When the war came, the brave old soul, stirred by patriotism, paid his own passage and expenses on the mail boat to St. Johns, and offered to volunteer for service.  Of course he was too old and was rejected because of his age.

Uncle Tom, his patriotism not in the least dampened, returned to his Labrador home and divided all the fur of his winter’s hunt into two equal piles.  To one pile he added a ten dollar bill, and that pile, with the ten dollars added, he shipped at once to the “Patriotic Fund” in St. Johns.  He had offered himself, and they would not take him, and this was all he could do to help win the war, and he did it freely and wistfully, out of his noble, generous patriotic soul.

“What is the trouble, Uncle Tom?” asked Grenfell, when Uncle Tom had to some extent regained his composure, and the old man told his story.

He was in hard luck.  Late the previous fall (1920) or early in the winter he had met with a severe accident that had resulted in several broken ribs.  Navigation had closed, and he was cut off from all surgical assistance, and his broken ribs had never had attention and had not healed.  He could scarcely draw a breath without pain, or even rest without pain at night, and he could not go to his trapping path.

He depended upon his winter’s hunt mainly for support, and with no fur to sell he was, for the first time in his life, compelled to contract a debt.  Then, suddenly, the trader with whom he dealt discontinued giving credit.  Uncle Tom was stranded high and dry, and when the fishing season came he had no outfit or means of purchasing one, and could not go fishing.

Besides his wife there were six children in Uncle Tom’s family, though none of them was his own or related to him.  When the “flu” came to the coast in 1918, and one out of every five of the people around Turnavik Islands died, several little ones were left homeless and orphans.  The generous hearts of Uncle Tom and his wife opened to them and they took these six children into their home as their own.  And so it happened that Uncle Tom had, and still has, a large family depending upon him.

“As we neared the cottage,” said Doctor Grenfell, “his good wife, beaming from head to foot as usual, came out to greet us.  Optimist to the last ditch, she knew that somehow provision would be made.  She, too, had had her troubles, for twice she had been operated on at Indian Harbor for cancer.”

Uncle Tom must have suffered severely during all those months that he had lived with his broken ribs uncared for.  Now Dr. Grenfell, without loss of time, strapped them up good and tight.  Mrs. Grenfell supplied the six youngsters with a fine outfit of good warm clothes, and when Dr. Grenfell sailed out of Kaipokok Bay Uncle Tom and Mrs. Tom had no further cause for worry concerning the source from which provisions would come for themselves and the six orphans they had adopted.

These are but a few incidents in the life of the people to whom Dr. Grenfell is devoting his skill and his sympathy year in and year out.  I could relate enough of them to fill a dozen volumes like this, but space is limited.