ODDS’N’SODS — Is there a doctor in the bush?

Medical services were well-planned during the gold rush to Ontario’s Red Lake camp in 1926. There were a doctor and two nurses, who operated out of a small tent hospital in town, as well as two Red Cross nurses, who made clinical use of an empty railroad dining car at Hudson Station, 135 miles to the south. In addition, two doctors were on hand at nearby Sioux Lookout.

Lawrence Carr, an Ontario Provincial Policeman based in Red Lake, wrote to the Red Cross Society in Toronto suggesting that it set up a first-aid post at each end of the route. This was accomplished forthwith.

By this time, Domes Mines had optioned the Howey Gold discovery in Red Lake, and had a crew of men working there.

One of the first casualties at the Howie operation was prospector Jack Campbell, who had arrived in Red Lake from Massey to stake a large group of claims. One day, he visited Hudson Station via dog sled to buy supplies, and, along the way, one of the dogs bit him severely on both hands.

Campbell was treated and had his hands bandaged at the Red Cross car in Hudson. It was not long before he recovered from his injuries. The group of mining claims he staked in Red Lake became incorporated as Red Lake Gold Shore Mines, later to be merged with Hasaga Gold Mines. The operation produced more than $8 million in gold over a 14-year mine life.

The only other serious accident took place when pilot Howard Watt and passenger John Hill took off from Hudson in a J.V. Elliot Ltd. Air Service Curtiss Canuck Aircraft, only to encounter heavy snowfall. The pilot attempted to land slowly on the frozen lake, but the impact proved too great, causing the landing gear to collapse and the top and bottom wings to be sheared off.

Watt received a few abrasions, but Hill suffered a broken arm and bruised ribs, as well as cuts and abrasions. A prospector, en route to Hudson with his dog team, witnessed the accident and drove both injured men to the Red Cross car at Hudson, where the nurses dressed their wounds and determined that Hill required surgery. Whereupon they telegraphed Dr. Bell in Sioux Lookout, who sent down a CNR switching engine and caboose to retrieve the patients and bring them to the hospital in that town. The operation proved successful.

On another occasion, surveyor C.V. Gallagher and prospector J.B. St. Paul were returning to Red Lake when they stumbled upon another prospector, lying on the trail and bleeding from the mouth. They promptly loaded him onto their sled and took him to Constable Carr, who administered first-aid by crushing up some ice from the water pail in his tent and making the patient swallow it. This stopped the bleeding, a condition that, Carr later learned, had been caused by a steady diet of desiccated potato pellets.

The patient was flown out to Hudson by Carr’s captain, H.A. Oaks, who, in addition to being the chief pilot of Patricia Airways & Exploration, was a First World War flying ace and graduate mining engineer. He later became manager of Western Canada Airways and, still later, chief pilot of Northern Aerial Mineral Explorations.

Alma Finnie and Agatha Gamble were the two nurses stationed in Red Lake. The former wrote:

“We had few serious injuries in Red Lake. One patient had to be sent out by boat due to a severe case of arthritis and showed no improvement after two weeks in our hospital tent. We were recalled to the Dryden Red Cross Hospital in September, 1926, and then sent back to Toronto for re-assignment to other Red Cross hospitals.”

By that time, the gold rush to Red Lake was over, and the Howey Gold mine had its own doctor. He set up a small cottage hospital, and virtually every gold mine that followed did the same.

— Donald Parrott, an occasional contributor, is a retired operating engineer living in Thunder Bay, Ont.