In those days it was quite remarkable, because you could fly from Heathrow, London, to Goose Bay. That Air Canada flight used to come down here en route to Montreal. It didn't last long, but in that particular year, 1951, you could land here.

I landed at Goose in the middle of the night. There was no one to meet me of course. I stumbled around for a while in the dark. There's a graveyard up there at Goose, right at the end of the old runway where there's a number of graves of aircrew - pilots who had crashed, and others. I seemed to find that quite easily. I found a barracks and went in there and they gave me eggs and bacon. It was lovely. Then in the morning, I think one of the Mounties turned up.

We had a little nursing station in the Valley then, with two beds. Dr. Paddon, who later became my husband, had started it in a tiny building and they took me down there to Happy Valley. Later in the day, the Mission sent a boat up for me and I came down here to Northwest River.

The day after I got here, Doctor Paddon left, so I was alone here for quite a while. That's when I really needed to know my midwifery. Then I went to Harrington Harbour which is down on the North Shore, where the Grenfell Mission had a hospital. It was actually in Quebec. I was there all winter, then I came back here.

Doctor Paddon and I were planning to get married. I went home to England to get a few things, like a wedding dress, said goodbye to my family, and came back. We were planning to get married in June, but the nurse left, so naturally, I ended up doing the nursing all summer, because they didn't send anyone else until the fall. I wasn't really on staff, but there was no one else, so my future husband, Doctor Paddon said, "You'll do the nursing, won't you?" "Yes." You know, you did what you had to do in those days. That was fine. I didn't mind.

We were finally married in September.

But after that, I didn't really nurse because Grenfell always supplied one. Sometimes there was a nurse who was not a midwife, so I would fill in, but not often. And sometimes there was a gap between one nurse leaving and another one coming, so I would assist then.