         |  |
          | |
|
Return to the Wilderness Idyll: Ross River
|
||||||||||||
  |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
A nurse's work - putting her training to work
Like many RCMP wives, Mary played an important role in the small community. Though she lamented, on at least one occasion, that she wasn’t a qualified teacher, she did make her nursing skills readily available to her neighbours.
In a letter of June 27, 1928, she told of a calamity that befell one young native man during some late-night festivities, possibly a stick-gambling session:
"They sing and dance and yell, and get noisier and noisier until about four or five o’clock in the morning. At least they had been doing that until two days ago, when an accident happened. One of the young chaps got so worked up, playing a game, that he had a bad hemorrhage from the lungs. I doctored him up, and he is better now. But it gave them all a scare so they’ve quit the game."
On another occasion in 1928, the steamship Thistle arrived in Ross River with most of its passengers and crew suffering from the flu. Mary was on hand to treat them.
|
|||||||||||||
 |
Settling in, making friends | Mary's big adventure |  |
