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The Exeter Times-Advocate, 1933-08-24, Page 7THE EXETER TIMEStADVQCATE THURSDAY, AVWST gdth, 1933 “The Little Doctor of White Mud Valley” A Farm Girl’s ‘‘Success” Story By Ethel Chapmam in “The Farmer” The following interesting story- with illustrations appeared in the1 August issue of “The^ Farmer” and1 will be read with considerable inter-1 est by our many readers. The article and the illustrations through the courtesy er.” nights a from the are reproduced of “The Farm- French-Canadian fire-rangers If success means place of easy living salary, this is not a success story. If success is achievement in service, then Dr. Margaret Strang-—a few years ago a farm girl of Hensail, Ontario, now a medical missionary on the fronier of the Peace River country—is having what might de­ cidedly be called a “career.” And she has scope for her talents, all of them. There is no other doc­ tor for forty miles to the north and fifty miles to the south. “What about the she like arriving at a and generous east and west?” we asked, and replied, “I can go as far as I and I have no opposiion.” She and had night school three week for the young people settlers’ homes and the section men and men from the pulp mills and the We had a piano so we had music along with our English and history and geography. The music lessons I had had as a child helped me here, In fact I found, both there and in Peace River, that I .could use every bit of training I got on the farm at home.” 'The more we heard of her work .the more we appreciated this. She has played about every musical in­ strument from a mouth organ to a double bass fiddle, so with even a ilittle material to work with, she seems able to organize an orchestra wherever she goes. People have visited her in her log tell us that you don’t get bread anywhere in Peace than is made at the manse. Dr. Margaret Sprang of it I have had doctor a load of hay or a doz- piece of meat. So the their self-respect tihro' with a few of Swedes excellent do mixed one in need bills paid in en eggs or a people keep these times when some of them do not own a bit of money for months at a time.” who house, better River. And Dr. Strang on her graduation day a few years ago, and hei farm home near Hensail. almost the same freedom in the hopeful future, but it is only three years old, and these three years ol low farm prices have been particu­ larly hard on ^people making a start iSome of them are just taking off theiir first crop this year and when wheat is fifty cents a bushel in Win­ nipeg it is about thirty cents at the Peace River shipping distance. But taxes are light and there’s no mort­ gage on a homestead. And they are a fine type of people in the valley—eighty per cent, Eng­ lish-speaking, coming mostly from the dried out southern prairies and the middle western states ■Ukrainians and a number Danes and Norwegians, Plioneer fjarmers. They farming, not only because they have hills for grazing as well as fertile crop land, but because at such a dis­ tance from trading points they must supply most of their own needs. “We’re not on the gold standard,” said the doctor. ‘We’re on the stan­ dard of moose meat and pork chops and lard pails. The farmers can raise all the food hey need but with the sale for their produce what it has been the last two years, clothing is a problem. And the need would be serious if it were not for our mis­ sionary relief supplies. Last winter I gave out about $1600 worth of supplies over an area of a thousand square miles, and of course we give to anyone in need, whether they come to our church or not. Women’s missionary societies have been par­ ticularly good about sending lay­ ettes, and we need uted three dozen of five months of this “A little wool is district, a Ruthenian woman spins some yarn on a spindle made of two sticks and an ingenious settler has fitted up a spinning wheel on his wife’s sewing machine with a steel nod and some empty spools, but un­ til we can sell our produce for money to buy yarn and cloth, we need spin­ ning wheels and looms and some­ one to teach us lrow to. use them. “In distributing relief supplies, we have quite a job, too, to hunt out Strang came to her at Dixonville in White she superintended the When Dr. headquarters Mud Valley, building of her house, but the sett­ lers did the work and did it cheer­ fully. “A doctor was generally wel­ comed in the district even if some didn't care about a missionary,” she remarked. It is a log house oi three rooms—office, living-noom and bedroom and the women of a church in Edmonton sent up the furnishings complete. For a while she conducted church services in the school house. There was little hope of building a; church for there was no money to buy hard­ ware and such essentials as the people could not make for them­ selves. Then from somewhere came an offer St, Janies church of London, Ontario promised the furnishings — pulpit communion table, baptismal carpet and stove; and the themselves did boys, bachelor into the woods the logs and brought their teams and hauled them out before the snow went, and as soon as the spring work was finish­ ed the building began. It was very much a co,mmunity enterprise. Men from all over the district, Catholics as well as Protestants, came worked together. Women sent visions and the main room of manse was turned into a men’s ing room until the work was finished It is a beautiful little church, the best build log building north of the Peace, the doctor tells us. A Ukrain­ ian Greek Catholic, a skilled axeman and engaged to superintend putting up the walls and the corners are as pretty as a piece of finer than any of this thusiasm and harmony ers. a spirit that seems the life of the church, ing day some Anglicans, good musi­ cians, came some distance to sing at the services. Dr. MacKay, of New St. James, London, was there to preach and to administer baptism and holy communion and to ordain elders for there are a few things woman missionary cannot do. Dr. Strang is also active in commuinty life apart from church. The first year she was in the Dixonville neighborhood she organized weekly “Community Nights” in the school house with dramatics and the usual literary so­ ciety program and an orchestra. She has her 'cello with her, so if there is no piano at a meeting place she has an instrument that can be fairly easy transported. She has started five circulating libraries in the dis­ trict, leaving the books at some sett- of money for these: New thepi. I distrib- them in the first year. produced in the pa- ■the the has matter of religious services. Other churches are so far removed that at the three preaching points of her cir­ cuit— she conducts two services every Sunday, travelling twenty or thirty miles on horseback to reach them—she has Anglicans, Presby­ terians, United Church people, Lu­ therans and some less common var­ ieties of the Protestant denomina­ tion, as well as a few Greek and Ro­ man Catholics. She herself is a mis­ sionary of the Presbyterian church. “But you can’t preach denomination- • alism in a new country like this,” she says. “The people have no •tience with it. They want straight gospel.” So she gives them that and same sound sort of medical advice and care when they need it. But how they must have stared When they first met their missionary Dr. Strang is still young and possibly looks younger than she is—a boyish little figure with a wind blown bob and a tendency to run rather than walk in covering short distances. She does her travellig about her par­ ish on horseback, and in her riding breeches, cap and mackinaw she looks so much like a boy that the story is told that once, when over­ taken by night, she stopped at a settler’s home to ask for shelter, the woman who came to the door said, “My husband is away so I can’t keep you, but there’s a bachelor on the next farm who'll take you in.” We visited Dr. Strang when She was at home on furlough this sum­ mer, back on the farm with the big stone house that her grandfather built and the orchards that are her father’s pride, .a place which she loves like no other spot on earth. In the fall of her third year at uni­ versity, when it was difficult for her father to get help, she got leave from her Saturday morning classes and picked the whole apple crop. And knowing her love for the farm we asked her how she came to study medicine. “In the beginning, Dad was more anxious that I should go to college than I was myself,” she bold us. “And I knew, if I were going at all, I would want a course where I could use my hands as well as my head, so • I decided on medicine. Then, prac­ tising medicine didn’t give me just what I wanted and the frontier ap­ pealed to me. I knew It meant hard work but I was born to that. The summer I graduated I went to North­ ern Ontario to do settlement work with the frontier college. Thera was no school in the settlement, so 1 taught the children in' the afternoon ofwe happen to know that on one her calls at a homestead she found the farmer worried over a horse that had suddenly gone lame. The doctor felt the animal’s hot and quivering shoulder and diagnosed the trouble as lymphangitis. * “How do you know it’s that?” the farmer asked. fiont. people Swede went the rest. Two homesteaders, that winter, selected cut them; farmers and pro­ file din- Right • the doc- tor Heaving her cabin, probably on one of her sick calls. Below: church and “manse”; the manse is the same cabin shown above. she tranis- an old On- district of them, how thankful I am “Oui‘ horses at home used to take it,” she' said and told him what to do for it. In fact she has a section of her dispensary stocked with vet­ erinary supplies, since there is no­ where else in the district where the settlers can get them. In numberless ways fers her experiences on tario farm to the new the Peace. We especially appreciated what she meant when she said: “When I find myself at the end of a week filled with sick calls and Sunday before me with two sermons to preach and no time to prepare for the background of reading that I got at home in the years when there was time tor it.” Part of the Peace River district as everyone knows, is a well estab­ lished farming country, with its own doctors and churches, but of course the missionary did not stay there She went through to White Mud Valley, Peace spring, Itimbs but always adding a rich alluvian deposit to soil already fertile. Every­ one agrees that the settlement has a a. new section Where the overflows its banks every flooding the flats and some- delaying seeding until late people who need help but who won’t ask for it. Our settlers are anxious to pay in whatever way they can for anything that is done for them and we our don’t discourage this. While medical service is free to any- mosiac. But was the en- of the build- to last on in On the open- the the the Ipr’s home where the family will. And she does not hesitate to speak her mind on anything that seems to interfere with the , community wel­ fare. At one centre in the district Saturday night dances had become a' community institution. The doctor had no objection to the people danc­ ing on Saturday night, but if they did stop at midnight, it would be hours later before some of them got home and church services the next morning were likely to be poorly at­ tended. So she sent word that she was coming to say a few words at the next party and a goodly crowd was there to hear her; some of them did not want their Saturday nights interfered with. She arrived about ten o'clock, probably danced a few sets with them for she isn’t averse to dancing—considers the olcT square dances a very healthful sort of re­ creation, in fact. Then the floor manager called for her speech and she told them just what she thought of the practice of dancing on into Sunday morning, or even dancing on Saturday night until they were too tired to coone to church the next day. and how she felt about the influence of this on the children they brought with them. A few of them didn’t like it at all, but the majority were with her and the dances now are held on Fridays. And this she says of the general tone of the country, that in all her experience in Peace River, she has seen no drunkennes nor heard of any roughness of any sort in their social life. On the New Year’s day after the church was built, a young man came to her office, talked a while then laid his liquor permit on the table and said, “I guess I'm through with that. You can take charge ot at.” But it isn’t work that the little doctor is doing. There is the strain of carrying the whole burden or medical emergencies alone—there is a hospital fifty ‘miles south at Peace River Crossing wUere she can take surgical cases if she gets them in time, but in the regular routine oi medical practice she must do every­ thing herself, even to pulling teeth and she has a lot of that to do for there is no dentist in the district to put in fillings. There was the baby who died and had to be buried in an open field because there was no cemetery within fifty miles. And the wandering Indian who went out in a attack of ’flu and had no one re­ sponsible for him so that the doctor had to make all arrangements her­ self and notify the authorities after­ wards. There are long rides through all sorts of weather. On the cold­ est night last winter, a man whose wife was ill came for her with a jumper—a box on the front bob of a sleigh—and they drove twenty-five miles with the thermometer fifty degrees below zero when they start­ ed and sixty below when they arriv­ ed. It is not surprising that her fur­ lough this summer is really sick leave, but he is going back this fall as enthusiastic as ever. It seems pretty worth-while living And while it is the experience of a medical missionary, it is also a farm girl’s story—not lived out on the farm it is true, but very close to it, and entirely in the service of farm people. It is f-oolish to expect every boy or girl who grows up on the farm to stay there. The profession of agriculture requires special talents just as do medicine and theology But it’s a fine thing for country life when young people who like the farm but feel a special urge toward some other work, come back to use their gifts ih the country. Scattered in tiny cabins, Hidden by hills of stone, They who are building the North- * land, Silentry and alone. They shall know want and hunger (Stark In their tragic eyes, Long ere their days are numbered They will be old and wise; Wise in the ways ot courage, Wise in the simple truth— They who have given beauty, Flung to the land their youth— They shall go out unforgotten Leaving for us, as their part Monuments of a labour, Burned oh their .country’s heart. DON’T PUT UP WITH an UGLY SKIN Fruit-a-tives give new beauty **1 was run down and listless. I felt irritable all the time. My face was a sight, due to pimples and rash. I was ashamed to meet people. •Fruit-a-tives' prewed just what I needed. In less than two months my skin cleared up, I got rid of severe constipation and felt full of pep.” Fruit-a-tives ... all drug stores HIT BY LIGHTNING A barn owned by Peter Lamont near Brussels, was destroyed by fire ion .Saturday evening as the result of a bolt of lightning during the severe electrical storm which swept the district late in the evening. PAINFULLY INJURED Edwin McLeod, 15-year-old son of David McLeod, of McGillivray, suf­ fered painful injuries recently when he fell on a fork. ,He was immed­ iately taken to St. Joseph's hospital. London, by Dr. W. G. Racey, where he is still in a somewhat serious condition. PEDIGREE MARKS AND OTHERS Today Canadian pedigree pigs are tattooed on the ears by officers of the Dominion Live Stock Branch and in the olden times Canadian hogs were allso marked, but for a different reason. In 180 0 the num­ berless pigs rooting about the streets of York (Toronto) constituted such a nuisance that on March 3rd of that year, the council at its annual meeting at Abner Miles tavern pass­ ed the folowing resolution; “It is agreed by a majority of the inhabi­ tants of the ttown that no hiogs, of any description, shall be allowed to run at large within tlie limits of the city, from and after 1st May next ensuing, and it is further agreed by a majority that every person or persons shall be liable to pay the sum of five shillings lawful currency for each time, and for each hog found running at large. It is fur­ ther agreed that all persons who keep hogs shall cause them to be marked, which mark will be regis­ tered with the town clerk. Shingles! No. 1 B. C. XXXXX EDGE GRAIN The best grade made at a low price No. 1 Dry Hemlock barn siding DWELLERS ON THE FRONTIER The Church at Dixonville on its opening (lay, Dr, McKay, of London, the doctor and the baby chris­ tened that clay ate central figures in, the front row By Lereine Ballantyne Out on the weary stxetches, Far from the city’s mart, Dwell on the silent frontiers They -of the lonely heart. 10 in. wide, any length Matched 2 in. barn flooring at $30.00 per M A. J. CLATWORTHY Phone No. 12, GRANTON That Burning, Itching, Stinging Skin Trouble, Eczema RIJRDOCK1 Blood 'ButersJ Manufactured for the past 54 years by THE T. MILBURN CO., Limited Toronto, Ont. Those suffering from eczfema know what torture^ is enduted with the burning, itching and stinging that accompanies this disease, especially at night, when the hands are put in water, or when exposed to heat. 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