Unlike yesterday which was a day we looked forward to, today was ... not so much. It takes almost seven hours behind the wheel to travel from St. Anthony to Grand Falls-Windsor; it takes just as long if you are not behind the wheel. When we planned our trip, we built in a long day of driving since we would already have seen the sights on the Viking Trail on our travels to the northern tip of the peninsula. There is only one highway up and back down.
As we checked out of the Grenfell Hotel and Suites this morning, the desk clerk, Marilyn, showed us a picture of an iceberg she took from her yard yesterday. She lives at a village called St. Lunaire where a sizeable iceberg has been grounded in the harbour for several days! If we had only known.... I asked her if she would email me the photo, which she agreed to do. If the email arrives before we get home, I'll post it. The caption will be "The Iceberg We Almost Saw." She, like virtually everyone else we have had the good fortune to meet in Newfoundland, is very chatty--in the best possible way. When she learned that we were from Saskatchewan, she told us about her experience as a 17 year old exchange student who visited Saskatchewan. She stayed with a farm family near Moose Jaw, an experience she still enthuses about. The daughter of the Saskatchewan host family visited Marilyn in St. Anthony later in the summer. It really is a shame that the student exchange program has been discontinued. I am sure there are hundreds and hundreds of people in this country who have a better appreciation of the Canadian Character because of that opportunity. It was a relatively cheap way to promote Canadian unity, as opposed to spending countless millions of dollars encouraging Quebecers to vote no on a referendum. Certainly the program is a better way to spend taxpayers' dollars than allowing senators to pad expense accounts.
On a whim, we pulled off the highway at Daniel's Cove just north of Gros Morne Park to visit the heritage home of Myra Bennett. Not nearly so well known nor as celebrated at Wilfred Grenfell, this remarkable woman and nurse from England was the only medical aid for over 300 km of rugged coastline. Arriving in the Spring of 1929 as a volunteer nurse, she set broken limbs, sutured wounds, delivered 750 babies, extracted 5000 decayed teeth and performed surgery on her kitchen table for over 50 years. She had previously worked as a nurse in Britain during WWI, so she had trauma experience. Paid $75 a month, she travelled to outposts by boat (there were no roads until 1957), dog team or horse-drawn sleigh, attending to the needs of the sick who became her people. She married a merchant who built what is now called the Nurse Bennett Heritage House in 1922. It is a comfortable middle class house, except for the medical clinic in the kitchen, the convalesce bedroom upstairs, a medicine chest in the hallway and a host of medical instruments. She retired when she was 63 and lived to be 100. Her achievements earned her many accolades, including the Order of Canada, an Honorary Degree from Memorial University and medals from both George VI and Elizabeth II. The young woman who showed us around the house proved to be very well informed and did an excellent job telling us about an astonishing woman we had not previously heard about. In particular she told the story of a woodsman whose leg was almost severed in an accident. Three months pregnant, Nurse Bennett took a team of horses with her husband Angus four miles into the woods and saved the man's life. She used snow to freeze the wound before she sutured the leg wound. She and her husband transported the man to their house and called for the doctor from Bonne Bay. The doctor was reluctant to do so, so she and her husband took the injured man by sleigh to Bonne Bay through snow that was sometimes as high as the horse's haunches. The journey took three days. On their arrival, the doctor examined the patient and declared there was nothing further he could do. The wound had been treated exactly according to the textbook and there was no infection. They don't make many women like Myra Bennett anymore.
We arrived at our B&B, the Carriage House B&B, about 4:00 o'clock. It is in a quite new house which is a miles from downtown. It lacks the charm of the older B&B we've stayed at, but it is comfortable after a long day's drive. And the air conditioning works. The daytime high in Grand Falls-Windsor was 32 degrees. Several new temperature records across the province were set today.
As well, the B&B is only a couple of minutes from Paul and Brittany Rollett's home where we have been invited for dinner. Brittany is the daughter of friends from Outlook, Gerry and Gail Gross. Brittany and Paul are both optometrists who work in Grand Falls-Windsor. We enjoyed a lovely meal and an evening of conversation, comparing impressions of Newfoundland and listening to stories from their recent honeymoon in France, Holland and Great Britain, especially their experiences in Scotland.
Very few pictures today -- spent the day driving.
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| Nurse Bennett Heritage House in Daniel's Harbour |
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| Brittany and Paul |
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