings were over, we got together as a group and explored the City of Washington.

*    *    *    *    *    *

My medical education progressed very well, partly because I was able to study faithfully long hours and never had to interrupt my classes, or sacrifice sleeping time, to earn money during the school years.

At the end of my fifth year, in my final examination of the year, I earned the following grades:

                Medicine (including Paediatrics) -A
Surgery -A
Obstetrics and Gynecology -A
Pathology -A
Pathological Chemistry -A
Hygiene -A
Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology     -A
Therapeutics -A

69


I had an overall average of 75% and passed 8th in the class with honours. In 1926, I was one of the first five students selected from my class to become members of the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha Honorary Medical Fraternity. Membership in this fraternity is given only on the basis of high scholastic standing. There were only five of us who made it that year:

H. Borsook, M.A., Ph.D
P. G. Murray
W. E. Park
W. S. Keith, B.A.
B. A. Killoran
The following year in 1927 four more were admitted from my class. They were:
A. W. Farmer
D. E. Cannell
N. M. Wrong
C. E. Snelling
The officers of Alpha Omega Alpha for the year 1926-1927 were:

           Counselor -Dr. J. A. Oille
President -H. Borsook
Vice President -P. J. Murray
Secretary - Treasurer          -W. S. Keith

Membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha is for life. Some doctors, who have especially distinguished themselves after graduation, have been honored by election to this Honorary Medical Fraternity.

During the 1926-1927 year the AOA put on eight evening meetings. Each one of us had some part in one of the programs. The program on March 7, 1927 involved the subject "Traumatic Conditions of the Knee Joint" presented by W. E. Park and C. E. Snelling. The discussion which followed was led by Dr. C. E. Gossage and Professor of Surgery, C. L. Starr.

Having come this far in the saga of my struggle for a good education it would seem in keeping with my sentiments to quote a couple of poems I have kept in my collection.

1)   This one I copied in April 1928 from "A Psalm of Life" by Longfellow -

Art is long, and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

70


Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
2)   Growth, by Hugh J. Hughes

It is easy to climb when the strong hands lift,
It is easy to go where the waters drift;
But it tests the sinew and tries the bone
To climb to the heights when you climb alone,
And your back must bend with a breaking strain
When against the tide your port you gain.
It is easy to say what the many believe,
It is easy to take what they receive;
But to set your face as a flint to lies
That are hoary-headed and seeming wise
Demands of a man that faith to think
Beyond the bounds where the millions shrink.
It is easy to join with the jesting throng
In its babble of mirth and its thoughtless song,
But once you have trodden the path of pain
Your heart will never know peace again
Until it comes, as it will and must,
Through seeming doubt to larger trust.

The reader will remember that at the end of the previous chapter I explained how the first year of my university education was financed. It would seem appropriate, at this point, to explain how I managed to finance the rest of the six years of schooling and one year of internship in a hospital without interruption, and without having to work at earning money, at any time, during the months when the university was in session.

Toward the end of my first year at the medical school at the University of Toronto, I somehow learned that the company manufacturing "Wear-Ever" aluminum cooking utensils, not far from Toronto, was seeking salesmen for the summer among university students. As there was no prospect for employment for me elsewhere, I joined the group and received instruction on how to proceed. Each student was assigned his territory. I was assigned to the Picton, Ontario area for the summer of 1922.

Instruction was given in how to keep records, send reports to the company, how to order and make payments, etc. We were told to arrange evening demonstrations twice a week. These were to be conducted, in the kitchen, in the home of a cooperative family. The hostess was responsible for inviting her neighboring women friends. For doing this the hostess was to be presented with a gift of a valuable

71


"Wear-Ever" utensil. The salesman was instructed to do some cooking using Wear-Ever utensils. In doing so the salesman not only talked about the utensils, but actually demonstrated how effectively they could be used. The salesman was also instructed not to sell any utensils at the demonstration, but to make individual calls, on the women present, for the sales pitch at their homes in the following days.

The summer vacations from the university permitted 14 weeks to be used annually for this selling job. I started in hopefully in my territory and after one week of genuine effort I had sold only one little sauce pan which went for 75 cents. This was discouraging and seemed to indicate that, as a salesman, my future was unpromising. Furthermore, at the end of my first month, my income from sales only matched my expenses with no net profits.

However, my whole future depended upon my succeeding in earning enough to carry me through another year in the study of medicine. There was no help available to me from any source, no such things as student scholarships, no student loans, generous well-wishers, etc. I had to fight on, or give up.

I found some encouragement in the following bit of poetry (author unknown).

"It's All in the State of Mind"

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don't;
If you'd like to win, but you think you can't,
It's almost a "cinch" you won't;
If you think you'll lose, you've lost,
For out in the world you'll find
Success begins with a fellow's will -
It's all in the state of mind.
Full many a race is lost
Ere even a step is run,
And many a coward fails
Ere even his work's begun;
Think big and your deeds will grow,
Think small and you'll fall behind;
Think that you can, and you will
It's all in the state of mind.
If you think you're outclassed, you are;
You've got to think high to rise;
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But Soon or late the man who wins
Is the fellow who thinks he can.

After the end of my first month of selling "Wear-Ever" I seemed to improve my technique, largely by applying ideas of my own rather than those taught by the Company's Sales-Manager. Anyway by the end of the summer of 1922 I had earned

72


and saved $600.00 which was enough to carry me through my second year at the Medical School.

The following summer I did even better. I was able to pay back to my grandfather the $300 he had lent me and had more money banked than I needed for my third year at the university. This second summer I was assigned to New Lisguard and vicinity.

The third summer I was assigned to Penetanguishine and vicinity. The fourth summer I sold in Haileybury and in Cobalt, Ontario. The fifth summer, 1926, I sold "Wear-Ever" in Welland, Ontario.

At the end of my fourth summer of selling I found that I had sold more than any other "Wear-Ever" salesman in Canada. At a banquet put on by the Aluminum Company of Canada in Toronto I was awarded the first prize of $100.00 in the first competition among their salesmen, and I didn't even know of the competition ahead of time.

During my fifth summer selling "Wear-Ever", I was again well ahead of any other of their salesmen, when I stopped selling at the end of 12 weeks instead of going the full 14 weeks as before. Even so, with 2 more weeks of selling, only one individual surpassed me, so that I still won the second prize of $50.00.

The "Wear-Ever" Bulletin, put out periodically by the aluminum company in both Canada and the United States, in the year 1925 carried a picture of me headed by the title "Dominion-Wide Contest Won by Varsity Man". Under it, in part, were these words "During the summer of 1925 the Aluminum Company of Canada held a contest in which Mr. W. E. Park, 217 Meds, proved his efficiency as a salesman by securing first prize ($100.00) from a field of over 125 starters....He expects to give again all contenders a lively time during the coming summer, in any contest which may be held."

I don't know how the points of this 1925 contest were determined, but here I am detailing the number of points allotted to the first five prize winners because the fifth position was won by my brother, Clifford G. Park.

                    
        Points      Prize
   W. E. Park         



C. G. Park
1st
2nd   
3rd
4th
5th
733
576
535
533
528
$100.00
50.00
25.00
25.00
10.00

I still have in my possession a letter on the letterhead of Aluminum Company of Canada, Limited, "Wear-Ever", Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which is signed by their Specialty Sales Manager, S. V. Wright, which reads as follows.

April 18, 1928

To Whom It May Concern:

This is to certify that Dr. Wilford E. Park demonstrated and sold our "Wear-Ever" products for five summers, during which time he established

73


many sales records and at that time proved a leader.
In our first Efficiency Sales Contest he won first prize and was pitted against salesmen from all over Canada, and in our second contest he won second prize. Mr. Park did what very few students do, namely, financed his entire university course from the profits made while selling "Wear-Ever" during the summer months, plus a substantial surplus to help weather him through his postgraduate work in medicine.

Note: The last statement of Mr. Wright is true, because from those earnings, I did pay back to my grandfather and my father the $300.00 each, which was advanced to me for my first year of university.

When selling "Wear-Ever" I always lived in a private home where I was able to get accommodation at a reasonable price. Usually I got breakfast with my room. Other meals were usually obtained at an inexpensive public place. For transportation I used the streetcars or public bus service. Where distances were not too great I walked and carried my two large suitcases full of the complete sample set. When making deliveries I hired a horse-drawn light vehicle. I collected payments on delivery. I kept my receipts in a bank and paid my expenses by check. One woman realized that she had over-bought and for a time kept her purchase hidden. One other woman bought a complete set of Wear-Ever utensils as a present to her daughter at her wedding.

The cooking demonstrations were an important part of the sales technique. At a demonstration I did such things as cooking carrots and potatoes and other vegetables, and then running them through a cone-shaped ricer, and finally using them for a delicious soup. Frequently I fried an egg in the frying pan and showed how it could be swirled around in the frying pan without sticking.

I also baked pancakes on the heavy griddle which didn't stick even though the pan was not greased. The secret of this was really in the pancake batter. It had butter added to it, but the most vital ingredient was an egg.

Another spectacular stunt was to bake a lovely yellowish cake on the top of the stove. For this purpose I used the omelet pan which was hinged in the middle so that either half served as a cover. When the cake was baked on the first side the upper side of the pan would be pushed up by the rising cake. At this point I would turn the pan over and bake it on the other side. The women would always gasp as they were sure it would cause the cake to fall, but it never did and the cake was always intact and delicious.

Cleaning up the used utensils and the kitchen afterward was a somewhat tedious chore, but generally there was an unmarried daughter in the house willing to help me. I was always able to leave my bags, with their sample utensils in them, overnight with the hostess and start my selling campaign from there the next morning.

I have tried to determine why I was so successful in selling and for the most part it appears to have been due to hard work. It was suggested in our training sessions that we should hold two demonstrations a week and average thirty-six showing of samples per week. My records show that I held 3 demonstrations per week and averaged 54 showings of samples per week. Also I worked at the job over 58 hours per week.

74


Another facility, which I somehow developed, was the ability to perceive within a few minutes, when talking outside of the door, whether or not the woman was likely to buy. This enabled me to cut short the time spent with unfavorable prospects.

There must also have been some improvement in my ability to sell, because in the summer of 1926 my effectiveness per showing of samples was 78.5%, whereas in the summer of 1925 66.6% resulted in sales.

I think it was also important that I never mentioned, at anytime, that I was working my way through the university. That is, I never tried to sell myself. All of my approach was directed toward promoting the quality and adaptability of "Wear- Ever".

Because it occurred while I was away at the university, I want to relate here something that happened to my father. One day he was leading a horse home from the pasture field by a rope which was fastened to a halter the horse was wearing. It was raining very heavily and they were walking in the middle of the road. Just as they reached the top of a small hill a bolt of lightning struck the horse down and killed it, but my father was totally unscathed. The horse, at the time, was wearing iron horseshoes, which was probably a factor in attracting the lightning.

There were two gala occasions of significance which I attended with my classmates during the sixth year of my medical course. They were the "Medical At Home" in the Crystal Ballroom at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto, and the 2T7 Medical Graduation Dinner at the Carls-Rite Hotel.

The "Medical at Home" was on the evening of February 1, 1927, and it was for the whole student body of the School of Medicine. The Patronesses were the wives of Professors A. Primrose, E. S. Ryerson, John Oille, W. E. Gallie and W. B. Hendry. The music was provided by Romanelli's Orchestra. The program consisted of eight fox trots and one waltz before supper and five fox trots and two waltzes after supper.

The Medical Graduation Dinner was held in the evening of March 2, 1927. The meal was good, featuring roast chicken. There were toasts as follows to:

The King - by my classmates L. A. Maklin and E. B. Patterson
Alma Mater - C. H. Rutherford and Sir Robert Falcones, President of the University of Toronto
The Faculty - W. A. Diniwoody and Professor Primrose, Dean of the Medical School
2T7 Athletes - Dr. W. E. Gallie and H. Marritt
Daffydil Skit - Dr. E. S. Ryerson and J. E. Matheson
The Profession - A. R. J. Heffering and Dr. M. H. V. Cameron
Presentation of Athletic Stick to Warren B. Synider by Dr. W. H. Hendry
Presentation of Cup to H. D. Marritt by Prof. C. L. Starr
Addresses to the Graduating Class were given by Sir Robert Falconer, Mr. Justice Riddell and Mr. I. H. Cameron

The sixth year of the Medical course was devoted largely to practical experience. There were opportunities to study actual patients closely in hospital and to talk the findings over with the teachers and professors. There were opportunities to study hospital charts and to become familiar with diagnostic laboratory procedures. There

75


were opportunities to sit in the gallery and watch operations being performed. There was, in addition, practice under supervision of giving vaccinations, giving anaesthetics and conducting labours.

I remember witnessing the giving of a blood transfusion for the first time in the outpatient department of Sick Children's Hospital. The child was probably about 8 months old. I don't know the diagnosis, nor why a transfusion was being given. The child seemed immobilized with eyes closed. I don't know whether or not any sedative had been given. The intern was injecting blood with a large syringe, in what seemed to me to be a fast rate for so small a child. After a few of these injections the child seemed to yawn and stop breathing. We students were hustled out of the room and I don't know what further efforts were made to restore the child, if any.

My final examinations at the end of my sixth year at the University of Toronto Medical School consisted of a total of 37 papers and orals. I afterward learned that I obtained A standing in 19 of them and B standing in the other 18.

When the names of the students came out in the newspaper afterward, I found that I was among the seven students who were at the top of my class and who had passed the sixth year examinations with honors.

There were also five of us who had done so well throughout the six years of the medical course that we were scheduled to graduate from the Medical School with honors.

I further learned that I stood third in the class of 112 who would graduate. It seems that I did remarkably well to attain this standing, considering that the man who came first in the class had undertaken the study of medicine after he had an M.A. degree and Ph.D. degree. Also another of the best five in the class had a B.A. degree before he started medicine.

Graduation ceremonies were held in Convocation Hall at the university. We five who graduated with honors were the first to be called up. At that time the University of Toronto was following the pattern of the British Universities and conferred on us the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine - M.B. Graduation day was June 7, 1927.

Many years later the University of Toronto adopted the American pattern of conferring the M.D. degree. All of the earlier graduates were contacted and told that they could have the M.D. issued to them without further examinations, if they wished. I chose to have it changed so the records show that I obtained my M.D. degree in April 1946. To people who don't know better, it would seem that I started with an M.B. degree and later earned the M.D. degree.

After the University of Toronto examinations were over, and before the Convocation was held, I wrote the Examination set by the Medical Council of Canada. I passed it without difficulty and became a Licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada on July 6, 1927. With this certificate I could register to practice medicine and surgery in any part of Canada, without having to pass any more examinations. I chose to register in the Province of Ontario.

76


Unlike many other medical students, I sought internship only at the Toronto General Hospital because it was most used for university teaching, and it was here that most of the University Professors carried on their individual specialty practice. I was immediately accepted and began my internship there on July 1, 1927.

As an intern at the Toronto General Hospital I was required to sleep nights at the hospital. I shared a room with another junior intern who was also one of my classmates. At the hospital, at that time, interns were not paid any salary. However we were supplied with all of our meals, supplied with white suits and our laundry was taken care of without cost to us.

In the doctors quarters, on the top floor of the hospital, there was a comfortable common room and a game room equipped with pool and billiard tables. There was a library with some medical books available. As a junior intern my responsibilities were limited and varied, but fitted into the differentiated responsibilities of a senior intern. The senior interns, being fewer in number, covered larger departments in the hospital than did the junior interns.

I spent a lot of my time taking histories and writing them up on the charts of new patients. My assignments changed every month so that I got experience in every part of the hospital. I remember spending a month in the obstetrical department, where I frequently acted as the physician delivering a baby. Of course if difficulties were encountered the Senior intern took over.

I remember there was one woman sitting around who had reached the end of her term, but who was not actually in labor. She had had several children before, and never had experienced any labor pains. She never knew when she was in labor, and had experienced embarrassing situations when she found that the baby was coming out. This time, she determined that she would already be in the hospital when it happened. I was not there when her baby was born so I did not observe the delivery without pain.

I remember one month I was assigned to the private women patients ward. The women had their own private physicians so there I didn't get much practical experience, but I took care of the routine things and got experience in public relations.

There was one time when a policeman needed a transfusion and I was delegated to draw a few cubic centimeters of blood from about eight or nine big policemen, who were associates of the patient, for the purpose of blood typing to select a donor. I had them waiting in an adjoining room and took them in, one at a time, where a nurse was helping me. I had just nicely started when there was a loud thump in the waiting room. The noise was caused by one of the big policemen fainting and falling down on the floor, before he had even seen a needle or any blood.

I also had a short assignment to the women's clinic in the outpatient department. Here I encountered many minor conditions and some venereal disease among them.

I recall one time when I was assisting in the men's outpatient clinic, a man came in who was complaining of back pain. The senior intern there wanted him to have some counter-irritation to his back, which was supposed to have much the same benefit as heat applied, but more lasting. He showed me how to quickly pass a hot electric instrument across his back which would leave only a first degree burn. He was sent home with several red streaks across his back. I never heard whether it was beneficial or not.

77


I remember one time, when I was working in the outpatient emergency room, we had a man brought in who had been shot in the head. He was bleeding quite profusely. After that was controlled he was admitted to the hospital and I don't know what happened to him.

One time I was assisting a surgeon when he had to amputate a man's arm because of severe gangrene. When the surgeon was sewing up the skin afterward, he accidentally caught his needle in my arm. Because of the danger of infection from the organism causing the gangrene, he sent me promptly away to have some antiseptic applied to my arm. I did not develop any infection.

I remember hearing about a young public patient who had his tonsils removed and then returned to his ward. There was nothing unusual about his case, except that in the morning he was not there, and it was learned that he had jumped out of the window in the night, which was on the ground floor, and was never heard from again.

One time I assisted Dr. McKenzie at an operation when he had to open the skull of his patient. It was a long and tedious process, and I do not remember the reason for operating. However, as soon as he got a look at the dura mater, Dr. McKenzie saw that it was tuberculosis and knew at once that there was nothing he could do to help him, so he closed up the opening.

Most of my work at the hospital was on the medical wards where my responsibilities were to take and write-up the complaints and medical histories on patients charts and to order routine laboratory procedures. I found that I was more interested in medicine than in surgery and I devoted much time to doing thorough examinations of patients in the medical wards.

It is perhaps worthy to note that of the nine members of my graduating class of 1927 who in their undergraduate days became members of Alpha Omega Alpha Honorary Medical Fraternity, four of us eventually became certified in some specialty, as follows:

D. E. Cannell, certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1934
N. M. Wrong, certified in Dermatology in 1938
A. W. Farmer, certified in Plastic Surgery in 1939
W. E. Park, certified in Occupational Medicine in 1955.

And none of us started our medical education with prior university degrees.

It is also perhaps interesting that three of us, Dr. Farmer, Dr. Cannell and myself had at least one year of internship at the Toronto General Hospital. Dr. Farmer was there at the same time I was.

It was during my days as an intern at Toronto General Hospital that I wrote a little poem, dated March 4, 1928.

            What is Life
By Wilford E. Park, M.D.
What is life, that I should live,
To earn each day a bowl of meal,
Regardless of another's weal,
And seek at night a pallet mine?

78


What is life, that I should fear,
The whim of chance, the grasp of greed,
As plodding on, my feet do bleed
Upon the stones of circumstance?

What is life, that I should stay,
If not for joy of life to live,
With cheer and hope and love to give,
And living be myself today?

So toiling, sleeping, loving still,
With hope that cannot be suppressed,
For life with Holy beauty blessed,
Is God's own destiny for man.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Late in the Spring of 1928 I became seriously ill with rheumatic fever. It was playing havoc with my heart and for quite a time it was questionable that I would recover. I was confined to bed in the General Hospital under the care of Dr. John Oille, chief cardiologist. At that time antibiotics and sulfonamides were not available, so aspirin was about the only useful drug. Dr. Oille put me on ten grains of aspirin and ten grains of Sodium bicarbonate four times a day. This routine dosage continued for many months. Of course, hospitalization, and all of the doctors services, were provided to me free of charge.

When no significant improvement was taking place, the doctors decided that it might help to remove my tonsils. This was done by one of the nose and throat specialists. and I was afterward returned to my room, which was then on an upper floor over the Emergency Department. Soon after my return to the room, the tonsillar area on the right side began to bleed quite freely. An intern was hastily called, who happened to be my classmate Dr. K. E. Ferrie. He put a swab on a forcep and proceeded to hold it firmly in my throat on that side, which was the correct procedure. However, he did not have it low enough in my throat so that I continued to bleed below it. After a little while I realized what was happening and that my trachea was filling up with blood. Of course I couldn't talk, nor otherwise alert him to the situation. So in desperation, I grabbed his arm and pulled the swab out of my throat, and then I coughed up about a cupful of clotted blood into the basin.

Of course he was angry with me, but it was either do what I did or suffocate in my own blood. When he inserted another swab he got it in the right place, and after holding it a long time successfully stopped the bleeding.

In the summer of 1928 the doctors at the General Hospital decided that there was nothing further that they could do for me, and indicated that I would have to stay in bed for many more months. So it was determined that I should go home to my father's and mother's place in the country where I could get lots of clean fresh air and sunshine.

In preparation for my arrival in Fair Ground, my father borrowed a tent from one of his neighbors and set it up on his lawn near to the house. He also acquired a cot, which was on wheels, and could be wheeled out into the sunshine during the day.

79


At the hospital everyone was very kind to me and I could have visitors at any time. I spent a good deal of time reading and was well looked after. Although during my internship I was ill for quite some time I still got full credit for the year's internship.

Being strictly a bed patient posed some problems in getting me to Fair Ground, Ontario. I was taken to the railroad station in Toronto in the General Hospital ambulance and placed on a cot on the floor of an empty freight car. The freight car was attached to the passenger train and I was on my way to Tillsonburg. Someone was sitting in the freight car with me or available for all of my needs.

On arrival at Tillsonburg, Ostrander's ambulance was at the railroad station and picked me up and took me to the tent provided for me in Fair Ground.

My health improved very slowly in Fair Ground, but when the cold of fall was coming on I was still unable to be up and about. It became necessary to move me into the shelter of the house, and into a bedroom upstairs. My father, at that time well past 46 years of age, was still strong enough to take me in his arms and carry me up the narrow stairs to the bed.

After being in bed about eight months in all, I began to sit up a little, and after several more weeks, I was getting around quite freely.

In the spring of 1929 I felt that I had to be getting on with my practice of medicine. By this time I was convinced that the Good Lord did not want me to be come a foreign missionary, so I began looking into the possibility of going into general practice.

At this time Dr. H. J. Alexander's partner in Tillsonburg had died, and Dr. Alexander, a long time friend of mine, took me in to start work with him. I think he had in mind that I might eventually become a partner. After a short time he wanted me to become skillful in using the equipment he had in his office to test eyesight, and to fit glasses. So he arranged for me to get some training in this area through private tutoring by an optometrist in Toronto. He sent me there for this purpose and paid all of my expenses.

I benefitted from the training, but when I came back I found that Dr. Norman McLeod of Brownsville, nearby, had bought himself a partnership with Dr. Alexander and they had planned to put me into Dr. McLeod's office in Brownsville. So that is where I ended up. I took Dr. Alexander's eye testing equipment with me and used it there. I eventually bought it. At first I worked for Drs. Alexander and McLeod on a salary but later I bought the practice there and also the property vacated by Dr. McLeod.



80


First car
Dr. Wilford Park and his first car.
(photo taken 4/14/29)

Watson and Lura

Watson and Mary Emma Lura Cutler Park
Photo was taken in September, 1935,
3-1/2 months before Lura's death from cancer.

Wilford during college

Wilford during college days
(photo taken 9/21/26)


CHAPTER NINE

YEARS IN GENERAL PRACTICE

As I start writing this phase of my life, in the year 1982, I realize that general practice was only the first of three careers in my professional life, but when I began it in Brownsville, Ontario in 1929, I did not know it was only one phase. Also, when I look back on the circumstances which placed me there, I realize again how little I had to do with choosing the Brownsville location.

Now, in looking forward to what is yet to be written about my professional experience, it seems reasonable that I should exclude from this narration the personal details of my life and concentrate on the professional saga. Even so I do plan to include something about the general living conditions and community activities which were current during my general practice days.

Brownsville was essentially a small village serving as a center for a rich and prosperous farming community. My home and office was located next to a small hotel which occupied one corner of the main intersection. The community's general store occupied the opposite corner. The store was much like others of that time, and carried a good line of groceries, miscellaneous items and dry goods. The local post office was also located in the store. Next to the store was a small butcher shop and next to it, opposite my office, was a fine brick house where the butcher lived. There was a barber shop under the corner of the store.

The village had two churches, a Methodist and a Baptist. There was a small bank and a small library building. There was one quite large school for elementary students on the ground floor and continuation classes on the upper floor. There was a Town Hall used for public meetings.

In the village, not far from the center, was a large milk receiving station to which farmers brought their milk daily and from which it was taken away in large tank-trucks. There was a tile and brick industry located close to the railroad station. This industry had two sizable water ponds to serve its needs. The shallower of the two was much used in the winters as a skating rink.

Brownsville was served, in all four directions, by well-kept gravel roads. The village was six miles west of Tillsonburg and many more miles south of Ingersoll.

There were good hospitals in both Tillsonburg and Ingersoll and both towns were well supplied with doctors. About six miles west of Brownsville, in Springfield, one other doctor was located, and about eight miles northeast of Brownsville, in Mount Elgin, was another general practitioner, Dr. Bartlett.

Brownsville did not have a drugstore, so my office was equipped with my dispensary. It was in this setting that I started and carried on my practice of medicine for nearly thirteen years. I had no office help, so I had to do my own dispensing, keep patient records, send out bills, collect fees due, write my own letters, order drugs, answer the telephone, etc.

I had a brass nameplate made and attached to the office door. Also I had

81


the swinging sign hanging high in front of the office painted over to obliterate Dr. McLeod's name and my name put in its place.

I had labels printed to stick on my bottles of medicine on which I could write the dosage directions, the prescription number, date, my phone number, and the patient's name. On the top of the label was my name, Dr. W. E. Park, L.M.C.C. and under it in smaller lettering, "Physician and Surgeon". The L.M.C.C. stands for Licentiate Medical Council of Canada.

The entrance to the office waiting room was a door from the veranda. This door was adjacent to another door which led into the hall of the living quarters. The office waiting room was of adequate size and contained spartan furnishings. Some years later, when one of my patient's home was sold, I bought its horsehair settee and two matching chairs for my waiting room.

Behind the waiting room was an examining room with my desk, and behind a partition was the dispensary. The furnishings for the examining room were inadequate so I had a proper examining table made for me, with five drawers in it for my instruments. It also had a glass top, with a three-inch high barrier on all sides except the front. On this I kept my various antiseptics and frequently-needed solutions.

There was a red barn on the property with a hayloft above, and carriage space and a horse stall below. The house was of frame wooden structure and two stories high. A one-story kitchen area was attached to the house at the back. There was a full basement under these buildings. There was also a red-brick cellar which could be entered only from the basement level. There was a concrete tank of considerable size in the basement where rain water was collected. There was no plumbing in the house, but there was a pump at the kitchen sink where water was pumped up from the pump at the well on the property a little way from the house.

Water for diluting of medicines was kept in the dispensary in a container with a top on it. The dispensary had a sink for disposal of excess liquids. There were no toilet facilities in the house and the usual outdoor toilet was situated on the back of the property, with its entrance covered by a large grapevine arbor.

The soil on the Brownsville property was of excellent quality and there was lots of space for gardening. There were several fruit trees on the lot and many varieties of roses. The lawn on the property was of fair size but cut up into smaller pieces by concrete sidewalks.

My sleeping quarters were directly over the office waiting room, and I had a wall telephone within reach from my bed. I soon found that farmers who wanted to see the doctor expected to do so at their convenience, which was likely to be early in the morning when they brought their milk into the milk factory. Because they would keep ringing until I got dressed and downstairs, without knowing whether I had heard or not, I had to establish a ready communication system. So I had a speaking tube an inch and a half in diameter installed from outside of the office door to my bedside. Then, when they rang the doorbell, I would answer from above and get their names, and tell them I would be down in a few minutes.

My first car was a one-seater Dodge which I bought second hand from the storekeeper in Fair Ground. I had several cars later, including a Model A Ford. Sometimes there was so much snow in the winter that I couldn't get around in an automobile until the roads were opened up by the snowplow. My first winter the snowfall was heavy and banked up on the sides of the road. I was still working

82


for Drs. Alexander and McLeod at that time, on salary, and Dr. McLeod still had a horse kept in the red barn by a man who took care of it and had been driving the horse for him.

One day I had to see a patient in Culloden, two miles north of Brownsville. On that day the driver of Dr. McLeod's horse took me there in the cutter. A cutter has the shafts in which the horse stands off center so that the horse travels in the track on the left instead of in the center of the snowy road. When we arrived in Culloden the driver tied the horse to a post, and I went to my patient, and he went to visit a friend across the road from where the horse was tied. I was ready to return before the driver was, so I sat down in the cutter to wait for him. The horse apparently thought she should be immediately on her way home, so she tore herself loose by pulling off her bridle which she did by hooking it on the end of one shaft, and then, with the bridle resting on her chest, she broke loose from the post and took off for home at a fast trot.

The leather lines were in place, resting on the dashboard, so I picked them up hoping to slow the horse by pulling on them. However it did no good, because the bit was not in her mouth, but rested on her chest, and there was nothing on her head. By pulling on the lines with my feet braced on the front of the cutter, I only succeeded in pushing the cutter forward so that her hind legs struck the cutter at every step. This only frightened the horse more and made her go faster.

This is the way we travelled all the way back to Brownsville. I did not jump out because we were traveling safely and the deep snowbanks on each side provided a soft landing place in case of an accident. When we were nearing Brownsville we met a car coming our way. The mare knew enough to move to the right and we passed safely.

When we got to the corner in Brownsville the horse knew that she had to turn left to get to the lane entrance to her stable. She was making her turn to the left and saw the big telephone pole on the corner in front of her. I knew if she went on the right side of the pole that we could pass safely, but if she went to the left of the telephone pole she would wreck the cutter. She slowed up in her uncertainty but eventually chose to pass on the left. When I saw what she was going to do, I stepped out on the right side of the cutter unharmed, as she slammed the cutter into the pole and went on to her stable without it. After that Dr. McLeod sold the horse and terminated his relationship with his driver.

One other winter I was driving my car slowly and carefully over wet icy roads, where the ice was rough with uneven ruts in it. Suddenly my car coasted sideways into a wire fence. Fortunately, at that point there was no ditch and no damage was done to either me or my car and I had no difficulty in getting back on the road.

Another winter we had such a heavy snowfall that all the roads were completely blocked. Even the farmers could scarcely move. However, one managed to get to my office with his sick son, who was 12 years old. I found that he was suffering from acute appendicitis, and needed an immediate operation. This could not be done in Brownsville, and the hospital was in Tillsonburg, six miles away with roads almost impassible. However, the father alerted his neighbors and several of them got together and put the boy on a bobsled drawn by a sturdy team of horses and set out for the hospital. With the men going along with their shovels, they cleared the way when it was too deep for the horses and got him to the hospital where he was operated on by Drs. Alexander and McLeod. Years later that lad, Billy Cook, was graduated from medical school and became a doctor.

At one time, in Brownsville, I had a car with a rumble seat. This car had the usual one-seat with a hard top, where the driver and one passenger could sit comfortably. In the back, instead of the usual trunk space, with the trunk cover opening from the back of the car, there was a rumble seat. To open this, I had to stand at the back of the car and reach far forward and grasp a handle and turn it to unlock it. Then by pulling backward and upward an extra seat appeared, facing forward, with its own padded backrest. This provided an extra seat for two adults when needed. It was fine in warm weather but too cold to use during cold weather.

At that time, it was my practice to leave my car parked on the road in front of my office, with my medicine bag and all of my obstetrical equipment in it, even during the night. This was handy when I wanted to get away in a hurry, and some times I even left my keys in the car because Brownsville was such a quiet village.

One morning early, one of the farmers who had brought his milk to the dairy woke me up to ask me if the two bags he brought were mine. They of course were my medical bags. He told me that he found my bags in a ditch along the roadside while traveling from his farm on a back road. This was the first I knew that my car with the rumble seat was missing. I promptly reported the theft to the Tillsonburg police.

A few days later I was summoned to a hearing in Tillsonburg where I was called upon to identify my car, and the car keys found with the car. The young man who had stolen the car was present as a prisoner. The car and the thief had been picked up somewhere in the vicinity of Windsor, Ontario. The rumble seat was ruined by leaking storage batteries which the thief had placed on that seat. I received an adjustment from my insurance company and later sold that car. Needless to say, from that time on I always removed my keys when parking a car.

Sometime later I had a garage built on the north side of the house which opened directly into the road. I could enter this garage through a side door directly from my inner office. This attached building served me well during the rest of my stay in Brownsville.

While on the subject, I might mention the other changes which I had done to the Brownsville house. Since natural gas was available, I had the furnace changed to a gas furnace. This worked out well. However, the exhaust from the furnace was directed into the existing chimney and the combustion of gas added so much moisture that black streaks appeared running down the brick chimney. This was later corrected by installing a metal pipe inside of the chimney.

I had a small ceramic fireplace installed in the living room with a small gas burner, which was exhausted to the outside. I also had a flush-toilet and a small shower stall installed upstairs. Since there was no public water supply in Brownsville at that time, I had to have a pressure tank and an electric water pump to it in the basement. I obtained the water from the existing cistern in the basement. But I soon found that there was not sufficient water, so I had a much larger concrete cistern built in another part of the basement. Of course, I also had to have a septic tank built to take care of the effluent, with its overflow directed into the storm sewer passing on the road.

I also had an additional porch built on the west side of the kitchen. In doing so, I had the carpenter build, over it, an additional room entered from the upstairs level. This had many windows to the west and south, thus providing a nice solarium.

84


Also more storage cupboards were built into this room.

My practice in Brownsville was not as extensive as it might have been because Dr. McLeod, the former physician, was only six miles away and many of his former patients stuck with him. However, Drs. Alexander and McLeod used me a good deal as their anaesthetist, when they worked together in doing surgery. I also had some work to do in testing people's vision and fitting them with eyeglasses. This was partly because Dr. Alexander's office no longer gave this service, and partly because there was no optometrist nor optician in Brownsville.

While I had no special expertise in caring for eyes, a few interesting cases came my way. On one occasion a man from Tillsonburg was referred to me suffering from ulcerations in the cornea of his left eye. Other doctors had been treating him without benefit and I could not offer anything better. However, in an effort to do something for him, I explained the situation, over the phone, to an eye specialist in a neighboring city. He too had handled such cases unsuccessfully, and as a last resort, he suggested that I might try leeches applied to the temple. I obtained two or three leeches and used them to suck blood from the temple, a little way from the diseased eye. When they were distended with blood I removed them and dropped them into a salt solution, which made them vomit up the blood. Then I transferred them to their ordinary jar of water and used them again. After several sessions of this kind, I could see no benefit to my patient and advised him that I could do nothing more for him.

On another occasion a totally blind man came to me who previously had had one eye removed because of pain he was suffering from glaucoma. His remaining eye, also hard and totally useless, was hurting him so much that he wanted it also removed. So I took him to the hospital and under general anaesthesia administered by Dr. Alexander I did remove his remaining eye. In doing so I removed a small piece of subcutaneous fat from his abdomen and placed it in his eye socket and drew the eye muscles together over it so that if he ever obtained a glass eye he would be able to move it somewhat like a normal eye. However, he was an indigent patient and never did get a glass eye. At any rate the operation was a success.

One of the residents of Brownsville came to me complaining of difficult vision in his left eye. With the opthalmoscope I discovered a tumor growing in the depths of his left eye. I referred him immediately to an eye specialist in London, Ontario. The specialist confirmed my diagnosis and removed the eye. During my stay in Brownsville there had been no extension of his tumor to other parts of his body.

Most of my professional practice in Brownsville was much like that of other general practitioners of that era. There were no wonder drugs then, and little could be done for severe cases of lobar pneumonia, and epidemics of influenza were devastating. One time I was attending a patient with pneumonia for a family which still clung to some early treatment practices. I was able to achieve some benefits from hot linseed packs on the chest, but in the face of much insistence I consented to the use of one of their pet practices. They proceeded to kill a fat hen. Then immediately they slit open the hen's abdomen and applied the exposed entrails onto the patient's bare chest. It was kept there until it became cold, but no perceptible benefit took place.

One time an elderly patient of mine came to me complaining of sleeplessness and I gave him a four ounce bottle of liquid medicine which contained a common hypnotic. He was supposed to take two teaspoonfuls at bedtime. Later that evening I was called to see him, where he was standing in the general store behaving strangely, with an open penknife in his hand. He was a ghastly pasty-white color and

85


obviously in a very bad way. I learned that he had drunk the whole bottle of medicine which I had given him. At that time, there was nothing more I could do for him because too much time had elapsed to empty his stomach, so I got him home and into bed. I was afraid he might hurt himself or somebody else with his open penknife, so when he was in bed I proceeded to take it away from him forcibly and give it to his wife. He eventually survived the ordeal with no after effects.

One morning I was called to a farm where a young workman, about 22 years of age, was found dead in bed that morning. There was no history of illness before he went to bed the night before, and I could find nothing to indicate the cause of death. I had never examined him while he was alive, and did not know him previously, so I had nothing to guide me in determining the cause of death. I reported the death to the coroner for the township, hoping that he would order an autopsy to determine the cause of death. However, this coroner was an elderly doctor who didn't have much practice, and didn't seem concerned to find the cause. He simply certified that the young man had died of natural causes and allowed him to be buried.

Another time I was called to an emergency in the home of the man and his wife who lived closest to the deep pond mentioned earlier in this chapter. I found that a group of boys had built a raft and were playing on it while it was several yards from shore. One of their number had fallen off, who couldn't swim. The other three had managed to haul him out of the water and get him into the kitchen of this nearby house. When I arrived I found him on the kitchen floor apparently lifeless. The boys were trying to give him artificial respiration. Under my supervision, we drained water from his lungs and continued efforts to revive him. However, all of our efforts were unsuccessful and I certified that he had died by drowning. He was probably 10 or 12 years old.

Since we are on the subject of violent deaths I might continue with documentation of some others. One of my first cases was a youngish man who was working for one of the farmers as a laborer. He was brought in by some men who found him in a ditch beside the road, where they said he had been thrown by a horse he was riding. He was unconscious with a gash on his forehead. I cleansed and sewed up the wound hastily, and sent him, still unconscious, to the hospital in Tillsonburg to be under the care of one of the doctors living in Tillsonburg. He died without regaining consciousness and the Tillsonburg coroner held an inquest.

On another occasion I was called to a farm where the owner had committed suicide. He had aimed his shotgun toward the roof of his mouth and managed to fire the gun. The full charge went directly into his head and killed him instantly. His whole skull was fractured and his head much enlarged, and soft all over. He was in much financial difficulty and couldn't cope with it.

I was involved in another tragic gunshot case. There were two men who were out hunting and each had a gun. The accident, as explained by the survivor, was as follows. The two men while walking came to a wire fence, which they climbed over. Before climbing over, the man who died had leaned his gun against the fence, with the butt on the ground and the barrel sticking through the fence. Then, when he was over the fence, he grabbed the gun by the barrel and was pulling it through the fence toward him when the gun fired and killed him instantly. The gun was equipped with a mechanism which had to be cocked before firing. In pulling it through the fence the firing hammer had caught sufficiently to partly cock it, so that when it freed itself, it came down on the firing pin with sufficient force to cause the gun to fire.

On another occasion I was called to see a man on a farm who had been crushed

86


by a bull. When I got to the farmhouse the hired man was lying in bed, obviously dying. His whole chest was a mass of pulp. He was seen by the farmer lying on the ground with his large bull standing over him and boring his head into the man's chest. In a case of this kind, when a bull behaves this way he is considered crazy and he is no longer allowed to live. It is considered humane to kill an animal when it becomes a threat to mankind. But it makes you wonder about the meaning of the word when society, in practice, considers it just the opposite (in humans) to execute a crazy man who kills another human being.

While the following paragraph has nothing to do with this narrative of my experiences in the general practice of medicine, I would like to interject a few comments about psychiatry, which, at this time, in the year 1982, may give the reader some insight into my present feelings. I do not deny that there is a real place for specialists in the field of psychiatry, but I do deplore the extent of collaboration that is sometimes taking place between psychiatrists and defense lawyers, in their efforts to protect criminals. It seems to me that far too many law-breakers are hiding behind alleged temporary insanity pleas to frustrate the process of justice.

While I had little opportunity in my practice to engage in surgery, I might mention a few specific cases. One of my regular patients was having some wood cut up at his home, by a buzz saw. When the work was done, and the driving belt removed from the saw and the tractor, my patient foolishly began to push the sawdust away from the saw with his foot, not realizing that the saw was still spinning. The saw by its own momentum cut his foot off almost completely. I rushed him to the hospital in Tillsonburg, controlling the bleeding with a tourniquet. With the help of Drs. Alexander and McLeod, I performed the necessary amputation, and shaped his stump below the knee so that it could accommodate an artificial leg.

Dr. Bartlett, of Mt. Elgin, and I worked together a good deal in the removal of tonsils, in the homes of our patients. Together we owned all of the necessary equipment, that is, instruments, an electric suction apparatus, anaesthesia equipment, etc. He gave the anaesthetics for my patients and I gave the anaesthetics when he operated. We had quite an extensive practice in this field, which was much cheaper than having the patients admitted to hospital.

Among my nose and throat equipment, I had a snare for use in the nose. I happened to have a man who had a recurring obstruction in his nose which was caused by polyps. Several times I relieved his trouble by removing them, in my office, under local contact anaesthesia.

I also had a young man come into my office with both hands burned by flaming gasoline which he was working with when it became ignited from a lighted cigarette.

One time a man visited me at my office complaining of sharp pain in his anus. I extracted from him the complete shoulder blade of a small animal. It was that of a rabbit which he had eaten several days before, but didn't know he had swallowed any bone.

On another occasion a young teenager presented himself for treatment on a wound on his bottom that would not heal. Under local anaesthesia I extracted a piece of wood two and a half inches long with sharp ends tapering to one half inch wide and one quarter inch thick. He remembered receiving the injury when he was sitting on a sleigh, riding down a snow slide, when the sleigh struck an immovable object.

87


One time a young farmer came in and showed me some sections of white tissue he had passed from his bowel. I identified it as some section of (Taenia Saginata) beef tapeworm. He admitted that several months ago he had eaten some raw beef, which he was cutting up for his own use. I found some medicine in my dispensary designed for this purpose and instructed him how to use it. A few days later he brought in a pail half full of liquid which contained the tapeworm, which when spread out was nine feet long. I cleaned it up and preserved it in a jar in my office. I did not find the head of the tapeworm but the patient never had a recurrence.

Several years later the above patient developed leukemia, for which at that time there was no treatment. I telephoned the Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, but he was unable to suggest anything. The man, of course, died. Since those days very much progress has been made in this field.

One time I attended a young man who was in bed at home with a severe sore throat and a high temperature. This was not an uncommon condition but what was unusual was that he had crepitations under the skin of the upper part of his chest. This would have been very serious if it had been gas gangrene. However, he recovered and I don't know how the gas or air bubbles got in there.

I had an elderly man, whom I was attending, who had thrombosis in the main vein of one of his legs. I kept him in bed, but in spite of that a piece of the blood clot broke off and lodged in his lung. He was critically ill and continued to have extensions of the blocked arteries to his lung for some weeks, but he eventually recovered.

I went through a period when people were suffering from an epidemic of some kind which caused jaundice. Most people recovered, even without treatment. However, I had one patient who was severely jaundiced with her liver enlarged. I put her in the hospital in Tillsonburg where consultations with other doctors did not turn up any promising treatment. The outlook for recovery was very bad indeed. However, I put her on one of the sulfonamides that were just coming on the market, and she recovered quite dramatically.

I also went through an epidemic of poliomyelitis, then called infantile paralysis. This was before the days of polio vaccine and little could be done, except to keep the affected limbs warm with hot packs. The problem was more complicated for me because I was, at that time, Medical Health Officer for the township of Dereham. There was little I could do to stem the epidemic, but I took what preventive measures were suggested by the Health Officer for the Province of Ontario.

I think I had my share of confinements, which was over one hundred and fifty during my years in Brownsville. Most of them were conducted in the homes of my patients, but a few went into hospital for their first babies. Some of them were repeat pregnancies, in one instance as many as four more in the same family.

In one instance twins were born, a girl and a boy. In another case of twin pregnancy, one child was born alive, at full term, and the other, born at the same time, was macerated, which meant that it had been dead in the uterus for two months or more.

In one labor there was an unfavorable outcome. Without previous contact I was called to attend an Indian woman, far out in the woods where there was no telephone and no other woman in the house. The baby was born without too much difficulty but the woman continued to bleed afterward, which I was unable to control. I sent the husband to a telephone somewhere to call another doctor to help me. He finally arrived and together we got the bleeding under control.

88


The woman had lost so much blood that she should have had a transfusion. But this was quite impossible in this out-of-the-way place, in the middle of the night, with an ambulance many, many miles away. The best we could do was to prop the foot of the bed up on blocks, so that the woman's head and shoulders were low, and left her in that position for the rest of the night. In this position, her heart, lungs and brain were getting sufficient circulation and her condition was not too bad.

When I arrived back to see her the next day she was dead. Her husband told me that she had begged him to turn her around in the bed, which he did. This was the worst thing that he could have done. He didn't even lower the propped-up end of the bed. So with her head, shoulders and chest high, all of the limited supply collected in the lower part of her body, and of course she died.

I attended one young woman, who was one of my indigent patients, at her first delivery. A little girl was born with a birth defect called spina bifida. She also was equipped with a blind end to her oesophagus which meant that nothing could ever reach her stomach. Of course she died after several days which was a blessing for all concerned.

About five or six boys under my care were given the name Wilford after me.

My last confinement in the Brownsville area took place only five days prior to my moving out of Brownsville. I knew that Mrs. Claude Whitecraft was pregnant, but I had no inkling that they intended to call me to be the attending physician, so I had no opportunity to give any prenatal care or advice. Although the mother was then past forty years of age, and so far as I know had no previous deliveries, the little girl was born without difficulty. The father was of somewhat peculiar stature, which might be described as bordering on gargoylism. The mother was tall and thin. I mention these parental characteristics because they might have some pertinence in respect to the child's extremely rare condition at birth. The child was of normal weight and physically normal in every respect except for her eyes. She was born blind, with the type of birth blindness which is perfectly normal for little kittens. Kittens, of course, for about nine days after birth, continue to have maturing changes taking place in their eyes which give them normal vision at the age of ten or twelve days. This condition in a child is so rare that most doctors and even eye specialists have never heard of it. In examining the new born baby, I saw at once that the corneas were absolutely clear and there was no evidence of inflammation in the eyes. However, behind the corneas, where there should be a normal iris, with its circular opening in the center called the pupil, there was nothing of the kind. In the place where these organs should be, there was only an intact cream-colored membrane, with no evidence whatsoever of either irises or pupils.

I saw the baby five days later, on the day I left Brownsville and moved away. At this time there was only a slight lessening of the creamy color, but otherwise no change in the eyes. This was a charity case, and the mother and child were both doing well, so I did not ask another doctor to make follow-up visits.

Years later I learned from a friend that the child was attending school with no unusual eye troubles, so it would seem that instead of permanent blindness, the child simply had a delayed development of iris and pupil, as is normal for kittens. None of the people working with the child were even aware of the abnormality nor conscious that any change took place in the baby's eyes.

89


One of my regular patients, whom I had served before during a previous delivery, was again pregnant and under my care. After about 6-1/2 months of her pregnancy she developed high blood pressure and showed definite premonitory signs of impending eclampsia. This condition is life-threatening to the mother and can only be solved by terminating the pregnancy. So I took her into the hospital in Tillsonburg and inserted obstetrical bougies into the uterus outside of the fetal membranes. In a few hours she went into labor and delivered a small premature child, which I did not expect to live but it did. The mother came through the ordeal without any difficulty and the baby was sustained on breast milk, which I was able to procure for the three or four days which it took for the mother's breasts to begin lactation.

Not all of my time in Brownsville was spent in the practice of medicine. I had a good deal of time to do gardening on my property, where the soil was good, and there was always sufficient rain to promote growth. One time I gave professional services to a butler who was vacationing in the area, who worked for a prominent Toronto family which had a sumptuous estate. He gave me some hollyhock seeds from his employer's garden. I planted them, and that year I had a plot of hollyhock flowers more beautiful than I have ever seen before or since.

While I am on the subject of gardening, perhaps here I should record a few things more about the Brownsville property. There were always lots of grapes, pears, and apples on the property. There were also many kinds of roses. I remember the names of Mrs. John Laing, Dr. Van Fleet, New Dawn and American Beauty roses. The American Beauty was a vigorous climber which covered the whole south end of the kitchen building with even thousands of blooms at once, of a light red color. Dr. Van Fleet was also a climber and I had to build a large iron trellis for it. It had flowers which were small, with a delicate pink color, but exquisitely beautiful when they were just opening up.

I also had a lovely patch of Madonna lilies and I grew many kinds of vegetables. I sometimes competed with others at the Tillsonburg horticultural society, and I even won four first prizes for flowers or potatoes.

The one apple tree produced plenty of fall apples but I wanted a variety, so I grafted some limbs from other desirable varieties and harvested several different apples from the same tree.

One time when I was on the top of a ladder in the pear tree picking pears, my mongrel dog, of undetermined breeds, climbed up the ladder after me without me having taught him how. He reached a height of about nine feet off the ground, but he didn't know how to get down, so I helped him to get back to the ground.

One time I found that a pair of puff adder snakes had secured themselves under the veranda on the east side of the kitchen building. Although they are not poisonous they can make themselves look like cobras ready to strike. I had to kill them as they were undesirable tenants.

Other undesirables, a nest of yellow jackets, established themselves in the wall of the barn just beside the door where I had to enter the barn. Their only portal was a small knothole nearby. I had to wear elaborate new gear and gloves to protect myself while I nailed a piece of shingle over the hole. They just died in their own nest.

One time I found a tree frog in a small wild tree at the back of my lot.

90


It was greenish in color and looked very much like an ordinary small frog, but its toes were equipped with suction cups which enabled it to climb about and live in trees.

My years in general practice in Brownsville included those years of the great depression in the early years of the nineteen-thirties following the crash in the stock market and the closing of many banks. The farmers in my area were hard hit with low prices for their products and consequently had difficulty in paying their bills to me. They did the best they could, some of them offering me farm products in exchange for credit on their standing accounts. In this way I received such things as dressed chickens, dressed duck, pieces of salt-cured pork, and some vegetables, so we always had plenty to eat. One of the things I received in this way was a beautiful hand-made quilt featuring a large intricate star built of many colors worked into the pattern. This was made by Irene Gay and I still have that quilt, which is now much more valuable than it was in those days. Some of these accounts were still unpaid when I left Brownsville at the end of January, 1942. At that time I arranged for a patient friend of mine to continue to collect what she could. After some years I had quite a number of doctor bills which I wrote off as charity.

*   *   *   *   *

In early September, 1939, I listened to the rantings of Adolf Hitler on the radio as he was setting out to conquer Europe. On September 3, 1939, Canada followed the lead of England and declared war on Germany. I knew then that we were in for a long and difficult period, where we could expect food rationing, gasoline rationing, and many other problems, because I remembered what happened in the First World War. I knew that one of the first things that would be hit would be sugar, so I went out and bought a 100-pound bag of white sugar which cost $5.56. Sure enough, it was soon rationed along with butter. So far as butter was concerned we always had plenty of it, because the farmers made their own and often sold it to me for credit on their bills. Gasoline rationing too was soon in effect, but because I was a doctor and must have gas to attend my patients, I was not bound by the rationing quota.

Because I knew that the war would cause great changes in the prices of things through the inevitable inflation spiral, I recorded for posterity the prices at which the following items could be bought at the Brownsville general store on September 4, 1939.

Prices and Items Recorded

            First class letter postage stamp           
100 pound bag of white sugar
10 pounds of brown sugar
1 pound of butter
1/4 bushel of potatoes
1 loaf of bread, one pound size
1 dozen eggs--grade B

$5.56  
58¢
27¢
30¢

17¢

91


            5 pounds of corn syrup
1 large can of sink salmon
24 pounds bag of pastry flour
1 pound of lard
I package of jelly powder
1 imperial quart of ice cream
1 imperial quart of milk
3 bars of Lox toilet soap
1 50-ounce can of grapefruit juice
1 half-pound can of Fry's cocoa
1 pound jar of peanut butter
1 pound of shortening
3 pounds of dates
1 20-ounce can of pork and beans          
39¢
10¢
45¢


40¢

17¢
23¢
22¢
20¢

25¢
and from the local butcher shop
          1 pound of round beef steak                    25¢
and at the farms
          1 bushel of wheat, cost                           
1 bushel of oats, cost
50¢
35¢

Farm laborers were paid 25¢ per hour or $30 per month.

*   *   *   *   *

Early in my career in Brownsville I became a member of the United Church of Canada, and throughout my stay there I was an active member. I taught a young men's class in the Sunday school most of those years and perhaps was influential in getting some of them to make a public commitment and join the church. When the war was under way two of the members of the class were drawn into the armed forces. One of them came back alive and uninjured. The other one, Jack Ker, became a tail gunner in one of the fighter planes. The plane was apparently shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of France, and none of the crew survived. Jack was a quiet, well-behaved young man and his loss was quite a blow to his family and the community. Most of the other boys in my Sunday school class were farm workers, and contributed to the war effort by working in food production.

I was a member of the Official Board of the church and sometimes talked to church groups. On March 5, 1936, 1 talked on the subject, "Why Do Men Suffer?", and on February 16, 1935, my subject was, "Is Faith Reasonable Today?" On at least one occasion, I was master of ceremonies at the church annual Christmas entertainment.

At various times I was the guest speaker at gatherings in various communities in my practice area and even in Tillsonburg. One of these was at a meeting of the School and Home Club in Mt. Elgin. Using the subject, "Cooperative Child Education", I brought out and emphasized the responsibilities of parents to teach home skills and moral standards to supplement the efforts of the school teachers.

92


Brownsville had a library with a volunteer librarian and an active library board. I was a member of the library board for quite some time.

*   *   *   *   *

Brownsville had an active program going on at the Town Hall. This took the form of evening meetings for interesting programs such as lectures, recitations, production of skits, debates, social gatherings, etc. These meetings were arranged by a local committee, usually elected for the season. I remember I was chairman for one season and in the process of conducting the meeting I liked to introduce an item of humor. The following are some of the jokes and quips I used.

1. "It's a queer world. Remain silent and people think you are ignorant. Talk and they're sure of it."

2. "Many a young man thinks he's hard boiled, when he's only half-baked."

3. "A politician is a man who stands for what he thinks the people will fall for."

4. "What our government needs is more pruning and less grafting."

5. "Madam, I just learned today that your son is an undertaker. I thought you told me he is a doctor." "No, sir, I just said he followed the medical profession."

6. "We can't understand how the ant got the reputation of being a hard worker. Nearly all I have seen were on a picnic."

7. "There once was a boy, a cute little liar
Who ran through the town with his pants on fire.
He went to the doctor and fainted with fright
When the doctor told him, his end was in sight."

8. The old lady was not too familiar with English, and less with legal language. When she walked into the judge's office, she said, "Are you the judge of reprobates?" He replied, "I am the judge of probate." She said, "Well, that's it, I expect. You see, my husband died detested, and left several little infidels, and I want to be their executioner."

At one of these evening gatherings in the Brownsville Town Hall, the group I was working with planned to put on a shadow play wherein the hall would be darkened and pantomime shadows would be projected on the closed screen by having a powerful light behind it. It being near Easter, we had planned to have a large egg drawn, in a wagon, onto the stage, in which a little girl would be hidden and then suddenly erupt. I made a large egg of plaster of paris bandages and cut it in two for the purpose. I was large enough to accommodate the little girl chosen, but on the stage the girl was so frightened she wouldn't get into it. So we had to be satisfied with her sitting behind it and only partly hidden.

At one of these evenings, the main feature was a formally-structured debate. As I remember, the subject had something to do with the importance of stature

93


in the effectiveness of a politician. I was one of the debaters minimizing the importance of an imposing stature. We won the debate, partly because I pointed out that the small stature of Calvin Coolidge didn't prevent him from becoming President of the United States of America. On this particular occasion the judge for the debate was Ernie Livermore, an attorney from Aylmer, who later became a judge in the courts of the land.

One Winter, the ambitious young people of Brownsville wanted to put on a play for the evening program at the Town Hall, and they asked me to be their director. I consented to do so and after much rehearsing, the play was put on and went over well. It was so successful that we were invited to put it on at the church in Delmer. Later we also put on our play as a program for a church in Tillsonburg. It seems that again it went over so well that we were asked to compete with other play performances in the County of Oxford. So we went to the city of Woodstock, the capital city of the county, and performed again. We came out second in the county competition, failing to get first place largely because we hadn't sufficient stage properties to enhance the setting.

The Town Hall was also used for regular meetings of a boy scout troop, organized and conducted by the principal of the public school, Lloyd Moore. I joined the troop and functioned as assistant to the scout leader. We all had and used scout uniforms.

One important thing happened to us. We went as a whole troop in uniform to be among those to welcome King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when they paraded through the city of London, Ontario, as part of their visit to Canada. We stood on the curb on the street and saluted as the king and queen of England rode by, in an open-topped automobile, not more than twenty feet away.

As the years went by, in my general practice of medicine, I began to realize that I was not practicing medicine at my greatest potential, because I did not have close access to laboratory services. So I set up a small laboratory in the basement where I was able to make blood smears and examine them under my microscope, when such a procedure was necessary. I was able to identify a pernicious anemia case I had under my care. I did white blood cell counts and hemoglobin levels, etc. But even with these procedures I became unsatisfied with the quality of medical care I was able to give.

In other words, I felt impelled, by a force I did not entirely understand, to change my course in the practice of medicine. Since during my prolonged siege of rheumatic fever in 1928, I had committed the control of my life to God; perhaps this was the force pushing me toward a change in course. Only recently, on January 17, 1982, when I was listening to Rev. Clifford Swanson of St. Olaf College deliver his sermon at the American Lutheran Church in Sun City, Arizona, was this feeling put into words for me. He said, "When you discover who and what you are, it is God speaking to you."

So I began considering opportunities open to a doctor with my experience. The only thing which came to my attention was employment in a large shell-filling plant, at a place called Ajax, built close to Pickering, Ontario, not far from Whitby. I wrote a tentative letter to the company and received a reply offering me a salaried position on their medical staff, and offering to pay my moving expenses. So I proceeded to make plans to move to Whitby, Ontario, where my brother, Clifford, at that time, was the pastor at Whitby United Church.

94


I sold my barn to Les Jacobs who was developing a thriving garbage business nearby. A little earlier I had bought Wesley Bigham's fine brick residence because he was moving away and it seemed a good investment. I had repaired the wooden trim of the house and improved its appearance. Shortly after I left Brownsville, I was able to sell this house for $1,000 more than I had paid for it. In this house, after I had bought it, I found an abandoned bible dictionary in good condition. I still have it and many times I have found it extremely useful.

I was able to sell my home and property before I left. Someone bought my antique office furniture, at what I know was a low price, but I had to wind up my practice and dispose of things in a hurry. Of course I took all my medical equipment and household effects with me.

Many of my friends and patients were sorry to see me go, but they sent me off with their good wishes.





95


SECTION THREE

YEARS OF OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE IN CANADA

CHAPTER TEN

YEARS IN AJAX AND WHITBY, ONTARIO

Before the end of January, 1942, I found myself and all of our belongings moved into a fine brick house in Whitby which I had bought, with a mortgage on it.

At the first of February, I began my job at Defence Industries Limited, Ajax, Ontario, which was sometimes described as Pickering Plant because it was near the small community of Pickering. The plant had been built to produce artillery shells for the Second World War which was still going on. The plant was a significant part of Canada's war effort and employed about 9,000 people. The plant was spread out over many acres because of the constant danger of explosions when dealing with explosive materials. There were three TNT lines placed widely apart, which became my chief concern later, where molten TNT was poured into large artillery shells.

At first, I joined the regular medical staff in the examination of new employees and attending patients in the outpatient clinic or hospitalized on the premises. Soon, however, without my seeking it, I was asked to set up and take full control of a project to control TNT poisoning among the plant's workers. How they came to choose me I do not know, but in looking back on my life, it seems that this was only the beginning of a series of events which pushed me in directions which I had not planned or sought.

I soon learned of how distressing the problem was. It was the biggest health problem that the plant had to face. So many workmen were suffering from what was called TNT poisoning that it was a tremendous financial burden and made staffing of the TNT lines very difficult. Not only that, but the talk and apprehension current among employees was nearing panic.

I first approached the problem by going to the University of Toronto and consulting with professors and department heads to learn what was known about TNT poisoning and to get suggestions as to how to diagnose the condition and what laboratory procedures might be used to give early warning of its onset.

I found that so little was known about it that nobody could tell me what to look for, except that it caused jaundice. Likewise, the only laboratory tests suggested were those which were measurements of bile in the blood and urine. I obtained many suggestions of tests which should be explored, and was offered full cooperation of the Department of Pharmacology. With this limited information, I returned to the plant at Ajax to plan my approach, and to determine the staff, space and laboratory facilities I would require.

With the full cooperation of management I had the necessary rooms assigned to me at the plant hospital and set up the laboratory procedures I would carry out. I also planned the various forms I needed for keeping track of patient records and recording all laboratory results in organized detail, so that I would not only have records of findings for diagnosis and treatment, but also which could be easily analyzed for research purposes. The records also were designed to keep track of

96


patients, where they were working, where they were moved to, if transferred, with dates, and with an active method of keeping track of them at all times. This also included a follow-up method, even after they quit working for the plant for a couple of months or so.

I had a private office with my own private secretary and a nurse, Miss Stone, assigned to me full time. With this hospital staff and the laboratory technicians at my disposal, and with all personnel in all of the line first aid stations on all three shifts, with their nurses, placed under my control, I was in a position to set up an elaborate program and activate it. Originally I was given the title of Assistant Medical Director. This was later changed, at my suggestion, to Superintendent of Toxicology and Medical Research which was more descriptive of my real functions.

The first document I wrote I placed in the hands of the plant management and superintendents, and also in the hands of all of the plant physicians and nurses, both at the plant hospital and at the line first aid stations. It was entitled, "Organization for Management and Control of TNT Contacts and Sickness". It was also sent to Dr. F. M. Jones, Chief Medical Officer for Defence Industries, at company head quarters in Montreal, and to Dr. F. M. R. Bulmer of the Ontario Health Department, who during the war worked with Dr. Jones in looking after health interests on behalf of Canadian Public Health authorities in munition industries. These two physicians, throughout my service at Defence Industries at Ajax, Ontario, were kept informed of my activities and visited me at intervals. They also received copies of all forms and medical papers which I produced there.

The document, "Organization for Management and Control of TNT Contacts and Sickness," has over eight closely typed pages and is too long to include in this description of my life, but a copy is preserved in my filing cabinet. In the document it was made clear that all workmen complaining of sickness believed to be caused by TNT must be seen by me and their treatment placed directly under my control.

I soon recognized that moving a workman away from TNT exposure was a vital part of treatment. I obtained the wholehearted support of management in this maneuver, and in order to get the cooperation of the workmen I insisted that management continue to pay the higher TNT worker's salary schedule while the workman was employed in another area. When a man had to be moved, I issued the order in writing, and when he was well enough to return, I put that also in writing. Most employees gained so much confidence in me that they never questioned my judgement. However, if a man preferred not to return to work in TNT, he was permitted to continue where he was, with his salary reduced to the level current for that department.

The following principles, which I proposed, were accepted and enforced by management:

1. No worker may be employed to work in TNT whom the examining doctor considers unfit for such work.

2. No worker may be transferred from another department into TNT without first obtaining the approval of the TNT line nurse.

3. Workers ordered out of TNT by Dr. Park must be moved out of contact promptly.

4. No worker ordered out of TNT by Dr. Park may be returned to TNT without the approval of Dr. Park.

97


5. TNT workers must have a separate area for lockers in the change house.

6. TNT workers must wash before eating and going to the toilet.

7. Each TNT worker must take a shower bath at the end of each shift.

8. TNT workers must have clean uniforms and clean gloves at the beginning of each shift.

9. TNT laundry must be washed separately from all others and by a special process.

10. TNT laundry must be kept separate from all other laundry and returned for TNT use only.

11. Used TNT shoes must be kept separate from all others and reissued for TNT use only.

12. Workers ordered out of TNT permanently must, at once, change their uniforms and shoes.

The above principles were well enforced and had a great deal to do with the control of TNT sickness. Because showering at the end of the shift was so important in freeing the workman of skin contamination and preventing him from carrying TNT home with him and thus extending the length of his exposure, I was able to secure thoroughness in this showering by having men take showers within their work hours, where supervision could enforce it.

In trying to control TNT absorption and TNT poisoning, I worked on the premise that TNT could enter the body in four ways:

1. By inhalation in the rooms where it was melted and poured while in a liquid state because it got into the air in a vapor form in much the same way as steam from boiling water. However, unlike steam, the mist from TNT when cooling recrystallized and settled on everything as a dust. In this dust-like form it could be stirred up into the air and inhaled.

2. By the workmen eating it in the form of dust when handling the food with dirty fingers. Also, when a workman handled a cigarette with fingers dirty with TNT dust, he inhaled TNT with the smoke.

3. TNT could also be absorbed through the workman's skin when in contact with it. This absorption was slower but could be largely eliminated by careful washing.

4. TNT could be easily absorbed into the blood stream through an open wound.

The one person whose life I was unable to save died of TNT poisoning because he had been allowed to continue working in TNT with an open wound on his wrist. He was already in hospital and dying before I had anything to do with TNT.

Under my instructions, the nurses saw to it that no one ever worked in TNT who had an unhealed wound. This even included men who had teeth extracted. They were kept out until the gums were well healed.

98


*   *   *   *   *   *

I must say that I had the very best support from all of the nurses who worked under my direction. To them goes much of the credit for what was attained in control of TNT sickness at Ajax. They not only carried out my orders exactly, but they were on the look-out for early symptoms of TNT poisoning and brought them to my attention promptly.

In order to reach TNT workers referred to me by nurses or doctors, I arranged my time as follows:

At 8:30 a.m. I was on duty in the hospital clinic to serve those who had just come off the night shift.

Again at 3:30 p.m. I was on duty there to serve those going in to start work at 4:00 p.m.

To serve the day shift, working from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., I was at a clinic conducted at 1 p.m. in one of the TNT line's first aid stations. With the three TNT lines handled in this way, I was able, by cycling them in order, to provide each line with two clinics a week within my six days a week at the plant.

After each 1 p.m. clinic was over on the particular TNT line I was on at that time, I always, before leaving that line, made a complete inspection tour of that line. This was a vital part of my control which enabled me to see for myself how well the working place was being kept clean. It took a long time, but by reporting to top management after each inspection, I was able to point out failures and to make further recommendations. In this way, I finally got all lines to maintain excel lent housekeeping and the very best of ventilation. The superintendents of lines one and two were cooperative to the best of their ability, right from the start, but the superintendent of line three dragged his feet for months. He was an older man and apparently resented my telling him what he had to do. However, each of my inspection findings was written out carefully and specifically and addressed to each line superintendent himself, always with a copy to top management. Top management eventually compelled him to clean up properly, because I was always able to show that more TNT illness was coming from his line.

The plant hospital was required to follow through on the standing orders which I had supplied for any patients admitted to the hospital with TNT sickness symptoms. These began with thorough clean-up instructions detailed in nine specific items, which had to be carried out daily for four days. Then there were specific orders for a low fat diet, medication, and laboratory work. Routine urinalysis, urine color, Webster test and blood pressure were to be done daily. The following were done the first day and every third day thereafter: haemoglobin, blood smear, red cell count, haematocrit reading, icterus index, Van den Bergh, cephalin cholesterol flocculation test and other procedures as ordered.

*   *   *   *   *   *

During the years when clinical cases of TNT poisoning were encountered, several tests were carried out and data on many cases evaluated to determine their significance in identifying the effects of the disease. These were written up by me whether or not they were of value.

99


On September 7, 1942, a paper was written by me on the subject "Serum Chloride in TNT Sickness." The data did not show that the test had any significant value so it was never published and the test did not become routine.

On September 29, 1942, I wrote a paper on the subject "Report on Webster Test and Urine Color Test in TNT Absorption." This showed that bile was appearing in the blood and urine of cases with jaundice which was merely confirmatory of the clinical signs but of no particular value apart from clinical jaundice. This report, as were all others, was forwarded to Dr. Jones and Dr. Bulmer, but never published.

On October 26, 1942, I wrote a paper entitled "Report on Study of Sedimentation Rates in TNT Absorption." This report too failed to show any significant changes which could be related to TNT absorption by workers. This did not show any need to carry out this determination in TNT cases. This report was sent for their information to Drs. Jones and Bulmer, but never published.

On April 15, 1943, I wrote a report for Dr. Jones and Dr. Bulmer entitled "Vitamin Tablet Experiment." For this experiment I had tablets prepared by a drug supplier containing 1000 international units of vitamin Bi and 100 mg of vitamin C. I also had a placebo made which was identical in size and color.

From July, 1942, through March, 1943, the line nurses, under my instructions, went about once a day and placed one tablet in the mouth of each TNT worker, at his place of work. They kept careful records and gave their records to me.

At the end of the time the nurses tabulated the answers of the TNT workers to the question, "Do you feel better from taking the tablets, no change, or worse?" My analysis of this data failed to show any value except that which might be a psychological effect which was the same with placebo as with vitamin tablet.

There was one benefit which came out of it, and that was the necessity for the nurse to see each worker every day for observation. This gave the workers a daily opportunity to complain, if any of them were sick, without their having to stop work to go to the first aid station. This report was never published but a copy is in my filing cabinet.

*   *   *   *   *   *

On June 2, 1943, I prepared a paper entitled "Effect of TNT on Reticulocyte Counts in a Shell Filling Plant." This study was undertaken because earlier efforts at the University of Toronto to help find a way to detect the onset of TNT poisoning had shown some promise. Dr. A. W. Ham of the Department of Anatomy, and Dr. G. H. W. Lucas of the Department of Pharmacology, in their experiments on dogs, found that injections of TNT caused a drop in the haemoglobin and a rise in reticulocyte count. So, in collaboration with Dr. Ham, a study was undertaken at Defence Industries, Ajax, to determine whether the exposed workers, in our plant, showed the same changes in their blood smears.

This study was set up so that all of the technical work was done by Dr. Ham 5 technician, Mr. G. A. L. Ross of the Department of Anatomy, and all of the readings of smears and counts were done by Dr. Ham. Although some reticulocyte counts and other laboratory blood records were in our files, none of these were included

100


in this report. Besides reticulocyte counts the following items were also recorded on each workman included in the study:
Evidence of cyanosis
Evidence of jaundice
Blood pressure
Haemoglobin
White blood cell count
Van den Bergh test
Cephalin-cholesterol flocculation test
Foulger scores
Findings were classified as follows:
Table I: Workers who had not been in contact with TNT for four weeks or more.
Table II: Regular TNT workers in contact with TNT.
Table III: Workers who were studied before going into work with TNT and then again later after considerable exposure.
Comments on the Study
1) None of the items recorded in this study showed levels indicative of abnormalities which could be attributed to TNT absorption.
2) In the few cases where elevated reticulocyte counts were found, no evidence of clinical TNT sickness could be found.
3) The higher reticulocyte counts, when found, did not bear any relation to changes in the haemoglobin.
4) The study did not indicate that it had any significant value as a forewarning of TNT sickness.
There are probably two factors which explain why the experience with dogs was not duplicated in this study.
a) Probably the dosage given to dogs was too high and therefore not com parable.
b) At the time the study was made at Ajax, Ontario, on TNT workmen, our program of good housekeeping and strictly enforced preventive measures was so effective that no doubt our workmen were then receiving much less TNT into their systems than they were in the previous year.
This report on the effect of TNT on reticulocyte counts was never published but a copy is kept in my filing cabinet.

101


On June 3, 1943, I wrote a paper entitled "Study of Methaemoglobin Levels in TNT Workers." This paper was based on the findings of Mr. J. H. Johnston, of the Division of Industrial Hygiene, of the Ontario Department of Health, and Dr. G. H. W. Lucas of the Department of Pharmacology of the University of Toronto, done on the workers at our plant in Ajax, Ontario.

The data was collected in three tables. Table I listed three controls with no methaemoglobin, all of whom had no exposure to TNT. Table II listed TNT workers, all of whom were well and without cyanosis. Table III were TNT workers with some symptoms of illness.

Conclusions

1. Methaemoglobin in the blood is, on the whole, a little elevated in TNT workers.
2. Cyanosis, as observed in TNT workers, is not due to Methaemoglobin.

This study was never published but a copy of this paper is in my filing cabinet.

*   *   *   *   *   *

On June 4, 1943, 1 wrote a paper entitled "Oxygen Capacity in TNT Workers." This study was carried out as a supplement to that recorded above. It seemed indicated as a further search for the cause of cyanosis in TNT workers. Dr. G. H. W. Lucas of the Department of Pharmacology of the University of Toronto carried it out at my request. A Van Slyke gas analysis apparatus was used to make the analyses.

This study showed that the blood of TNT workers was normal in oxygen carrying power. The study also failed to suggest the presence of any haemoglobin compound which would account for cyanosis in TNT workers. This report was never published but a copy of this paper is in my filing cabinet.

On June 5, 1943, I wrote a paper entitled "Carbon Dioxide Combining Power and PH of Plasma in TNT Workers." At my request, Dr. G. H. W. Lucas of the Department of Pharmacology carried out these analyses with the Van Slyke gas apparatus and the Evelyn instrument on March 26, 1943.

Seven TNT workers were studied, all of them feeling well. All of them had normal blood pressure, normal pulse rates, and normal haemoglobin. Only one was cyanosed. In every workman of this series the carbon dioxide combining power and the PH of the blood fell within the normal limits. This paper was never published but a copy is in my filing cabinet.

On June 9, 1943, I wrote a paper entitled, "Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide Content of Venous Blood in TNT Workers." This also was based on studies carried out by Dr. G. H. W. Lucas, at my request, in a further effort to discover the cause of cyanosis in TNT workers.

Although the numbers studied is small there did not seem to be any indication that the blood of these TNT workers contained any unknown haemoglobin combination that was interfering with the capacity of their haemoglobin to carry and give up oxygen or to carry carbon dioxide. This study was never published but a copy of this paper is still in my filing cabinet.

102


On August 10, 1943, I wrote a paper on the subject "The Van den Bergh Test in TNT Absorption." This paper was based on a study of our records of people who had had the test done on their blood and the results recorded.

Table I contains the Van den Bergh readings on 22 TNT workers who were perfectly well at the time the test was done. No reading was over 0.50.

Table II contains the names of 30 employees who were ill but whose illness was not due to TNT. In six of these the Van den Bergh was over 0.50 which indicates that an elevated Van den Bergh is not specifically caused by TNT. There were only two patients listed in Table II whose Van den Bergh was above 1.00. In both cases the diagnosis was acute prostatisis.

Table III contains the Van den Bergh readings on 32 patients whose illness, by clinical diagnosis, was attributed to TNT absorption. 14 of these had visible jaundice. The two most jaundiced had readings of 40.00 and 16.00 respectively. A third has a reading of 2.30. All the other 11 had readings ranging from .60 to 1.80.

From this Table III it can be deducted that an elevated Van den Bergh is not vital to a diagnosis of TNT absorption because the diagnosis can better be made clinically in the presence of a sufficient exposure to TNT. However, it is certain to be high in the presence of obvious jaundice. In Table III there were 10 cases of undoubted illness due to TNT absorption in which the Van den Bergh was normal. This paper was not published but a copy is in my filing cabinet.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Early in September, 1943, changes in the responsibilities of the medical staff were made and my work load increased. In addition to my continuing to carry full responsibilities for all patients having any TNT-related medical problems, I was assigned all of the plant's occupational medical problems. That is, it became my responsibility to see, deal with, record and treat any illness in the large plant which could be caused by exposure to poisonous industrial substances. This meant that I had to make tours of the whole plant to study the nature of all chemical exposures, and to become familiar with the signs and symptoms of a much-expanded variety of occupational medical problems.

I was not, of course, expected to handle plant accidents, but I had to, for my own safety, become familiar with all of the explosive hazards of this huge ammunition industry. In addition, at the same time, I was made Medical Officer of Health for the whole Ajax community. This included the public health problems of the huge plant itself and also the public health responsibilities for all the residents living on the company's property, and inspections of toilet facilities and cafeterias.

In keeping with my expanded responsibilities, I prepared and sent to all line nurses, and my personal staff, a memo explaining the extent of my responsibilities and what they would have to do in cooperation, so that I could fulfill my obligations. At this time I revised my timetable for work so that everyone would know where to find me and where to send workers to me for consultations and medical services. The schedule for me, as drawn up at that time, was as follows:

Forenoons:

Mondays -- Limited to general plant inspections.

103


Tuesdays -- Clinics at nurses stations on "cap and detonator" (C & D), "pellet and tracer" (P & T) and line 1.
Wednesdays -- Inspection tours of C & D, P & T and line 1.
Thursdays -- Clinics on lines 2, 3 and 4.
Fridays -- Inspections of lines 2, 3, and 4.
Saturdays -- At my clinic at the plant hospital.

Afternoons:

Every afternoon, Monday through Friday, I was engaged in office work, but available for consultations in my hospital clinic suite in the plant hospital.

This schedule enabled me to handle my clinic responsibilities on the lines, so that there was a minimum of interruption of workmen's work, and the Saturday clinic, at the hospital suite, made me accessible to workmen who were off duty, or working on shifts other than the day shift, if the condition was urgent.

With three forenoons every week set aside for tours of inspection, I was able to keep on top of housekeeping, ventilation, medical accident hazards, control of toxic hazards, methods of handling poisonous substances, and general working conditions throughout the plant. If I found anything that needed correction, I always put it in a written memo addressed to the superintendent responsible, with a copy to top management. In a similar manner all public health memos were sent to the foreman responsible with a copy to top management.

*   *   *   *   *   *

In October, 1943, I wrote a report entitled, "Menstrual Survey in a Shell Filling Plant." This was never published but there is a copy in my filing cabinet. The study was carried out by the company's trained nurses with all following the directions I laid out. The numbers of women surveyed are large enough so that the conclusions may have some significance. The women surveyed were strictly limited to those from eighteen to thirty-nine years.

Seven groups were set up as follows:

Group One -- Consisted of 75 office workers as controls. These had 4% disturbances in menstruation.

Group Two -- Consisted of 392 line workers who differed from office workers only to the extent that they were doing factory work which they were not accustomed to, which involved change of shifts, sometimes heavier work, often standing for long hours and changes in eating and sleeping routines. However, none of Group One or Group Two had any exposure to harmful industrial powders or chemicals.

In Group Two, 18% had menstrual disturbance which was 14% more than those in Group One. This might be reasonably attributed to work in the assembly line environments, but had nothing to do with chemical exposures. So in evaluating the effects of exposure to powders and toxic chemicals, it seems reasonable that only percentages of menstrual disturbances over 18% can attributed to specific chemicals.

104


Group Three -- Consisted of 87 women who were working in TNT for the last two months or more. 32.2% had menstrual disturbances. Approximately 14% of these could be attributed to TNT. About 64% of the changes were in the direction of in creased menstruation.

Group Four -- Consisted of 38 women who had been working in tetryl for the last two months or more. 36.8% complained of menstrual disturbances. This would be about 18.8% more than those of Group Two which could be attributed to tetryl. About 76% of these were in the direction of increased menstruation.

Group Five -- Consisted of 86 women who had been exposed to condite for the last two months or more. In this group 29.1% had disturbances in menstruation of which about 11% could be attributed to the condite. The changes in the group were about 88% in the direction of increased menstruation.

Group Six -- Consisted of 64 women who were exposed to smokeless powder for the last two months or more. In this group 19.4% had menstrual disturbances of which only about 1.5% could be attributed to the powder which seems statistically of doubtful value.

Group Seven -- Consisted of 92 women who had been exposed to mercury fulminate for the last two months or more. Of this group 20.6% had menstrual disturbances of which only 2% could be attributed to mercury fulminate which is probably statistic ally of doubtful value.

In the summary this survey brought out that women working in TNT, tetryl and condite tend to have menstrual changes which can be attributed to those chemical exposures. This study was never published but there is a copy in my files.

*   *   *   *   *   *

On January 7, 1944, I completed a paper entitled "TNT Sickness and Its Control in Industry." This document was never published but it probably would have been, if the war were not still going on at this time. A copy of this paper is on file in my filing cabinet. Copies were circulated among proper authorities when it was completed and, of course, forwarded to Dr. F. M. Jones and Dr. F. M. R. Bulmer.

This paper draws on my experience in examining and dealing with some 2,500 employees who, over the preceding year and a half, came to me complaining of illness which was attributed to TNT; but not all of the complaints were genuine. I had kept careful records of signs and symptoms which I drew upon to write this paper on TNT sickness.

From these records I tabulated the frequency of symptoms complained of by the group of TNT workers involved. I also tabulated the frequency of observed jaundice and cyanosis and the frequency of low blood pressure and low haemoglobin. These frequencies are all given in percentage of the whole group.

These frequencies of symptoms are shown in the table below with the most prominent ones appearing first and others in their decreasing order of frequency.

Frequency of Symptoms

                Loss of appetite                               47%

105


                Undue fatigue
Cough
Nausea
Headache
Tightness in chest
Breathlessness
Dizziness
Abnormal drowsiness
Abdominal cramps
Muscle pains
Frequency of cyanosis
Frequency of jaundice
Frequency of low blood pressure     
Frequency of low haemoglobin
35%
30%
25%
25%
23%
22%
17%
16%
14%
8%
20%
17%
80%
44%

From this data it is evident that loss of appetite was the most frequent complaint. Nausea was frequent enough that, when accompanied by loss of appetite, it might well have led to under-nourishment and contributed to the undue fatigue and headache.

Cough, tightness in the chest and breathlessness commonly appeared together which made me consider the possibility of a lung condition. In true TNT sickness the cough was always unproductive. When a thorough examination of the lungs and heart failed to turn up any evidence of lung or heart disease, I was left with the conclusion that these symptoms were indicators of TNT sickness. The other symptoms, dizziness, abnormal drowsiness, abdominal cramps and muscle pains, may have had some significance among the symptoms of TNT sickness, but it is more likely that they were secondary manifestations associated with the first mentioned symptoms which would result in under-nourishment and poor circulation. The impairment in circulation was certainly a factor because in 80% of the cases of TNT sickness, the blood pressure was low.

Cyanosis, although detectable in only 20% of cases, was often associated with low blood pressure. Much research failed to uncover any other condition in the blood itself which would explain the cyanosis. It seems plausible that the low blood pressure was in some way associated with dilatation of the capillaries, resulting in slowing of peripheral circulation with consequent cyanosis.

The high frequency of low haemoglobin indicated that TNT tends to cause anemia, which might accentuate the feeling of breathlessness in the absence of lung or heart disease. Jaundice was seen less frequently than cyanosis, but when present seemed to indicate more liver involvement.

I became, through practice, so skillful in detecting jaundice in the sclera that I almost invariably recognized its early development before a positive Van den Bergh test could be obtained.

This paper points out that the treatment of TNT sickness is prompt interruption of exposure and maintaining it until the patient recovers. This also emphasizes the great importance of minimal exposure in prevention of the disease.

106


The paper was written at a time when TNT sickness at Ajax was already quite well controlled, so in order to document how this was accomplished I am reproducing here the last page of the paper in toto.

Excerpt from the paper "T.N.T. Sickness and its Control in Industry."

The reason for the remarkable decrease in T.N.T. sickness in our plant cannot be attributed to any one factor. I am listing below the factors which I think are responsible. I am listing them in order of importance beginning with the most important factor.

1) Early recognition of symptoms by line nurses and myself, so that patients are moved out of contact early, before serious symptoms develop, and kept out until recovery is complete.

2) Close supervision and daily contact with each T.N.T. worker, on the part of line nurses, under the present system of organized control.

3) Improvement in cleanliness in the T.N.T. rooms and more care on the part of the workmen.

4) Daily change of uniforms and daily showering with a general improvement in personal cleanliness.

5) Improvement in worker morale. Workers now show more confidence in the line nurses, myself and the company in our efforts to improve their health. The workers themselves are reporting symptoms earlier and not trying to hide symptoms be cause of suspicion of unfair treatment. Foremen are cooperating much better because they are convinced of the value of medical control, which has been reflected in a marked decrease in the number of man-hours lost through sickness.

6) Enlargement of the T.N.T. rooms so that there is more air space in proportion to T.N.T. handled.

7) Establishment of a fairly satisfactory technique for washing T.N.T. garments at our laundry and the present system of segregating and handling of T.N.T. garments.

8) The extensive use of ferrous sulphate tablets among T.N.T. workers.

9) The routine monthly check-up on all T.N.T. workers by the line nurses.

10) The elimination of dry sweeping of T.N.T. rooms.

11) The treatment of non T.N.T. ailments and thus reducing susceptibility to T.N.T.

12) The segregation of T.N.T. workers in the change rooms.

13) The judicious use of masks, guards and gloves.

14) The segregation of used T.N.T. shoes.

15) Better hospital and laboratory facilities for treatment and diagnosis of T.N.T. cases.

107


On January 31, 1944, I wrote a paper entitled "Case Report, Toxic Jaundice Due to T.N.T." This paper was never published but it probably would have been published if the Second World War were not still going on. I have a copy in my files.

The patient was a young man who had a heavy exposure to TNT dust followed by a heavy exposure to hot TNT fumes. The length of his exposure was exactly two months.

He first reported to me on November 4, 1943. On this date he complained of loss of appetite, nausea, undue fatigue, tight feeling in the chest, shortness of breath and abdominal cramps. At that time there was no cyanosis and no jaundice. His blood pressure then was 116/60 and his haemoglobin 92%. 1 took him off exposure to TNT immediately.

I saw him again on November 7th and found his condition unchanged.

I saw him again on November 13th. By this date his feeling of tightness in the chest had disappeared and did not return. He still had no cyanosis and never did develop any. However, he still had his other symptoms and was becoming jaundiced.

On November 17th he was admitted to our plant hospital. In a couple of days all symptoms had disappeared except poor appetite, nausea and weakness. However, his jaundice was becoming worse. Then the diagnosis of toxic jaundice was made and his Van den Bergh test was going up rapidly.

His liver and spleen were just palpable on November 24th and on that date he was transferred to the Toronto General Hospital under the care of Dr. Raymond Farquharson. I kept in close touch with Dr. Farquharson. He continued the general routine I was following, and essentially the same laboratory tests were followed at the Toronto General Hospital.

The Van Den Bergh readings continued to go up and eventually reached 40 units before starting to go down on November 30th. The changes in the urine color and the Webster test paralleled those of the Van den Bergh.

No other laboratory tests, except liver tests, showed anything of significance. The Webster test in this patient showed traces of T.N.T. in the urine for 18 days after his last contact. Usually when a workman's exposure is broken the Webster test becomes normal in four or five days. Liver function tests showed abnormalities until jaundice was gone. The cephalin cholesterol flocculation test was the last to return to normal.

The patient eventually recovered completely with a slight setback near the middle of December when he broke out with chicken pox while in the Toronto General Hospital.

*   *   *   *   *   *

In April, 1944, I prepared a 24-page document wherein I listed by name and described briefly 92 cases of undoubted TNT sickness encountered at the Defence Industries Pickering Plant at Ajax, Ontario, between May, 1942, and the end of March, 1944. This document was entitled "Case Reports of TNT Sickness." This paper was not published but a copy of it is in my file cabinet.

108


In this series of cases there were 64 males with an average age of 36 years and 28 females with an average age of 28. In this series all of the common symptoms were higher than the series of January 7, 1944. They are being listed below in their descending order by frequency. This may be because the January 7, 1944 report may have been moderated by the inclusion of some which might not actually have been TNT sickness.

Symptoms by Percentages

                Undue Fatigue
Loss of Appetite
Headache
Nausea
Cough
Tightness in Chest
Drowsiness
Abdominal Cramps
Dizziness
Breathlessness
Muscle Pains
Cyanosis seen in
Jaundice seen in
Low Blood Pressure in           
Low Haemoglobin in
74%
61%
49%
48%
39%
39%
39%
37%
35%
34%
26%
34%
15%
49%
54%

*   *   *   *   *   *

On May 26, 1944, I wrote a paper entitled "Report of a Fatal Case of Toxic Jaundice Due to TNT." I was not involved in this case in any way. In fact, it started before I was even working at Defence Industries at Ajax, Ontario, and the young man had died long before I heard about it. But after I was assigned to TNT I heard about it and looked up the records on it.

It is a depressing account of gross mismanagement all around, largely because the patient denied that he had worked in TNT and continued to lie about it until his record was discovered two days before he died. This was too late to save his life no matter what was done.

His record showed that he had suffered a burn on his wrist from molten TNT and that he had had previous contact with TNT in several ways. Because his burn was alleged not to be due to TNT, the treatment used was worse than nothing. He was not given the clean-up necessary for TNT exposure. He became progressively worse, was hospitalized and eventually transferred to Toronto General Hospital on March 21, 1942, where he died on March 23rd. An autopsy was done by Dr. I. H. Erb on March 25, 1942, after he had been embalmed, so evidence was difficult to find, but Dr. Erb certified that he had died of liver atrophy from TNT poisoning. This paper was never published, but a copy is preserved in my filing cabinet.

109


In October, 1944, I wrote a further report entitled "Case Reports of TNT Sickness, April 1, 1944 to September 30, 1944." This was written to put on record the cases I encountered during this period, making it supplemental to the report written in April, 1944, detailing those cases up to March 31, 1944. It is significant that the number of cases per month was much reduced because of the control measures then in force. I saw only one case of TNT sickness during the last three months of 1944. This report was not published, but I have a copy in my filing cabinet.

On April 15, 1945; I wrote a further report on cases of TNT sickness occurring early in 1945. It was entitled "Case Reports of TNT Sickness, January 1, 1945 to March 31, 1945." A copy is in my files. This report for the above three month period contains only three cases of TNT sickness. This small number of TNT sickness cases again demonstrated the remarkable success of the preventive program which I had instituted at the plant. This plant was still working at about its usual capacity.

Sometime during my later years of working with TNT health problems, I was asked to visit the Bouchard Munitions Plant in Quebec which also had similar problems. I visited the plant and talked to the plant physicians there. I explained how the problem had been approached at Ajax and I think they benefitted by adopting similar measures.

*   *   *   *   *   *

On May 3, 1945, I wrote a study which I had conducted on all of the workers exposed to R.D.X. at Defence Industries in Ajax, Ontario. Since R.D.X. was a new explosive and little was known about it, it seemed appropriate that I should undertake a detailed study of workers in the substance, using the laboratory investigations which had been applied to TNT workers. The reason for this approach was to find, if possible, early indicators of harmful effects.

Sixty-two workers were covered thoroughly in this survey. Forty of them were men and twenty-two were women. The results are detailed in three tables. Each of these tables takes up seven pages of findings. A copy is available in my files.

Table I is devoted to symptoms and has a column for each of the following items: visual disturbances, diplopia, cough, sneezing, tightness in chest, burning of eyes, dryness of nose and throat, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal distension, rash, dizziness, headache, undue fatigue, breathlessness, drowsiness, muscle pains, swelling of hands and feet, hearing disturbances, urinary frequency, menstrual disturbances, sleeplessness and nervousness.

Table II lists examination results and has a column for each of the following items: cyanosis, jaundice, blood pressure, Chvostek's sign, reflexes, optic discs, Rhomberg's sign, bleeding time, coagulation time in seconds, capillary resistance, retraction time in minutes, reticulocytes in %, red cell count, urinalysis for color, urinalysis for specific gravity, urinalysis for albumen, urinalysis for sugar, urinalysis for bile and other signs.

In Table II urine color is tabulated according to the scale reading. Specific reading figures are recorded for blood pressure, bleeding time, coagulation time, reaction time, reticulocyte percentage, red cell count and specific gravity of the urine.

In Table III are tabulated the following examination results: sedimentation rate in minutes in one hour, haemoglobin in percentage, appearance of blood smear, white cell count, basophils, easinophils, monocytes (by numbers found), neutrophils, lymphocytes,

110


Van den Bergh, serum calcium (9-11 mg is normal), serum phosphates (3-10 is normal), serum albumen (3.7-5.25 is normal), serum globulin (1.5-3.0 is normal), blood chloride (570-625 mgs. is normal) and cephalin cholesterol flocculation test.

The conclusion of the report states: "This study, although somewhat incomplete in some respects, failed to show any signs or symptoms of toxicity of R.D.X."

Further comment. I think this study was valuable for the very reason that no evidence of R.D.X. toxicity was found. It was carefully done and very convincing. I think, in any case against the company for damages in which R.D.X. poisoning was claimed, this study, when produced as evidence, would be a convincing defense. This report, entitled "A Study of Workers Exposed to R.D.X." was never published because at the time it was written the war was still on and publication of such things was still restricted. I have a copy in my files.

*   *   *   *   *   *

One time, when I was driving away from the plant at Ajax, for some reason I was looking at some papers I had in the car with me and I had an accident. The large parking lot was empty, and there was no other traffic in any direction, so I was moving slowly, without paying attention to where I was heading. Suddenly the car rammed into a large concrete block which was supporting one of the parking lot electric lights. The sudden stop threw me forward violently enough for my chest to break off the plastic steering wheel. My head was also thrown forward so that I received a cut on my lower lip. Otherwise no damage was done. However, with the steering wheel broken I had no way to control the car. So my car, with me in it, was towed to Oshawa where I obtained a new steering wheel without difficulty.

Although most of my time was taken up at the shell filling plant, I did manage to carry on a little private medical practice, using a small room in the front of my residence. I remember I took care of a confinement or two.

I also remember having a patient come to my office with a large piece of meat stuck in his throat. I could not see anything and had no instruments to explore lower down, so I sent him to the hospital in Oshawa to get service.

One time I was called in consultation to see a woman in the Oshawa Hospital who was suffering from a generalized and distressing rash, which her doctor could do nothing for. After studying her case and not discovering any environmental cause for it, I suggested that the doctor stop the newly popular drug he was giving her. When the medicine was stopped she soon recovered completely.

*   *   *   *   *   *

In Whitby the soil was good, and I had a healthy garden where I grew vegetables of many kinds. There was already a large productive plot of asparagus. I also grew a lot of gladioli flowers of many colors.

In Whitby I was a member of the Kiwanis Club and we put on a street fair once a year to raise funds. It was interesting but exhausting because it ran into late evening on Saturdays. Just before I left Whitby they wanted me to be president, but I had to turn it down.

111


One time in the winter I thought I would see what it was like to perform on skis. I had never had them on before so I didn't know when or how to use them. I walked out on the road, which at that time was icy and rutted. I soon found my feet sliding sideways on the ice and I fell down. I was not badly hurt but I quickly lost my interest in skiing.

In Whitby I belonged to the United Church of Canada and was active in the Men's Club in the Sunday School. I taught the adult class sometimes and for part of a year I served as superintendent of the Sunday School.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Toward the end of my service of Defence Industries at Ajax, I was sent a patient from the Toronto General Hospital who came and returned to the hospital by ambulance. I was not expected to attend the patient, but because I was then considered something of an expert on TNT sickness, he was sent to me to verify the diagnosis of the internist and top professors of the University of Toronto, who had already made the diagnosis of TNT poisoning. I was expected to fill out the report to the Workman's Compensation Board to ensure that his heirs would get the compensation coming to them because it was obvious to them, and to me, that the man was near death.

I found the man greatly jaundiced and much emaciated. I learned from him that he had worked at Defence Industries at Ajax only in the stockroom where TNT was received off the freight train. I knew what it was like in the storeroom, and that the TNT came in closed boxes which were kept in a large open shed with a roof over it. I knew that the only possible exposure there would be to a little dust that would spill out, if a box were broken in handling. I also knew that this tiny exposure could never cause TNT sickness. So I filled out my report for the Workman's Compensation Board, that the patient did not have TNT poisoning, and that, in my opinion, he was suffering from a malignancy which was obstructing his bile duct and causing his jaundice, even though I could not find anything on palpation.

A week or two later the man died, and a prominent story came out in the Toronto morning paper, that he had died of TNT poisoning. The source giving the information to the newspaper was the County Coroner. But he would never have such information if the death certificate were not sent to him signed by one of the illustrious physicians attending the patient. TNT poisoning was such a new thing that no doubt the doctors involved wanted to get the credit for their diagnosis.

A couple of days later I learned by some private enquiries that when the autopsy was done the following day, it was found that the man had died of cancer in the head of the pancreas, through which the bile from the liver has to reach the digestive tract. So my diagnosis on seeing the patient for about a half hour was entirely correct, and the doctors at the Toronto General Hospital were wrong.

Of course the report which had gone to the public through the newspaper was never corrected and I received no publicity whatsoever about it. I don t mean to imply that I was smarter than the hospital and university doctors, but I had the advantage that I knew the workman's exposure to TNT was so small that he could not possibly be harmed by it.

This principle of Occupational Medicine, not known at that time, even by the

112


professors at the University of Toronto, states that "the degree of exposure to any noxious chemical must be great enough to cause the disease."

*   *   *   *   *   *

In May, 1945, a communication came through top management at Defence Industries at Ajax that another branch of Defence Industries wanted to hire me at a higher salary. No information was available as to what or where, but they were prepared to pay my way to Montreal for an interview with the manager of the project. So I went to Montreal and saw him in his office. In the interview he said he could not tell me what the project was about until I had consented to work for him, and was prepared to keep the secret. Since it is no longer a secret, I can tell you that I was surprised when he calmly said they were building a plant to split the atom.

So I was hired to be Works Chief Medical Officer of the N.R.X. Project. The company was prepared to pay my moving expenses and provide me with a house at the townsite which was being built for employees, several miles away from the project itself.

Since the house was not yet completed and the company wanted me to get further medical experience in some phases of medicine, arrangements were made for me to get two months private tutoring at the University of Toronto at the company 's expense.

I terminated my activities at Defence Industries at Ajax, Ontario, on May 3, 1945, and went to Toronto where I got some intensive instruction in laboratory work in haematology and biochemistry and in electrocardiography, and familiarity with what was needed in such laboratories.

I made arrangements to sell my house in Whitby and prepared to move. I had no trouble in selling the house back to the man I bought it from, who also held the mortgage on it. This transaction was carried through so easily because the buyer wanted the house for his son and family to move into.

Again, I was amazed at a change which took place in my life which was not in any way anticipated by me, nor planned by me.

*   *   *   *   *   *

As I look back over my years at the shell filling plant at Ajax, I don't want to minimize the hazards there. Although safety was not my responsibility, I did have plant-wide responsibilities in other areas, so I had access to and did visit all areas. Fortunately I was not involved in any plant accidents but I did routinely take the prescribed precautions wherever I went. In some areas the explosives dealt with were very sensitive. In these areas the mixing room was constructed so that one wall was very flimsy. If and when there was an explosion this wall would be blown out and the rest of the building spared.

One time four or five men were brought into the plant hospital after just such an explosion. I saw them in the hospital, but did not attend them. They all were burned and blackened all over, their clothes burned off and the skin stiff and charred. Although some survived long enough to be transferred to Oshawa Hospital first, they all died.

113


CHAPTER ELEVEN

YEARS IN DEEP RIVER AND AT
CANADA'S ATOMIC ENERGY PROJECT
AT CHALK RIVER, ONTARIO

Without knowing of its existence beforehand, I became, on June 1, 1945, a member of the Manhattan Project when I took over the position of Works Chief Medical Officer N.R.X. Project at the Petawawa Works at Chalk River, Ontario, Canada.

Before going into my activities, I think at this juncture I should document the important events which have a bearing on how I came to be there.

On December 7, 1941, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, brought the United States into the war which Canada had been engaged in since it began in 1939.

I have in my files copies of newspapers from which the following excerpts are taken.

On May 8, 1945, the Toronto Globe and Mail stated: "London, May 7, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies today."

On August 7, 1945, the Globe and Mail stated: "Washington, August 6. Japan rocked today under the most devastating destructive force ever known to man: the atomic bomb." "He (President Truman) at 11 a.m. EST. said the first atomic bomb had been dropped on the Japanese army base of Hiroshima 16 hours earlier." "President Truman said the scientific skill of the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada had gone into long experimenting before the achievement of the long dreamed-of harnessing of atomic energy."

Ottawa, August 6: "The Dominion-Provincial Conference today heard the announcement of the first use of an atomic bomb, and Canada's part in its development. The announcement was made by Prime Minister King immediately before the noon adjournment."

On August 7, 1945, the Montreal Daily Star stated: "Washington, August 7. The Manhattan Project, probably the most carefully guarded secret of the war, produced the atomic bomb." Pictured in the newspaper were Major General Leslie R. Groves and Dean C.J. Mackenzie."

"Los Alamos, N.M., August 7. The age of atomic force was ushered in July 17, 1945, when a group of renowned scientists and military leaders gathered in New Mexico's desert wastelands to witness the results of their $2 billion experiment. The War Department disclosed yesterday that the test took place on that date on an isolated section of the Alamogordo, N.M. Air Force Base, 120 miles southeast of Alburquerque at 5:30 a.m."

On August 10, 1945, the Montreal Daily Star: "Guam, August

114


Chalk River personnel

Some of the people involved in running the Chalk River Atomic Energy Project. (Only last names are available.)
Left to right: Rosser, Sargent, Solandt, Park, Laurence, Gen. McNaughton, Cook, McEwen, Palmer, Thewlis, Desbarats, Ritchie, Tongue, Neilson. [correction]
10. The second atomic bomb dropped on Japan obliterated Nagasaki."

Headline: "Japanese offer to quit." "London, August 10. Moscow radio said today that the Japanese Foreign Minister had expressed to Russian Ambassador Jacob Malik, Japanese willingness to accept the Potsdam declaration."

On August 13, 1945, the Montreal Gazette carried a picture of the Nagasaki Firecloud.

An article from the Ottawa Gazette, August 12, 1945, was headlined: "Atomic Research at Chalk River to Probe Medical Applications." The article includes statements made by Reconstruction Minister Howe. On page 18, the first paragraph reads: "The largest and most distinguished group of scientists ever assembled, for a single investigation in any British country, worked in Canada on the experimental and development work of atomic energy." "Canadian scientists and those from abroad who helped in the work include..." (the list which follows has the names and university connections of upwards of 160 men and women, many of them from foreign countries).

On August 13, 1945, the Montreal Daily Star had pictured prominently in Section 11 a number of top scientists. Among them were the pictures of Dr. J. D. Cockcroft, who lived with his family in the house adjoining mine in Deep River (on the south), Professor R.W. Sargent, who lived with his wife in the house adjoining mine on the north, and beyond him, on the north side, lived Dr. G. C. Laurence with his family, who was also pictured.

On August 15, 1945, the Toronto Globe and Mail carried its bold headline: "Peace at Last". "Washington, August 14. President Truman announced at 7 P.M. E.D.T August 14, 1945 that Japan had accepted allied surrender terms. Orders went out immediately to silence the guns in the far-flung Pacific theater." "President Truman further stated General Douglas MacArthur has been appointed the Supreme Allied Commander to receive the Japanese surrender; Great Britain, Russia and China will be represented by high ranking officers."

August 15, 1945, the Montreal Daily Star: "San Francisco, August 15. Emperor Hirohito, in the first broadcast ever made to his 100,000,000 subjects, said today that the atomic bomb forced Japan to accept the first military defeat in the 2,605 years of her history."

I also have in files the TIME Magazine dated August 10, 1945. Cover story: "Atomic Age."

So it was in these hectic months in the summer of 1945 that I began to take up my responsibilities at Chalk River, Ontario. At that time the atomic plant was far from completion. In terms of output it contributed little, but its scientists supplied

115


much knowledge and brain power to the creation of the atomic bomb. In this I had no part.

At the beginning my medical services were very limited. At the plant-site at Chalk River most of the employees were engaged in various construction projects. They were housed in temporary large barracks. There was no medical office and I started with a desk, in a temporary building where all the medical supplies and gallon jugs of medicines were sitting on the floor around about. When I wanted to dispense any liquid medicine the only available bottles to put it in were empty and discarded whisky bottles.

At the townsite, at Deep River, ten miles up the Ottawa River from the plant, conditions were a little better. I was able to use a newly finished small house with rooms where I could have an office with desk and file and an examining room. As yet, there was no hospital in the place and any patients needing hospitalization had to be sent to doctors in Pembroke, who were mostly general practitioners.

Among my first duties was the necessity of setting up some kind of record system to keep track of patients served and to keep them recorded and categorized correctly. There were occupational conditions to look after, as well as non-occupational conditions.

An attempt was being made to develop a non-occupational plan into which employees contributed a certain amount per month to assure themselves of prepaid medical care.

I had much to do in going over the plans drawn up by the company architects for a hospital at the plant with facilities on the ground floor for emergency service and for routine physical examinations for new employees.

The plant hospital had to have quite adequate laboratories to conduct both haematological and urine examinations quite extensively, and also a well-equipped biological laboratory to do quite extensive blood and chemical tests. The plant hospital facility could not be built until I had agreed upon its size and design.

Then it was my responsibility to hire the doctors, nurses and laboratory technicians to do the work. I was able to do this because of my previous experience at the Defence Industries in Ajax and from what I had learned in private tutoring during two months previously at the University of Toronto. Also I had the valuable advice of Surgeon Commander, Dr. C. B. Pierce, of the R.C.N.V.R. who was attached to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.

Of course the plant hospital had to have its own x-ray machine and staff to operate it. The plant hospital building was designed to have, under the same roof, equipment for reading and measuring the amount of exposure of all employees to any radioactivity, which was monitored by the use of a dental-like film badge that everyone wore and turned in every week.

There had to be rooms for Dr. Cipriani and Dr. Butler to carry on their research activities. There also had to be space for various conference rooms and a private office for me and a private office for the supervisor of the health radiation staff (health physicists). Naturally all of this planning, building and staffing took considerable time. It was my responsibility to select and approve the hiring of all medical personnel, that is, doctors, nurses, medical technicians, etc.

116


Much of my earliest attendance on construction workers at the plantsite was basically caused by over-indulgence in alcohol. There were injuries received in drunken brawls and accidents due to unsteadiness while drunk.

I remember one man who came to me complaining of a stomach disorder, which he believed to be an ulcer of the stomach. After talking to him for sometime, I learned that he was separated from his wife and very unhappy. I became convinced that his symptoms were all emotional in nature, and I would not refer him to a doctor in Pembroke to have his stomach operated on. Rather, I wanted to treat him medically. A day or so later, I learned that he did not take my advice, but went to a Pembroke doctor without my referral. I learned, in addition, that the Pembroke doctors did think that he had a gastric ulcer and went ahead with the operation. For some reason, the man died on the operating table, but they did not find any gastric ulcer.

*   *   *   *   *

The townsite, named Deep River, was built on the southwestern bank of the Ottawa River, about ten miles upstream from the atomic energy plant itself. This townsite was selected because it was far enough away so that it could not be damaged if an explosion occurred at the atomic plant.

Another reason for locating Deep River at this place was the fact that it was a beautiful area, well-suited for residential buildings, and at this point the Ottawa River was much wider and the current not very strong. This made it an ideal place for boating sports, and it had a lovely, and safe, swimming beach where the shoreline gently curved at this point.

I was immediately involved with the architects in planning the Deep River hospital building. It was designed to meet most of the needs of the scientists, skilled research personnel and highly trained technical personnel who would be working at the Atomic Energy Plant, both before and after its completion. In other words, an up-to-date general hospital was required where good surgery could be done, where adequate diagnostic services and equipment would be available, including a good x-ray machine. It had to be large enough to meet the needs of the Deep River community, that is, not only the workmen themselves, but also their wives and children, and all the townsite commercial inhabitants. It was designed to handle obstetrics and dentistry as well. Not only that, but it had to serve as an out-patient center as well, with each of the doctors having his office and examining room.

When it was completed it did serve all of these needs adequately. We had a dental office, well equipped with a dental chair and laboratory, and a dental x-ray machine. We employed two dentists and each had his own dental nurse. The work was all done in the one office because one dentist and his nurse worked from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the other dentist and his nurse worked from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.

We were somewhat embarrassed in our obstetrical practice, because we found that our number of labors was three times that of the provincial average. This was because the plant employees were, on the average, much younger than the general population, with large numbers in the child-bearing age range.

We did not establish extensive laboratory facilities at the Deep River Hospital but used the plantsite laboratories which were readily accessible.

117


In staffing these two hospitals, the plant hospital and the community hospital, I had to hire a lot of nurses and qualified technicians as well as business office personnel. I did engage Miss Frizell as my head nurse at the townsite hospital who was formerly in charge of nursing at the Ajax plant where I formerly worked. I also hired Dr. William Shelly who was formerly a doctor at the Ajax plant also. I made him head physician at the Deep River Hospital. For the head doctor at the plantsite hospital at Chalk River, I hired Dr. Ernie Renton who formerly worked at a chemical plant in Quebec.

When I also had the health physicists under my control with G. Guest, Ph.D. supervising them, my total staff was 70 people. So much of my work was in administration, not only of personnel, but also I was hospital administrator in Deep River and hospital and medical laboratory administrator at the plantsite facilities.

It was necessary for me to organize a workable system of record keeping and from those records to provide for top management a monthly summary of my department's activities. Fortunately I did not have to organize and take care of any of the finances. This was all done by the accounting department at the plantsite business accounting office. That department took care of payments to every member of my staff which was a fixed salary. None of us doctors had private patients and we never collected any fees from patients. The accounting department did all of that billing and collecting or deductions from the employees' payroll. The accounting department also paid for the drugs, chemicals and supplies we used, and took care of processing our purchases.

I sent Miss Frizell to Montreal where she got training in the operation of the Deep River x-ray machine. She became fairly adept at taking the needed x-ray pictures but we had to have a qualified doctor of medicine to read and make written reports on all of our x-rays. For this purpose we had a doctor come in twice a week. Our own doctors however were sufficiently competent in reading x-rays to begin treatment immediately and to take care of fractures.

There were three doctors working full time in Deep River and one working full time at the Chalk River facility. I made the fifth one, and did some medical work at both the Deep River and Chalk River hospitals. I also attended some patients in their homes in Deep River. This, and my administrative responsibilities kept me very busy. In addition, I had the responsibilities of Medical Officer of Health for Deep River and Chalk River and much of the township surrounding those communities.

One time, one of the Deep River doctors on my staff went out hunting in some of the large forests near Deep River. On that day he got separated from his companions shortly before dark and couldn't find his way out of the forest. His companions came back and reported him missing. It was decided that no search could be made until daylight the next day. The following morning he walked in by himself. When he could see where the sun was rising he was able to walk in the right direction to get out. He had spent a rather uncomfortable night but was otherwise unhurt.

Of course, in this narrative the title "Dr." will appear with many names so it is necessary for the reader to realize that many of them are called doctors because they had a Ph.D. degree. In actuality the only doctors with M.D. degrees were myself and the four doctors working on my staff. Of course the two dentists on my staff had D.D.S. degrees. The man heading up the Health Radiation Division, described later, was a doctor because he had a Ph.D. in physics.

118


Data from first trial run

July 22, 1947. The very first trial run of the Chalk River Atomic Energy Reactor. The blackboard shows the actual readings and data from the monitoring equipment, as recorded by Dr. W. B. Lewis, Director of the Atomic Energy Project.

There was no high school in the Deep River community and there were enough children of high school age in the village, and living nearby, to charter a bus to take them to Pembroke and back daily. This was paid for by the operators of the Atomic Energy Project. While I was Health Officer, one of the boys who was riding the bus daily, who lived just outside of the village, developed poliomyelitis. As Health Officer I stopped the bussing for about a week. Then, since there were no more cases of the disease, I permitted resumption of the bussing.

By the end of January, 1947, the work of Defence Industries in building the plant at Chalk River was completed and the Atomic Energy Plant was then turned over to the National Research Council of Canada. I was retained with my title changed to Director, Health Division, Atomic Energy Project. The whole project at that time was put in the hands of the scientists with Dr. John D. Cockcroft, head of the British scientific team, named as top administrator. I then reported directly to Dr. Cockcroft.

The war at that time had been over for more than a year. Not long after Dr. Cockcroft took over he was recalled to England to help the British develop atomic power. He was succeeded by Dr. W. B. Lewis who was then my boss until he too returned to England.* After Dr. Lewis left, Dr. D. A. Keys, professor of physics from a university in Montreal became my boss. It is of interest that Dr. J. D. Cockcroft later was knighted by the Queen of England and became Sir John Cockcroft for his work in atomic energy in Great Britain.

It was quite some time after the work of Defence Industries was done at Chalk River that the scientists were able to train the operators and get the atomic reactor operating. The first trial run was made during the era that Dr. Lewis was head of the project. The trial run was scheduled secretly, for a time in the middle of the night. I was among the four or five top men invited to be there. We gathered in a large room well down underground where communication was only by an electronic amplifier from the control room. A blackboard was used by Dr. Lewis to record the number of atomic reactions being recorded on screens in the control room. The control rods were lifted very slowly and atomic reactions began taking place.

It was an exciting time for all of us to be there for the initial splitting of the atom by the Chalk River reactor. It was run up enough in power to show that it worked and then was shut down. Later I was given a photograph of the figures Dr. Lewis recorded that night on the blackboard. I still have it in my files.

*   *   *   *   *

Obviously I was much involved in administrative activities but I did some medical work as well. I was called upon to attend the twin boys of Dr. Pontecorvo, a scientist for the project, in their home in Deep River. One of the boys was subject to recurring attacks of middle ear infection. Their mother was a small likeable woman but I don't think I ever saw or knew Dr. Pontecorvo himself.

I mention this situation because toward the end of the second world war Dr. Pontecorvo disappeared and sometime later it was reported that he had deserted the Manhattan Project and was on his way to Russia with the secrets of how to make the atomic bomb. Later we heard that after some time in Russia he was on his way to China. I don't remember when his wife and twin sons left Deep River, but quite sometime later we found out that they had joined Dr. Pontecorvo in Russia.

_______________
* Dr. Jeremy Whitlock of the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.'s Chalk River Laboratories noted in April 3, 2009 email to Robert Park that Dr. W.B. Lewis in fact took over the Chalk River project from Dr. J. Cockroft in September 1946, and never returned to England but stayed at Chalk River to the end of his career in 1973, and retired in Deep River until his death in 1987.

119


Sometimes one or two of the doctors in Deep River would talk over their problem cases with me. I recall one patient whom two of the doctors had tried unsuccessfully to help was eventually referred to me. I studied his case and found that both of my assistants were treating him for unresponsive diarrhea. It had always been preceded by days of constipation. I decided that his attacks of diarrhea were the natural irritation response to severe constipation. So I began by insisting on the intake of much water and fruit juices and put him on a well-balanced diet. Before long he was free of both his diarrhea and his constipation.

*   *   *   *   *

My chief headquarters was my office in the Plant Hospital from which I supervised the activities of my staff. Being one of the top men of the project I was expected to attend the scientific lectures given by the scientists at their regular meetings of that group. I did attend, but frankly they were so detailed and expressed in such difficult scientific terms that I did not learn much. However, I was present at the first showing of the moving pictures taken in New Mexico when the first atomic bomb was exploded at the test site. It was certainly spectacular and impressive as the mushroom cloud rose and developed before our eyes ten miles away from the camera.

At the outset, when I started work at Chalk River, I didn't know anything about the Manhattan Project. Later I learned that the project at Chalk River was a part of it, under the name Evergreen. So it happened that one time General Groves, head of the whole Manhattan Project, made a visit to the Evergreen Facility (Chalk River). I, of course, met him and was one of the large group that sat down to dinner with him.

*   *   *   *   *

In the fall of 1946, I again found time to do some writing. On September 18, 1946, I wrote a paper entitled "The Romance of Blood." It was never published nor shown to anybody but a copy is still in my files. It records briefly some early concepts of blood and circulation. Below, from that paper, are some of the important historical figures mentioned and their contributions.

1) The Greek physician Galen lived between 130 and 200 A.D. His concept of the ebb and flow in the blood vessels dominated the world for about 1400 years.

2) The Italian, Servetus, in 1553, grasped the present concept of pulmonary circulation.

3) Caesalpinus furthered the study of circulation in 1571.

4) Fabricus, in 1574, did more research.

5) Our modern concept of blood circulation was proven by the English physician Harvey in 1628.

6) In 1651, the Frenchman Pacquet discovered the thoracic duct.

7) In 1668, the Englishman Mayow proved that respiration took something from the air which he called igneo-areal particles. His work was forgotten for 100 years.

120


8) In 1774, another Englishman, Priestley, described the absorption of oxygen by the blood.

9) In 1775, a Frenchman, Lavoisier, described the function of oxygen in the blood.

10) In 1837, Magus demonstrated both oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood.

The article goes on to describe the structure of the blood, modern concepts of bleeding and other scientific advances.

*   *   *   *   *

Because of my success in controlling the TNT problem at Ajax, Ontario, a request came through channels for me to study the exposure of employees to radium at the Eldorado Mining and Refining, Ltd. at Port Hope, Ontario. Since this also required geiger counter readings, I took F. S. Eadie of my health radiation staff with me. I wrote a report on that visit on August 29, 1947, which was sent to the company. It was no doubt helpful, but, of course, it was not available for publication. However, I have a copy of that report in my files.

The National Research Council sent me, in late September and early October, 1947, to a symposium at Saranac Lake, New York, U.S.A. I prepared and submitted to the National Research Council a report on that meeting. A bound copy is still in my files in its own folder. It is entitled "Report on the Beryllium Problem as Discussed at the Sixth Saranac Symposium, Saranac Lake, New York, 22 September to 3 October, 1947." It was dated November, 1947.

Sometime after the second world war ended, restrictions on my writings were lifted and I began to get some of my writings published.

1) The Canadian Medical Association Journal, December 1947, printed a paper written by me entitled "TNT Sickness."
2) The same journal also carried another paper written by me entitled, "A Fatal Case of Toxic Jaundice Due to TNT."
3) The Canadian Medical Association Journal of January, 1948, contained another paper by me entitled "Control of TNT Sickness in Industry."

In June, 1948, on request, I was sent to Kingston, Ontario to speak to the assembled officers of the Canadian Army on the subject, "Medical and Health Problems in Atomic Warfare." My speech was never published but a copy is preserved in my files. It consists of seven closely typed pages. My talk was well received and I think helpful to them.

Shortly after my meeting with the officers of the Canadian Army, when I returned to Deep River, I wrote a paper for publication entitled "If an Atomic Bomb Should Fall." This was directed towards planning in advance by doctors, nurses, first aid people, technicians, emergency stations, hospitals, etc. It describes the devastation that might be expected, burns, radioactivity exposure, etc. It describes the symptoms and treatment of radiation sickness and many other features that have to be anticipated in an atomic bomb disaster which is much different from any other violent explosion.

121


Before this could be published, I gave it to Dr. W. B. Lewis to read and he, through proper channels, requested that it be unclassified, if possible, before I submitted it to any medical journal. His request was granted and it was declared unclassified, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal was given permission to publish it. I have in my files copies of these documents. The Canadian Medical Journal published the paper "If an Atomic Bomb Should Fall," in its entirety in the November 1949 issue #61, pages 473-478. I obtained reprints of this paper which were fairly freely distributed and I have a copy of the reprint in my files. The paper has a bibliography of 27 references.

*   *   *   *   *

On February 11, 1947, a meeting was held in the office of Dr. W. B. Lewis to review the functions of the various groups associated with health control at the Atomic Energy Plant. The next day I wrote up what took place at the meeting. This document is still in my Deep River history file. The meeting was attended by Dr. D. A. Keys, Dr. W. B. Lewis, Dr. W. E. Park, Mr. K. F. Tupper, Mr. I. D. Ritchie and Dr. D. F. Brown. Reports were made on:
A. Medical Advisory Committee
B. Project Health Committee
C. Health Radiation Department
D. Supervision
E. Central Safety Committee
After the above reports were given by the people involved, a re-allocation of responsibilities came out of it as follows:

           A.       It was recommended that the Project Health Committee be replaced by a Health Radiation Advisory Committee to consist of Dr. W. B. Lewis, Dr. A. J. Cipriani, Dr. G. Butler and Dr. D. F. Brown as regular members and with a visiting panel consisting of Mr. K. F. Tupper, Dr. W. E. Park, Dr. H. Carmichael, Dr. B. B. Kinsey, Dr. G. C. Laurence and Dr. L. G. Cook.
           B.       It was stated that the committee should be responsible for:
          1) Setting up tolerances.
          2) Definition of dosage and method of measurement.
          3) Preparation of general health regulations.
           C.       It was further stated that this committee should be responsible to Plant Management and submit its reports through Plant Management to the Medical Advisory Committee for approval.
           D.       It was further recommended that the present Central Safety Committee be expanded to include all Research Division branch heads, and the scope of the Central Safety Committee be expanded to include health radiation hazards and that these be dealt with in the same manner as defined above for safety hazards.
           E.       It was further recommended that a representative of the Industrial Hygiene Division of the Ontario Department of Health should continue to visit the plant as he sees fit.

122


Early in 1949 a report for the Division of Health was prepared covering the year 1948; I gave a report for the Division of Health as a whole and the heads of the three subdivisions gave further details for their specific areas. Dr. E. M. Renton, Branch Head of the Plant Hospital, Dr. W. R. Skelly, Branch Head of the Village Hospital, and G. H. Guest, Ph. D., Branch Head of Health Radiation each wrote his report. A copy of this report is still in my file of Deep River history. It details how extensive the activities of the Health Division were.

The Village Hospital Branch reported 14,614 attendances for the year 1948. 3,881 of these attendances were to people living outside the village of Deep River. 3,776 were for dentistry, 273 were for operations, 97 births--3,943 hospital days.

A new 200 millivolt x-ray machine was bought during the year for the Village Hospital which reduced the exposure of the doctors' hands to x-rays.

The Health Radiation Branch under the direction of G.H. Guest, Ph.D., acquired great proficiency in doing their job of monitoring radiation health hazards throughout the entire plant. This branch monitored and recorded weekly the readings from the dental-like film badges that all plant personnel wore. Those workers whose hands might be exposed were issued special wrist bands to measure exposure to radioactivity and some workers were issued pencil-like recorders.

During the entire time I was employed at the Atomic Energy Project at Chalk River, the only worker showing any warning of an over-exposure among the film badges was one of my dental nurses. The only possible exposure was from the x-ray machine. This posed a curious problem because both dental nurses were similarly exposed to the same dental x-ray machine. One of them never had an over-exposed film badge and the other always did.

I studied the situation and found that the nurse whose film badge was never over-exposed always had it pinned on the outside of her uniform and the nurse whose film badge was always over-exposed carried the film badge in the breast pocket of her uniform. I further learned that she also kept the chamois, through which she squeezed the mercury for the amalgam, in the same pocket with the film. So the mystery was solved. The film was darkened by mercury vapors and not by damaging radiation from the x-ray machine.

In his report for the year 1948, Dr. Guest mentioned that he and Dr. L. G. Cook had produced a document entitled "Design, Auxiliary Equipment and Services for a Radiochemical Laboratory." This was approved by the Health Radiation Committee and issued in bound form on February 14, 1948. I still have a copy in my files. It served as a manual for the Chalk River laboratories and the university laboratories working with radioactive isotopes.

Earlier, on January 1, 1948, Dr. G. H. Guest wrote a handy little booklet of pocket size illustrated by W.E. Moon of the Engineering Design Branch at Chalk River entitled, "Health Radiation and Contamination Control." I still have a copy in my files.

Later in 1948, Dr. G. H. Guest wrote another guide for workers in radioactive chemical laboratories using some of the materials and pictures previously used when Dr. L. G. Cook participated. It was entitled "Precautions for Workers Using Radioactive Isotopes." It was published in December, 1948 in the Canadian Journal of Comparative Medicine. I still have reprints in my files.

123


Early in 1949, while Dr. Guest was still working under my direction, he wrote another document entitled "Precautions in Industrial Uses of Radioactive Isotopes." This was later published in Vol. 1, Number 2, May 1949 of Industrial Health Review issued by the Industrial Health Division of the Department of Health and Welfare of Canada. I still have reprints in my files.

On April 7, 1949, the Health Radiation Branch was separated from the Health Division and thereafter I had no further responsibility for it. This was a reasonable move because, by that time, the Health Radiation Advisory Committee was working well with the Health Radiation Branch. Its members were better qualified than I to supervise the activities of the Health Radiation Branch. When this change took place my title was changed to Chief of Medical Services, Atomic Energy Project.

In May, 1949, the National Research Council sent me to Philadelphia, Pa., where I took Course No. 8 of the American College of Physicians on the "Physiological Basis for Internal Medicine." I profited by it, and when I came back I tried to share some of what I had learned with my staff doctors. Perhaps it was too advanced for them. Anyway, they didn't seem to enjoy it much.

On October 23, 1949, I became an active member of the Industrial Medical Association.

*   *   *   *   *

Not all of my time was spent at my work explained above. I did engage in other activities at the townsite in Deep River. An interesting page from the Pembroke Standard-Observer newspaper is preserved in my Deep River file. It is dated December 20, 1945, and is devoted entirely to Deep River developments as far as they had gone and something of future plans for the townsite.

The house which I was assigned to live in was among the most desirable right on the bank of the Ottawa River. I had a small garden space between my house and the river where I grew a few things. Most of this space I used for growing flowers, chiefly gladioli. My flowers were outstandingly beautiful and usually carried off the first prizes in the Deep River competitions. I was very good at arranging them in a huge basket with a large arched firm handle to which I could tie them.

I had another garden plot in an area quite away from the riverbank where many others had similar plots. Here I grew vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and beans. In the Deep River competitions I often won first prize for my potatoes--maybe more because I knew how to select potatoes of similar size and shape than because they were superior to others.

One time after a vacation trip through Georgia, where lots of peanuts are grown and processed, I planted some seed peanuts and had the experience of growing them. The peanuts grow underground in the same way as potatoes.

The winters were quite cold in Deep River, especially at night. I had to have a car readily available to me, so my car was housed in a special shed used for other important automobiles. In this building there was an electrical outlet for each car. Like others, I had an electric water heater installed in the engine block of the car equipped with an electric cord, which I plugged into the electric circuit every night in the winter. It kept the water in the engine warm nicely.

124


Once there were some planks that washed up on the riverbank behind my house, so I salvaged them and built for myself a workbench in the basement of my house.

The house was heated by a furnace in the basement which burned coal. I had to feed the furnace from time to time and remove the ashes and clinkers. One time in the winter the furnace was not functioning as well as usual because something seemed to be blocking the chimney stack. I removed the furnace pipe to clean out the bottom of the chimney and there I found the bodies of two small river ducks. Evidently they had perched on the rim of the brick smokestack on the roof to get warm and had been overcome by carbon monoxide from the burning coal and tumbled in.

I had a small female dog with short hair in Deep River. I did not want to raise pups so I built a confined space outside of the house using chicken wire. I placed her in this to keep the male dogs away from her. However the wire was not strong enough. The male dogs chewed through the wire and got in anyway. So in the course of time a litter of pups arrived. When they were old enough I had no difficulty giving them away to town children. Soon afterwards the dog got sick and was put to sleep.

Many residents of Deep River went into hiking sports in the summer and skiing in the winter, but my interests centered around the river. I bought a sponson canoe which was the safest kind I could get. It had tightly enclosed spaces along the sides stuffed with buoyant material. This canoe, if overturned or filled with water, would continue to float and hold people up who were clinging to it. I also bought a motor boat with an outboard motor. With this boat we were able to explore much of the Ottawa River and go on picnics across the river in Quebec.

One time I had some important men from England in my home and proposed to take them on a short cruise on the river. They were agreeable but when I had them seated in the boat I couldn't get the outboard motor started so we had to give it up.

I kept the motor boat moored to a concrete block which was about four feet under water in the bay. It was reached by canoe which I kept on shore. One time when the water had risen considerably in the river, I paddled out to the motor boat to unhitch it, as usual. I dropped into the water as usual, and to my surprise went down into the water over my head without my feet even touching bottom. Needless to say I scrambled out of there, climbed back into the canoe and came back to shore.

There were a lot of sailing enthusiasts in Deep River and every Saturday or Sunday they had a sailing race in the summers. At the outset I had no sailboat but I had a small triangular sail set up in the prow of my canoe and joined in the sailing. I operated my canoe sailboat by myself and steered with my paddle. Of course, I could not keep up with the others and always came in last, but it was enjoyable.

One time, when I was sailing in my canoe about a half mile out from the Deep River dock, I was caught in a squall. It came up suddenly but it blew me towards my landing place. So I came sailing in at terrific speed, but managed to control the boat and arrived safely.

Later, when Mr. Desbarats, top man of Defence Industries and my original boss, left, I bought his sailboat and used that until I left Deep River. The largest sailboat was owned by Mr. Hatfield, one of my neighbors. It was a catamaran with two hulls

125


and a huge sail. It didn't always win the races but probably was the safest sailboat in the fleet.

*   *   *   *   *

As the population in Deep River began to grow, so an interest in religious responsibilities began to grow. The needs of Roman Catholics were served right from the beginning because there was a well-established Roman Catholic church situated on the highway just outside of the townsite, which was functioning long before Deep River was thought of.

Among Protestants, the Anglican Church was the first to begin holding regular services in Deep River. This was perhaps natural because so many of the scientists were from England. When I arrived in Deep River, there was no church building, but the Anglicans were holding services in one of the available construction buildings.

By the time I was settled in my home on the riverbank there were enough children living in the town to warrant beginning a Sunday School. This was initiated by Anglican women cooperating with women of other protestant faiths. Originally these Sunday School classes were held in private homes beginning with my home, and later in temporary buildings, and still later in the Public School, when it was built.

For some time I acted as superintendent of the Sunday School until some other man was found to carry on. It is interesting that during all of the time that I lived at Deep River, the Sunday School was functioning as a cooperative protestant effort with all denominations working together, even the Anglicans.

Early in the life of Deep River, Protestants other than the Anglicans began to plan establishment of churches of their own. It seemed to several of us that if each denomination got a foothold in this new community that it would lead to much religious rivalry, and no denomination would ever become very strong. So Mr. A. S. Walbridge and I began discussing the possibility of getting all the protestant factions together and establishing a community church which would emphasize unity rather than rivalry. I personally contacted the ministers of all the protestant denominations functioning in Pembroke, the only nearby community of significant size. Among them were Methodists in the United Church of Canada, Presbyterians, Baptists, two Lutheran churches and some others.

Anyway, the proposal caught on and the Deep River Community Church was established. The established Anglican Church was invited to join but couldn't because their ministers had to be ordained in a special way (called the Apostolic Succession). However, the Anglicans agreed to cooperated in any way they could.

The Community Church was organized, hired a minister and became a functioning church unit. Services were first held in the Public School and later in one of the townsite's recreational buildings. When I left Deep River in late December, 1949, the Community Church was still functioning well in ministering to the religious life of the town.

After I left Deep River, a church was built in which all protestant religious services and activities were held. In October, 1952, while I was working for the State of Minnesota, I received an invitation to attend the dedication of the new church in Deep River, signed by three officers of the Anglican Church and two officers of the Community Church. Unfortunately, I was not able to go, but have in my files a clipping of an article from the United Church Observer which reports on the dedication

126


under the title, "NEW CHURCH IS OPENED IN ATOMIC ENERGY CENTER," stating "It Meets Need of All Protestants in Area." The following are quotations from that report:

"Sunday, October 19, 1952 at 11:15 a.m. a joint Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication was participated in by the congregations of Deep River Community Church and St. Barnabas Anglican Church when the new and beautiful Deep River Church was set apart for the worship of Almighty God...The Very Rev. J. W. Woodside, D.P. of Ottawa, a prominent leader in the inter-denominational relationships in our time, gave the inspiring message for the occasion and dedicated the Church."

"The Church is the finest finished, and the most beautiful building in the Deep River Townsite, and very suitable for the worship of the two congregations...The main auditorium will seat 310."

"The Sunday School is for Protestants and now numbers 350 on the roll, with 35 teachers and officers...and more than 20 men are on duty each Sunday, in this important service for the growing youth."

"The high purpose of both congregations and their leaders is to promote the cause of Jesus Christ and His spirit of love and good will in this area."

It is my understanding from friends that this church is still functioning in the same manner in this year of 1982, which is thirty years after its dedication.

*   *   *   *   *

Sometime in the fall of 1949, my boss, Dr. David Keys, called me into his office and in a kindly manner suggested that I begin looking for another job. I am sure that if I were not handling my responsibilities well and correctly he would have discussed such things frankly with me, because he was formerly head of the Physics Department in one of Montreal's universities and familiar with administration. If he had reasons other than interest in my future, he did not reveal them to me.

For my part, in looking into my status at the time, I realized that the pioneer work which I had to do originally was already accomplished and there was not much challenge remaining ahead of me.

The thought of moving to another place, or even to another country, did not greatly disturb me because I was confident that, as had happened two or three times before, I would be guided into something better for me again, where I could be helpful to other people. As I look back now I see that this is exactly what did happen.

I first of all looked into positions available in various parts of Canada but nothing worthwhile turned up.

Somehow I learned that the State of Minnesota in the United States was looking for a doctor to take charge of the industrial health program for the Minnesota Department of Health. I further learned that the position had been open for four years, because they had been unable to find a doctor with the right kind of know-how. I wrote to the Minnesota Department of Health to inquire about the job and received a reply from Dr. Chesney asking me to come to see him for an interview. I went by train to Minneapolis and talked to Dr. Chesney, head of the State Health Department

127


and others on his staff. I found the job to be attractive to me, and the men I talked to seemed to be interested in me. However, Dr. Chesney wanted the opinion of another physician who was not connected with the Department of Health, so he sent me to see a prominent doctor in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I did so, but I don't remember the Mayo physician's name. Anyway, by the time I got back to Dr. Chesney, he had received the doctor's message by telephone, which was: "Hire him."

After some searching I found a suitable and affordable house at 1804 Humboldt Ave. So. in Minneapolis which carried a low interest mortgage that I took over. When I was ready to make a down payment to clinch the bargain, I found that Canada's post-war restrictions on the export of Canadian funds would not let me use enough of my own money in a Canadian bank to make a large enough earnest money payment.

The dilemma for me was not lack of money, but how to get it out and make my payment in United States currency. I was able to solve that in a rather strange way. The United States representative to the Atomic Energy Project was a friend of mine, and he lived on the same street as I did in Deep River, Ontario. Of course, he had private funds in a United States bank and always had to have Canadian money to pay his usual living expenses in Deep River. He agreeably exchanged his check to me for the full amount I needed in earnest money for my check to him in equivalent Canadian money drawn on my bank in Deep River. Several months later, after I was established and living in Minneapolis, all of my money held in the Canadian bank was released to me. After I had all of my bank funds transferred to an American bank in Minneapolis, I then paid off everything I owed on the house and got clear title of ownership.

Upon returning to Deep River, I submitted my resignation to Dr. Keys, releasing me from the responsibilities of Chief of Medical Services, Atomic Energy Project, to be effective on the last day of December, 1949. Because I had not used all of the sick leave and all of the vacation leave I was entitled to when I left the Atomic Energy Project at Chalk River, the National Research Council of Canada continued to pay me my salary for about six weeks after I left there.

In preparation for the move I sold my house, sailboat and my outboard motor, but retained my canoe to use on one of the lakes in Minneapolis. In the last days of December, 1949, I was on my way to Minnesota with my family* and household goods. When I crossed the border at Sault Ste. Marie on December 30th, 1 became an immigrant in a foreign country, having left the land of my birth, the Dominion of Canada. Of course, it was not a difficult transition because the language of both countries was the same. Furthermore my great-great grandfather, Dr. Amos Park, had been a citizen of the U.S.A. before he moved to Ontario, Canada and established himself there about 170 years earlier.

I found myself committed to a new job in the United States, carrying a substantial salary, with the Minnesota Department of Health undertaking to pay all my moving expenses from Deep River, Ontario, Canada to Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. This is where a new career opened up for me which I had never before dreamed of.



* Note: At this time the family included Wilford, his second wife Catherine, their three children Warren, James and Robert, and two children from his first marriage, Douglas and Betty. Douglas remained in Ontario for a few more months, until he graduated from high school in North Bay, where he had been living while in school.

Volume two of the autobiography, describing the author's public health career in the United States, is 358 double spaced pages in length. The full volume is available only in printed form, but it concludes with two sections of interest to family members, "Some Additions of a Personal Nature" on p. 342 and "ADDENDUM - Some Reminiscences" on p. 353, which are available via the next link on the Park Family Autobiographies page. To obtain a full copy of Vol. 2 contact Warren Park at 3339 15th Ave. So., Minneapolis, Minnesota 55407.

128