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From the Smoky Lake Signal, Wednesday, September 11, 2002. Volume 25, Number 18. Alun Thomas, Missionary Doctor Dies age 94
But he lived to serve, from England to wartime Dr. Alun Thomas died August 14. He was 94. Retired nurse Eleanor Holliday remembers Dr. Thomas serving Smoky Lake at the George McDougall Hospital from 1951 to 1957, and his many years as locum doctor when the locals were on holidays. Alun Thomas was born in Wales in 1908. He graduated with a medical degree from Edinburgh University in 1932 where he had also been a football player. He started in general practice in Chesire, England, then gave it up in 1940 to work in Hong Kong under the London Missionary Society at the Nethersole Hospital. It was an unfortunate choice of locations. A year later, after Pearl Harbour, Japan attacked Hong Kong. The British colony surrendered on Christmas Day shortly after Canadian troops arrived. Dr. Thomas had just married Elizabeth Jean McDonald, an American who was living in Canton, China. They were both interned. This is part of the diary that Dr. Thomas sent in a Christmas card to Eleanor and John Holliday in Smoky Lake. "By January 1, 1942, most allied civilians, the British, Dutch and Americans, had been rounded up and interned in Western and Chinese hotels in Hong Kong and Kowloon. By good fortune we internees were later moved out to Stanley. Here was the main prison in the colony. We were not interned in the prison but in the wardens quarters. Within a half a mile of the prison was St. Stephen's, a boarding school. These buildings were on a narrow isthmus, we were surrounded by sea. We collected our camp beds, blankets, utensils, food, clothing, books and medication and were taken to Stanley. We were assigned to the Indian quarters. There were four of us, three doctors and a Methodist missionary, on the top floor of a block of flats built to accommodate Asian Indian wardens and their families. To get there we climbed a narrow cement circular stairway. There was a six foot wide verandah and two rooms off the verandah. The larger rooms with the four camp beds, was just large enough to open the doors. The back verandah was 3-feet wide leading to a Chinese toilet and shower at one end with a small scullery at the other end. There was just enough room to stand and wash dishes or clothes. The smaller living room had been damaged. The roof had a large hole and was beyond repair. In wet weather there would be two inches of water on the floor. "This was my home until August of 1945. Bert Alton, the Methodist missionary, and I were involved in kitchen work. We had a population of 730 people to look after. About 130 of these were Hong Kong police. They supplied much of the labour force for the whole camp. We also did some medical work in St. Stephen's School. Our main task was to receive food, cook it and share it out as evenly as possible to give a fair division. Those doing heavy work received double rations for one meal a day. I worked from 7:00 until noon or from noon to 7:00 p.m. In my spare time I studied Cantonese for my second year exam. There were rumors that we could help work at other hospitals, but nothing came of it. There were rumors of repatriation. The Americans left for home in June. "In September 1942 a clerk came from the CSO to see me and asked if there was any accommodation for a young woman coming into the camp from China. I asked him where she was coming from, Canton. That's where my wife was living. What was her name, a Mrs. Thomas, he said. It was my wife. On October 2, I learned that Jean would arrive. The weather was bad, as we had a typhoon. With my roommates we ran up to the main road, and there she was - well dressed, sporting a hat and surrounded with five suitcases with Yamasita, the Japanese Commandant, Gimson, the colonial secretary and clerks. She had had a good journey. The Nipponese had been considerate. Yamasida had met her at the wharf and got her baggage to the car and had driven her to Stanley. She carried a basket in which there was a sealer of chicken. We carried her luggage down to the Indian quarters and opened up the sealer to find it was moldy. Throw it away, said Jean. No, said the other four starving internees and we polished it off with no ill effects. For the first four months Jean was billeted at St. Stephen's School. Because of curfew we saw each other only in daylight hours. Finally a police friend got hold of a door. How I cannot say. We built a bed 6 foot by 38" and built walls around it on the verandah to keep out the rain and this became our home until August of 1945. In the early days of internment, life was depressing. Attending church services on arrival we heard a good deal about the trials of the children of Israel and Job's tribulations. By the summer the mood had changed. Preachers talked of the future and how we could deal with it. People arranged classes to study languages. A Welsh class was in operation when Jean joined us. There were plays, pantomimes, two choirs. Soon after Jean arrived we had Red Cross supplies distributed. Life was more exciting. I played soccer in barefeet. Jean enjoyed living with so much going on. We were able to swim in the sea in warm weather. There were days of depression, but never a return to the sadness of the early days of 1942. We were so fortunate to be together for so much of our internment." The doctor and his wife remained in Hong Kong after the end of the war and helped reorganize the Nethersole Hospital. Alun and Jean were content to remain there for many years to come, but without warning he contracted tropical Sprue and was unable to continue. His hopes for recovery were uncertain if he stayed in Hong Kong, in 1951, so he decided to move to Western Canada. The United Church of Canada had a posting for him in Smoky Lake at the George McDougall Hospital. Dr. Thomas was asked to send his reminiscences of the town to become part of "Our Legacy", the local history. It was early doctoring at its best. He remembers Smoky Lake as a town with a population of about 1,000 pleasantly situated in rolling countryside. The railway passed through the town which was dominated by four grain elevators. The two main streets had the usual garages, farm machinery and grocery shops, a pharmacy and a small hospital of 20 beds, a hotel and many churches. Most of the people were engaged in mixed farming. The town had developed about 1920, after the coming of the railroad and had been settled almost entirely by Ukrainians of various religious backgrounds, from both Eastern and Western Christian churches. One soon became accustomed to the sight of Russian domed churches in the town and countryside. The hospital had two sections, the old had been situated at Fort Victoria, seven miles to the south. But with the coming of the railroad, the village around the trading post there became less important and the simple log building had been towed to Smoky Lake to be used by more people. Ten years prior to his arrival, a new wing had been constructed to house a small operating theatre and maternity beds. The hospital was similar to others all over the world and met the needs of childbirth, sickness and accidents. It was run by the United Church of Canada. Twenty miles away on either side were two Roman Catholic hospitals of similar bed capacity, each run by one doctor. Forty-five miles to the south, across the river, was a larger hospital at Lamont, run by the United Church of Canada. This hospital had four doctors. It was with these three hospitals I was to maintain relationships and to ask for and give help when required, wrote Dr. Thomas. The roads were poor by his previous standards. The better ones had been gravelled, but the remainder were dirt or mud, depending on the weather. Travelling to Lamont was difficult due to the river. In summer there was a ferry, and in winter you drove on the ice. There was one train to and from Edmonton daily, and the gravel road to the city was reasonable and rarely impassable. It was a main route to the Canadian airforces base, 150 miles to the east. Arriving in autumn he used the Indian summer weather to acquaint himself with the territory and hamlets and the outlying farms. The roads in Western Canada were set out like a chess board and at first it seemed odd to go two miles north, one west, and two north to reach a farm house. By mid-November the river was frozen, I had to attend the board meeting at Lamont. There were three other men from the district who accompanied me in my car. It was a cold afternoon. But coming to the river they elected to walk, to stretch their legs while I drove across. Upon reaching the other side they congratulated me upon being the first to cross the river on the ice that season. On the return journey they also left the car, but this time I drove with the doors open as a precaution. The intense cold of January was only tolerable because of the brilliant sunshine. Snow added beauty to the landscape, but unlike British snow, this stuff was fine like flour, and would blow across the roads like dust. If there was any wind, travel was treacherous. Drifts would block a road in minutes. On one occasion the doctor was at a farmhouse and arrived without difficulty. During the short time he attended the patient, the road became blocked. Unaware he drove as far as the first impassable drift and then when he tried to return to the farm found the snow had drifted behind him. He had to abandon the car and trudge to the farm. After the blowing had ceased, the farmer cleared the road and enabled him to return home. In his first year he took risks unconsciously. Later a neighbor insisted on going out with him at night for moral and physical support. His medical colleague, 25 miles away in Vilna went on holidays in summer and Dr. Thomas was left in charge of two hospitals. One day he went to Vilna three times, a total of 150 difficult miles. Another day he drove to Vilna to give advice to a woman in labour, returned home for a delivery at his own hospital and went to bed. At 3:00 a.m. he was called to go back to Vilna. "The sisters were overjoyed to see me, I attended the situation, slept in the hospital until dawn and returned home. Reaching Smoky I was told a telephone call had come from the local hospital to attend an epileptic who had been brought in. Fortunately the nurse on duty could cope." One autumn night in his third year, he was called to the hospital to find two patients, a man of 40 and a girl of 20. It was harvest and as was the custom, harvest was continuing through the night, using the head lights on the machinery. At 2:00 p.m. they told me they took food out to the workers. The operator of the tractor had stopped and was filling up the tank with gasoline when it caught fire and they were burnt. But the girl was not burnt, but scalded. I mentioned this, said the doctor to the nurse, and the man who had suffered minor injuries. Both patients were admitted to hospital, but the next morning the man slipped out early to return home to dispose of incriminating evidence of a still that had exploded scalding them both. During his last years in Smoky Lake the hospital was taken over by the municipality and ceased to be part of the mission. A Ukrainian doctor, Fred Lobay, recently qualified, decided to settle in Smoky Lake. He could freely converse with the patients and was anxious to practice in his home district. So Dr. Thomas moved to Edmonton to start a new practice. He retired in 1976 and moved to Metchosin, B.C. His wife of 48 years, Elizabeth Jean McDonald, died in 1989. They had five children, two born in Wales, one on a ship in the South Pacific, one in Hong Kong and the last in Canada.
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