Canada
Indian Harbour, NL, Canada
Indian Harbour: A Grenfell Mission Hospital on the Labrador Coast
Doctors and nurses of the Grenfell mission spent their summers at Indian Harbour from 1894, treating the men of the Newfoundland fishing fleets and the families who lived along this part of the Labrador coast. Indian Harbour is a former settlement, so a visit is about the history of the place rather than a call at a town.
Good to know
What Cruise Travelers Should Know About Indian Harbour
Indian Harbour is a former settlement on the Labrador coast. Your ship will tell you whether a landing is planned and how you go ashore.
- The Grenfell mission opened a summer hospital here in 1894, the second of its hospitals on the Labrador coast.
- Its patients were fishermen from the Newfoundland fleets and the people who lived along this coast.
- Labrador keeps Atlantic time, half an hour behind the island of Newfoundland, so check which clock your ship is using if it called in Newfoundland before Labrador.
A Mission Hospital for the Fishing Fleet
Indian Harbour's written history is the history of a hospital. Wilfred Grenfell, a British medical missionary, came to Labrador in 1892, found almost no medical care on the coast, and built a chain of hospitals that included one here from 1894.
- 1892: Grenfell came to Labrador for the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, to report on how the region's fishing families lived. Apart from a Moravian mission and an occasional government doctor on the mail ship, the coast had no medical care.
- 1893 and 1894: The mission opened its first Labrador hospital at Battle Harbour in 1893, then a summer hospital at Indian Harbour in 1894, staffed by two doctors and two nurses.
- 1912: Dr. Harry Paddon and nurse Mina Gilchrist arrived at Indian Harbour. They cared for the fishing fleets in summer, and each fall sailed about 150 miles west to Mud Lake, where they ran an outpost in an old lumber camp, coming back in spring. They married in 1913.
- 1914: Their son Tony Paddon was born at Indian Harbour. He became a surgeon, directed the Grenfell organization from 1960 to 1978, and from 1981 to 1986 was lieutenant governor of Newfoundland and Labrador, the first Labradorian appointed to the post.
- 1915 onward: The Paddons opened a hospital at North West River and kept up a seasonal move between there and Indian Harbour for 20 years.
- A teacher who wrote: Elliott Merrick, an American, took a job as a teacher at the mission at Indian Harbour. His book Northern Nurse (1942), written from his wife Kate's memories of nursing for the mission, spent 17 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
- The people: Kirkina Mucko, a nurse and midwife, is listed among Indian Harbour's notable residents.
- To read more: Grenfell's own A Labrador Doctor (1919) and Tony Paddon's autobiography, Labrador Doctor: My Life with the Grenfell Mission (1986), tell the mission's story from the inside.
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