We weren't joined with Canada then, so we had to cross from Port aux Basques to North Sydney. Then we had to go through immigration.

I had over three years' training, plus making up some sick time. When the base started in Goose Bay, they paid good wages. Everybody went for the big wages, so they had a hard job to get anybody to work in the hospital. This was 1943. They couldn't get a nurse, so Mrs. Paddon asked me to come back here to Northwest River.

I didn't have my midwifery training, but I had to go and do the best I could. I had been ward aide for five years before, and I had helped with that all the time. So I had to do the best I could. If we had an emergency, we got hold of the doctors up at the air force, or the Americans.

One time a girl broke her leg. I had just come back from down around the little settlements, inoculating all the people for diphtheria. I got back in the evening. I met Mrs. Paddon on the steps. She said this little girl slipped down on the steps and broke her leg.

I went and measured her and knew her leg was broken, because it was shorter. I got them to make a splint, from the hip down, with wood. I stretched out her leg, and padded it all around. Then I sent her up to the Goose Bay hospital by dog team. You always managed. You would be surprised. You think you can't do something, but when you're faced with it, you can do it.

I fixed up somebody's leg one time. Another person I looked after was Marguerite Michelin. Dogs bit her and I had to shave her head and stitch her.

Grenfell couldn't pay very much. The first year I got $350.00. That was 1943. But I didn't mind that. I got all my training and all that.

But then I was on call, twenty-four hours a day all the year. You never got off at all.