Fifty Years of Emergencies: The Dramatic Life of a Country Doctor

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Burden is obviously a caring, brave, energetic man. Everything he has
done in his life, he seems to have done to the full. Brought up in Nova
Scotia during the Depression, he joined the Canadian Forces as soon as
he was old enough during World War II. After spending four-and-a-half
years in England and Europe, he returned to study medicine in Halifax.
He established his first practice in rural P.E.I.

In the 1950s Burden returned to Springhill, N.S., to take part in
rescue attempts during the two mine disasters and the downtown fire. He
tells tales of crossing weak sea ice to visit patients and squirming
through narrow tunnels to reach trapped miners, and of the difficulties
of traveling in the country during snow storms and getting patients to
pay their bills.

It should have been a fascinating glimpse of a time that is gone.
Unfortunately, the writing style does not do justice to the content.
This book will, however, be of interest to people in Springhill who wish
to read a first-hand account, complete with names, of their famous
tragedies.