Acknowledgment:
Dr. Gordon W Thomas began his work at the Grenfell Mission at St. Anthony in 1946. The Grenfell Mission was a resolute band of doctors and nurses working to provide medical and social services to the isolated people of northern Newfoundland and Labrador in the spirit of the Mission’s founder, medical missionary Sir Wilfred Grenfell.
Following World War II, Gordon W Thomas and his wife, Patricia, began 33 years’ service to the people of northern Newfoundland and Labrador through the Grenfell Mission. Dr. Thomas is an officer in the Order of Canada and holds three honorary degrees from Acadia, Dalhousie, and Memorial Universities.
The detail provided in this article (Chapter 9 Cold War Years) has been extracted from a book called "From Sled to Satellite – My Years With the Grenfell Mission" by Gordon W Thomas, MD, former Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland. The book was printed in 1987 and was published by Irwin Publishing Inc. ISBN 0-7725-1660-X
I have taken the liberty of including dates in brackets throughout the article, in an attempt to provide the reader with an understanding of when things occurred.
Cold War Years
Gordon W. Thomas
The guns hard hardly cooled when the largest allies of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, turned from the defeated Axis and stood like two gunfighters eyeing each other coldly across the top of the globe. Canada lay between. The Cold War that resulted caused upheaval in the lives of people in St. Anthony and Labrador, as it did across much of the Arctic. The fear of Soviet bombers led to the construction of an early warning radar system – the DEW Line in the Arctic and the Pinetree Line further south – which represented the first major intrusion of the industrialized world into northern society. Although this radar and communications network was a joint effort of Canada and the United States, nearly all the men and money we saw were American.
The first hint that something was brewing came when three American PBY flying boats, familiar to many Canadians as Cansos, landed in St. Anthony harbour in the early fall of 1949. A number of surveyors and other men came ashore and tramped mysteriously all over town and up the hills behind the hospital. A few hours later they flew off again, leaving behind a wealth of rumours about some new type of military base.
This left us with mingled feelings of excitement and worry. A new base would undoubtedly generate work, but what would it do to the harmony of a quiet little fishing town near the farthest tip of Newfoundland. Apart from the summer fishery, the Grenfell Mission was now the main employer in town, with a local staff that had grown to about fifty by this time. Despite this benevolent outside presence, St. Anthony was still an outport, a little more sophisticated than most, but only a little. Life was simple and revolved around the various churches. There were no roads. Traffic from the east side of the harbour to the west side, dominated by the mission buildings, was by motorboat in summer and by foot or dogsled in winter. The community had changed little since Grenfell’s day.
Nothing much happened that winter (1949), apart from a brisk trade in rumours. But in spring (1950), flying boats landed again on the harbour and a small ship brought a crew of surveyors and their helpers. They surveyed a site on a high hill west of St. Anthony for the radar installation, a site near the harbour mouth for a new wharf, the route for an access road between the two, and the site for a construction camp.
The local inn could not hold all of the newcomers, so the engineer in charge of the project stayed with Pat and me for several weeks. He was full of information and gave me one piece of what proved to be good advice; we should let no military construction crew use any of the mission facilities without a written consent.
The next spring (1951) a number of ships anchored off St. Anthony and the neighbouring village, St. Anthony Bight. Some paused briefly and sailed to the north, while others waited to unload thousands of tons of building materials, construction equipment, and supplies. The American military commander in charge of the project came ashore to request permission to use our wharf until their own was built. The commander also wanted accommodation for the construction crew until a camp was in place. He had no authority to sign agreements, but he assured us we would be compensated. Dr. Curtis informed him we would need a signed agreement first.
Anxious to get started, the commander made other arrangements with local property owners, including the United Church, and began to discharge freight by means of landing craft. This was slow. The commander grew more impatient as the unloading dragged on and the cost of tying up those ships kept rising. Messages went back and forth to Washington, but it was nearly a month before the necessary agreement was signed. Through it all Dr. Curtis remained polite but firm. When a contract for compensation was finally signed, it included a promise to rebuild our wharf, which would be badly damaged by heavy use. We also got compensation for the use of other facilities, including the summer staff residences, which had to be winterized to accommodate senior construction personnel. Those in town who had not insisted on contracts never did get any compensation, despite many later protests to government.
Over the next two and a half years (spring 1951 to fall 1953), St. Anthony and most of its neighbouring communities enjoyed full employment. Wages were high and the future looked good. Once the site was complete (fall 1953) about 250 American military personnel would be posted there, generating some continued civilian jobs. More construction work was available in a number of intermediate sites that formed a chain of communications from Frobisher Nay in the Arctic down along the Labrador coast to St. Anthony and on from there to NORAD headquarters in the United States.
The sudden demand for civilian workers posed a temptation for our local employees and a real problem for us. We could not match the wages paid in construction or in service jobs on the base. We would remain as a major employer when the construction boom had passed, but no one knew how long the bases themselves would remain active. Uncertainty and divided loyalties created some resentment in the community.
The site was largely finished by 1953 and staffed by US Air Force personnel in the fall of that year. They remained for more than ten years (the base eventually closed in 1968), until the Pine Tree Line and many of the DEW Line sites were rendered obsolete by developments in long-range surveillance and the fear of bomber attack was replaced by the fear of missiles. This short period in the history of St. Anthony completely reshaped the life in our community.
First, hard liquor was introduced almost overnight to a town that had always been "dry". Some people did get liquor on the mailboat from St. John’s and some made homebrew or moonshine, but neither spirit had much influence on the peace of the village. Now, sudden access to cheap drinks at clubs on the base was a new temptation for which individuals, families, and churches were not prepared. Second, Air Force personnel had a one year tour of duty and were not allowed to bring their wives and families.
Cheap liquor and a sudden influx of lonely men had predictable results. Many of the girls of St. Anthony eagerly accepted the friendship of the Americans, to the annoyance and frustration of young local men. About the only good thing that can be said of this was that it infused much new blood into the community. Genetically, if not morally, the area got quite a boost.
We were on sabbatical leave in Montreal the first year (1953-1954) the USAF radar base was in full operation at St. Anthony. When we came back from leave there were many subtle changes as a result of their presence. Some of the officers were spending s good deal of their time around the hospital with the nurses and other personnel with the aides and maids. It was a summer (1954) with a great deal of rain or dense fog.
The base was serviced from Goose Bay by a flying boat, an SA 16. It was having difficulty maintaining any schedule because of continuous fog. One flying boat had been held in St. Anthony for several days because of weather.
Gerald Doyle, a prominent merchant from St. John’s was travelling around the coast in his ketch the Miss Newfoundland and was holding in St. Anthony as well. He was up to our house for dinner and just after dinner while having coffee we heard the sound of a large aircraft, obviously the flying boat, start its engines and appear to take off down the harbour. The fog was so thick we could scarcely believe our ears. Suddenly the engines stopped and we were relaxed somewhat, thinking he had aborted the take-off.
A few minutes later our telephone rang and the hospital informed me that there was an air crash and requested that I go around the harbour to "old man’s neck". This is a peninsula of land on the east side of St. Anthony harbour between the harbour and St. Anthony Bight. A number of people lived along this shore.
I asked them to send an ambulance and told them that I would proceed around the harbour road in my jeep. The fog was thick and visibility so poor we had to crawl along in low gear. When I came around to the other side I was stopped by a crowd on the road. Gradually through the fog we saw bits and pieces of aircraft scattered over the road. There was a heavy smell of aircraft fuel, which had been deposited from ruptured fuel tanks but luckily had not caught fire, evidently because the air was so saturated with moisture and the ground was soaked.
The pilot for some reason had taken off across the harbour instead of down the length of it and had simply flown into the hill and through a wooden house along the way. The house slowed him down as he crashed; although there were ten men aboard the aircraft, only one was injured and not seriously. Apparently they had left because they were anxious to get back to Goose Bay for a party.
The house was demolished. The excited crowd told me they thought there was a woman inside. Just that morning I had discharged a young woman on whom I had removed a large ovarian cyst a few days before. She was doing well and insisted on going home although I had wanted to keep her for a few days longer in the hospital.
Taking a flashlight I made my way into the demolished kitchen. In one corner hanging from a rafter was an oil lamp swinging to and fro. In the centre of the room I made out the outline of a rocking chair with something on it. To my horror it was the torso of my patient slumped in the chair. Her head had been neatly severed – obviously by the propeller or a piece of metal from the aircraft. Looking around I finally spotted the head lying in another corner. I gently took it and placed it on the body which I had placed on the floor. I turned the lantern off. I still wonder why the gas fumes of the aircraft fuel never exploded.
I went outside to direct a stretcher and to tell the distraught husband what had happened. While doing so a lieutenant from the base – the orderly officer in charge that night – rushed up. When he heard what had happened he exclaimed to the husband, "Don’t worry, we will pay you for her". I experienced a feeling of revulsion and disgust that has coloured my view of the military ever since. How are you compensated for the loss of your wife, your home, your lost dreams and aspirations? With money? With a new life? With a new house? With what?
Later I was told that the husband received compensation of $10,000. For a long time after I could see the macabre sight of that oil lantern swinging to and fro in that demolished kitchen.
Every Saturday night the officers’ mess, the non-commissioned officers’ mess, and the private personnel mess were turned into clubs and opened to civilian employees and their friends. A large proportion of civilians in the area, including hospital staff, took advantage of this diversion from isolation and loneliness. As one result, church attendance declined sharply. Moreover, the influence of the military was divisive. Civilian access to some clubs and facilities depended on social status, which provoked new jealousies in a town that had largely been egalitarian before now. This was not helped by a frequent rotation of base commanders, each of whom had a different view on fraternization. The rules changes with each new commander, roughly every two years.
The climax of these tensions came in a drunken argument over girl friends. Several Air Force men knifed three local boys. One, the son of a former mayor, was stabbed several times in the chest. One stab wound punctured a lung and another nicked the muscle of the heart, causing heavy bleeding. Fortunately, a rapid thoractomy allowed us to close his lung wounds and suture the heart wound before he died, but it was close.
This incident was undoubtedly the low point in relations between the town and the base. For my part, though I had been friendly with the base commander, this event put us clearly on opposite sides of the fence. I assumed he would discipline his own personnel or at least allow the RCMP to investigate, but he refused to permit this. He informed me that by agreement with Ottawa the behaviour of his men was a matter for the US Air Force, not civilian authorities, even though clearly a crime was committed against a Canadian civilian. He promised to do his own investigation, but as far as we could tell the matter was totally hushed up. Nothing came of it, except for greater distrust and animosity between the town and the base.
Yet eventually such things were forgotten and the base became an important part of the life of the town. The Americans contributed to the work of the hospital and provided new company and diversion for our staff. Close friendships, even marriages, developed. Some Americans played an important role in the local churches, and many were generous to a fault. At Christmas and on other occasions they showered our orphans and patients with gifts.
Late in the life of the base the town petitioned the Newfoundland Liquor Control Board to establish a liquor store in town. This had happened before, but in the past the churches and Grenfell Mission had joined forces to oppose it. Although I was troubled by the prospect of allowing easier access to liquor, I felt that the citizens of St. Anthony had a right to make their own decisions and a right to the same facilities as other towns in Newfoundland. I was criticized for this, but in my view the time had passed when the Grenfell Mission could impose its moral values on the community.
When the time came for the base to close (18 June 1968), there was a great deal of sadness in the town. Aside from the departing of friends there was concern for the local economy and the awareness that a chapter of the town’s history was ending. St. Anthony had lost its innocence; perhaps it was now better able to face a modern world.
The closing of the base (1968), like its construction, brought a period of frenzied activity. Outport Newfoundlanders are opportunists, adept at turning bits of hardware and machinery to their own use. They can swarm upon a shipwreck like piranha, stripping it very quickly of anything they can use, sell, trade, or put away in a shed for the time it will become handy. The base, when the Americans left (1968) was the biggest shipwreck ever. When it closed, many residents pilfered the site. When officials from the Crown Assets Disposal Corporation arrived many months later, local people bought expensive tractors, vehicles, and building supplies at bargain prices. The town itself received a number of useful buildings simply for the cost of removing them from the site.
The same thing was happening across the north. In the area served by the mission, such installations were closing or would soon close in Cartwright (18 June 1968) and Hopedale (18 June 1968), and with equally abrupt impact on the life of those communities. It was part of a larger complex of social change with tragic results, especially for the Indians and Inuit in Labrador. They had not been able to absorb the impact of access to cheap liquor, the sudden, somewhat artificial affluence of a construction boom, or the contact with single American servicemen and construction workers. Increasing alcoholism caused violence and rapidly destroyed the fibre of what had been proud, noble people. Government spending on welfare and social problems did little, if anything, to change this.