Recollections about Dr. Charles H. Lawford
Note: The following article first appeared in the Medical Bulletin of May 1953 and was reprinted in the St. Paul Journal, and again in the "Our Legacies" History book.
This is more than a story about a man, even though, without the man, much of the story would never have come to pass. It is a story about a way of life, a settlement, in part about a church and yes, almost about a nation. In all of it runs the history of Dr. Charles H. Lawford. Certainly it was men such as he who, from the very fragments of nature, welded the foundations of our province. Almost coincidentally did Dr. Lawford pioneer medicine to an immense area, and leave in his memory such an aura of simple service and genuine humanity and humility that he stands alone amongst our medical pioneers.
Charles Lawford was seventeen when he came west to join his father in 1879. The following year the rest of the family left Toronto and came to Rossburn where Mr. Lawford was farm instructor to the Indians. For the next ten years the family resided there, 180 miles from Portage la Prairie where supplies had to be bought, and 25 miles from the nearest post office. Rugged years they must have been and there is little doubt that they accounted for the development of the self-reliance which Dr. Lawford was to display later in his medical practice. A sense of heavy responsibility was a prime characteristic of the man and, along with a deep religious sense, led him into the ministry. In 1890 he was a Methodist probationer in Yorkton and by 1892 he was ordained and was a minister at Carlyle. between that year and 1898 he served as minister at Whitewood and also completed four years of training at Wesley College in Winnipeg.
It was in 1898 that Lawford withdrew from the ministry and undertook
to study medicine.
His immediate aim was to serve as a medical missionary in China but the
war there at the turn of the century made that impossible. As a result, Lawford was
persuaded to pursue his work in the Territories and he was posted west of Pakan around
which had settled many families of the New Canadians from the Ukraine. It was here that
George McDougall had established a mission and school before coming to Edmonton and it was
here, in 1900, that Dr. Charles H. Lawford established his first medical practice.
The following six years were difficult but fascinating ones for Dr. Lawford. In common with other pioneers of the west he did his work under conditions which most of us would fear to face today. The nearest hospital was 85 miles away, and the nearest railway point was at Strathcona, an even greater distance. The area he served was greater than 1200 square miles and the rails over it were few and not too heavily traveled. But Lawford, without a hospital or a car, treated the people's disease and, where the occasion demanded it, operated upon them in their own homes or in his. With the help of an interpreter he cared for their bodies and for their souls. He held regular Sunday services in the homes of the people, not with any idea of interfering with their own orthodox faith, but rather with the desire to help them in their pioneer life and, as he himself put it "to bring to them a fuller knowledge of the will and love of God."
A good example of the life Dr. Lawford had to lead at the time was to be found in his own memoirs where he tells the story of an incident which to him was not unusual. "I recall a trip made in January, on a Monday morning I started out to go to dress a cast we had operated on in the previous week. It was sub-zero weather, the snow was drifting and it took all day to make the round trip of 36 miles. That same evening I was called from a meeting of the school trustees which was being held in our home, to make an emergency trip to Saddle Lake and Good Fish Lake. I started out at once - about 9:00 p.m. - but had to break about eighteen inches of snow all the way. I reached Saddle Lake at 6:00 the following morning where I attended to one patient, and then, with a fresh team, set out for Good Fish Lake where the second case was dealt with. I returned to Saddle Lake about 9:00 the same night and left at once for Pakan, arriving there at sunrise the next day. After breakfast I set out again and made my rounds until that night."
Lawford's memoirs tell us more about the efforts he made in some of his most exciting cases to deal with tremendous medical and surgical emergencies. In many of them he relied heavily on the help given him by Mrs. Lawford who was a trained nurse and like her husband, had prepared for missionary service in China. He recalls that one day at noon he and Mrs. Lawford were sitting down to their dinner when a young lady was brought in with an infected mastoid. Lawford was afraid of a brain abcess and, accordingly, while Mrs. Lawford cleared the table, he prepared the instruments. The patient was placed on the diningroom table, Mrs. Lawford gave the anaesthetic and the doctor opened the mastoid, finished the operation, placed some blankets on the dining room floor, put the patient on them, and then with the patient under observation, set the table and he and his wife completed their meal.
The follow-up on such surgical cases was difficult, particularly when the patient was operated on at some distance from Pakan. There was a tremendous amount of driving to do and yet, as Dr. Lawford wrote, "we lost only one operative case in these six years, and that was a case of an appendix which had burst before we were called. We felt that Divine help and blessing attended our work."
By 1907 the importance of Lawford's work became fully recognized and plans were made to build the George McDougall Pakan Hospital. In November of that year the hospital was opened and it proved a real boom and lifesaver to many, especially to the acute abdominal cases, the mutilated and fractured limbs, and the complicated maternity cases. However, Lawford still had the large area to travel and between 1907 and 1918 he continued to give it the service it had rapidly grown to expect. He himself was stricken in the influenza epidemic and was so affected that he found it necessary to confine himself to a less arduous routine. As a result, when the railway reached Smoky Lake, some nine miles from Pakan, and the entire hospital was moved there, Dr. Lawford discontinued his work as hospital superintendent and opened a drug store and medical office. Here he practiced until 1944, at the age of 82, he moved to Edmonton "with its modern conveniences and advantages", as he put it.
Dr. Lawford was known to many and admired by all who came to know his story. He was an old man when he finally passed away in 1952 and he left behind him a heritage in medicine which few of us will leave in our turn. The named Charles H. Lawford will stand forever in the eyes of the profession and the public and all those interested in the history of our province, as a beacon which helped in no small way to lead to our present standard of service.
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