Long*Serving International Grenfell Association Physicians Share $50 000 Royal Bank Award
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Long*serving International Grenfell Association physicians share $50 000 Royal Bank award SHEILA GUSHUE Two physicians, who have devoted medicine and a past president of lauded for their work. In 1976, Dr. their lives to service in northern CMA; Miss Mary Pack, pioneer or- Paddon received an honorary doctor- Newfoundland and Labrador, are the ganizer of the Canadian Arthritis and ate of science degree from Trinity 1977 corecipients of the prestigious Rheumatism Society; Paul-Emile Car. College, Connecticut, where he ob- Royal Bank award. dinal Leger, prince of the church tained his BSc many years ago. Dr. Dr. W.A. (Tony) Paddon, 62, and turned simple priest; and agricultural Thomas holds an honorary doctorate Dr. Gordon Thomas, 57, share the scientists Dr. Ruth Downey and Dr. in civil law, conferred in 1969 by $50 000 award, which is presented Baldur Stefansson, who in 1975 were Nova Scotia's Acadia University, and annually to a Canadian citizen or the first corecipients. in 1970 became an officer of the resident "whose outstanding achieve- This year's winners, chosen from a Order of Canada. ment is of such importance that it is field of 78, were selected unanimous- The lives of the two doctors paral- contributing to human welfare and ly by a committee whose members leled and yet in many ways were dif- the common good." had no connection with the Royal ferent, reflecting the individual ap- A gala award dinner at Memorial Bank. It also marks the first time the proach to life and work which each University in St. John's, Nfld., July 6, award has gone to someone east of had exhibited as they carried on the paid tribute to the work of the two Montreal. work of Sir Wilfred GrenfelL doctors, who have a combined 63 Grenfell was committed to uplift- years with the International Grenfell W. Earle McLaughlin, chairman and ing the medical, spiritual and eco- Association (IGA), a mission-oriented chief executive officer of the Royal nomic lives of the people of the three organization founded in 1912 by Dr. Bank of Canada, referred to the rare cultures living in northern Newfound- Wilfred Grenfell (later Sir Wilfred dedication exhibited by Drs. Paddon land and Labrador - the Indian and Grenfell). and Thomas as being ----- the some- Inuit natives and the white settlers The Royal Bank award was estab- times difficult decision for a man or - since first visiting the region in lished in Centennial Year, and its 11 woman to persevere in the face of 1892. recipients to date read like a who's. many obstacles, often to forego re- CMAJ conducted special interviews who of Canadian greats: the late wards that might otherwise come with Drs. Paddon and Thomas in an Dr. Wilder Penfield was the first their way, and not to falter or swerve attempt to dIscover the motivations, recipient, and others have included from the high goals they have set obstacles, rewards, or lack of them - Dr. Gustave Gingras, internationally for themselves." the raison d'.tre In their lives and known authority on rehabilitative Both doctors have been previously careers. For Tony Paddon, it came naturally on the Maraval, a 20 m diesel motor- considered to be the death knell." to be a doctor "on the Labrador" (as sailer, plying the fiord-indented coast- Bad case-selection of terminally ill local parlance has it). As the eldest of line runhing from Mary's Harbour to patients who had been sent south by four sons of the region's beloved pio- Hebron. visiting medics to hospitals where they neering physician, Dr. Harry L. Pad- "This training was to prove invalu- died alone, in many cases not able to don, the coast's first "real" doctor, able," Dr. Paddon said. "I was ex- communicate with those around them, Tony had always tacitly understood pected to do a little bit of everything, had contributed to the widely held be- that following in his father's footsteps including extracting teeth. This latter lief about the evils of medicine and was precisely what was wanted for him, experience my father considered ex- hospitals. and of him. However, there was never cellent public health work, since a Dr. Paddon noted that, at last count, any pressure to conform and a decision painful tooth brought you the patient, he had pulled somewhere in the vici- taken in undergraduate days to become albeit a reluctant one. However, that nity of 15 000 teeth. In the early days a bacteriologist was greeted with patient soon became a relieved ally, he had become "very handy" at doing equanimity. amenable to further medical advice or a dozen patients at a time. He learned As a medical student in the 1930s, treatment, even hospitalization, which to work fast, pulverizing the procaine the young Tony served with his father then was greatly feared; in fact, it was (Novocain) tablets with the plunger of CMA JOURNAL/AUGUST 20, 1977/VOL. 117 389 a 20 ml syringe, drawing up boiling fishermen and their families who Dr. Tony Paddon's medical practice water from a kettle through boiled swarmed to the Labrador each summer in the North began just after World needles, then anesthetizing and extract- for the abundant cod. War II - "the Hitler unpleasantness" ing in quick succession before the "Showing great good taste and sense he calls it, with characteristic under- "charge" wore off, doing the uppers my father married the competent, ad- statement. first, then the mandibles. venturesome and pretty Canadian, Following graduation from New "Since this procedure could be done Mina Gilchrist, who had come out to York State Medical College in 1940 almost anywhere - in a boat, a house, Labrador as Indian Harbour's head and a 2-year residency in surgery in even in a snow igloo or by a camp- nurse, intending to stay 1 year. He New York City, he joined the Royal fire - dental care to Indian, Inuit and changed her mind." Tony Paddon Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve settler alike frequently was the doctor's chuckled appreciatively, no doubt re- (RCNVR). initial calling card," he commented. lishing the thought that he himself did He arrived back in St. Anthony in the same thing years later when the the fall of 1945, coming to the Grenfell lovely and competent volunteer nurse, mission headquarters at the eastern tip In father's footsteps Sheila Fortescue, arrived from England of Newfoundland's Great Northern Dr. Paddon insists that only against in 1950 at his newly built hospital in Peninsula. From here he was appointed the backdrop of his father's life and North West River, appropriately named to Cartwright and North West River work can his own work be fully com- The Paddon Memorial Hospital. (NWR). prehended. The elder Dr. Paddon had The Paddons formed a medical team In the eight-bed hospital which his arrived in Labrador from England in for which their name became legion father had built there, his mother had 1912. Born in Sussex, schooled at Rep- the length and breadth of Labrador. A valiantly struggled on after her hus- ton and Oxford, with a medical degree monument to them both, built by the band's sudden death, on Christmas Eve from London's St. Thomas's Hospital people of Labrador,- stands in North 1939, during a visit to New York. She and experience in surgery and medicine West River near the site of the hospital had succeeded in providing manage- as house officer at a Midlands hospital, he built, near the first school they ment, had acted as head nurse and had he was well prepared medically to care started in 1925, near the gardens they'd maintained most of the previous work for the people living in the hamlets and cultivated and the children's home and except surgery. For all this she was villages scattered within the 320 km orphanage. to be later made an officer of the Order of the British Empire, an honour radius of Mud Lake, located at the Without antibiotics mouth of the Hamilton (now Churchill) she "richly deserved", her son declared River. "Working without antibiotics, with- in his own Royal Bank award accept- However, it was a stint of three sum- out any of the paraphernalia now con- ance speech. mer vacations working as a volunteer sidered essential in setting up a first- Virtually Dr. Paddon's first experi- with the Royal Mission to Deep Sea aid station, let alone a hospital or clin- ence during the winter of 1947 was to Fishers, ministering to the men who ic, my father nevertheless managed cement forever his relationship with his fished the North Sea, that was to round successfully many who otherwise would homeland, the quiet telling of which, out his training for what was to be- have died from infections and wounds; in his soft-spoken voice, is for the come his life work. he did appendectomies, tonsilectomies listener a moving experience. It was in those ships that he learned and cesarean sections, with my mother, He, his driver and the dog team to become a first-class sailor; even an excellent practical anesthesist, giving were returning to NWR after a 1920 more important, he learned first-hand the open drop ether (his anesthetic of kin, 6-week visitation to the isolated of the deprivations, the hardships and choice) until Virothen came on the livyers. Weather at -400C, ice rough the physical pain and suffering of or- scene - later it was viewed as cardio- as sandpaper and blinding, drifting dinary working men. It was here also toxic, but literally thousands were given snow slowed their progress, until fi- that he developed the genuine, easy- in his 30 years with no serious com- nally, in a howling nor'easter, the going camaraderie which later gave him plications.