Grenfell and Christmas in Northern Newfoundland and Labrador

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.

In 1892 a young English doctor, Wilfred Grenfell, volunteered—as a
medical missionary with the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen—to serve the
nearly 30,000 fishing families and natives along the barren coast of
Labrador. It was the beginning of a lifelong dedication that resulted in
the establishment of schools, orphanages, medical outposts, and
hospitals throughout the region, and, more significantly, in a physical,
spiritual, and cultural revolution among its poverty-stricken people.
For, as Ryan correctly points out, Grenfell, always a Christian
optimist, was never content to minister only to the body but insisted on
trying to alter the conditions that, in most cases, had created the
illness. One of the ways in which he did so was to introduce what most
of these people had never known—the happiness and excitement of
Christmas. Too poor to give gifts, too uneducated to share the customs,
too isolated to be influenced by other cultures, they knew little or
nothing of Yuletide traditions. Grenfell sought to change all that, and
in his many writings (for he was nothing if not prolific) he offers many
vivid accounts of his attempts to do so, from the turn of the century to
the 1920s, from St. Anthony to Cape Chidley. Some of the best of these
Ryan has brought together here—along with a few from some of
Grenfell’s colleagues—and the result is a delight, not only as a
valuable Christmas reflection but as a social document. Grenfell’s
descriptions are visual, full of his irrepressible humor and optimism,
and reveal the soul of the Labrador fisherfolk. The whole is poignant
but uplifting, and the inclusion of almost 20 reproductions of
Grenfell’s Christmas cards and autographed sketches makes this a
valuable and totally engaging little book.