Grenfell Mission Nurse

Sheila Paddon

Miss Sheila Fortescue came from England to Labrador as a volunteer nurse in 1949. Two years later she came on salary to the Grenfell Mission at Northwest River. She later married Doctor Anthony Paddon of Labrador. They are well-known in the province as Lieutenant-Governor the Honourable Anthony Paddon and Mrs. Paddon.

I FINISHED SCHOOL IN 1938, just before the war. The war started in 1939 and at that time you were given several options. You could go into the forces, make munitions, join the land army, or go into nursing. I went into the land army for a year, before the war, but I started nursing in January, 1940.

I wanted to take a diploma at an agricultural college, but the day the war was declared it was closed down and there was no more training. Many of the different training schools were closed for the duration, so you couldn't just do any particular thing that you fancied. You had to do something that was useful.

I trained at the Prince of Wales Hospital and in those days it was four years' training. Midwifery was added on. You had to become a registered nurse first, and then you took another year of midwifery training. At the end of that time if you passed all the exams you were a certified midwife.

Then I came to St. Anthony. I'd heard about the Grenfell Mission all my life. If you were a little girl in England, growing up in the twenties and thirties you had a little box that you put your money in for Doctor Grenfell. There was always a missionary box. That was Dr. Grenfell's Box.

I went away to boarding school when I was eleven, and there was another Grenfell Box! So I had been putting my pennies in for Grenfell for years.

Then when I was in training in London, there was a doctor there, Dr. Denley Clark. He had been working on the Labrador coast before the war, at Mary's River. Now it is called Mary's Harbour, near Cartwright. He used to tell me about it. He said, "When this war is over you should go out to Labrador. You'd enjoy it there."