“The saint in overalls”

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25 May 1912 | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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The Rev. Jesse Halsey of St. Anthony’s, Labrador, one of Dr. W. T. Grenfell’s right-hand men, is just now on a visit to New York in the interests of the Grenfell mission. After a ten days run with the dogs he reached the coast and sailed for Boston in a small sailing craft, arriving there three weeks ago. He departs again in a few days for Labrador. Mr. Halsey, after two years in Princeton, graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1910. He distinguished himself in his theological course and had excellent opportunities for work in the States, many influential Presbyterian pulpits being open to him. He elected, however, to go to Labrador. Here he has done “a man’s work,” not only doing the usual duties of pastor and preacher, but donning his overalls and working whenever occasion required as carpenter, plumber, and odd-jobber. “The saint in overalls” is the name bywhich he is known by his Labrador colleagues. Mr. Halsey is married and has one child. He will preach on Sunday for the Rev. Gwilym O. Griffith of the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, who was a fellow student of his at Princeton. On Sunday evening he will give an illustrated address on the work of the Grenfell mission.

"Southampton public school has distinction of having two Labrador children on its roll."

 

The children were brought here by Mrs. Jesse Halsey, wife of a minister at Dr. Grenfell's station at St. Anthony's, Newfoundland. The Rev. Mr. Halsey is a native of Southampton and has been located in Labrador for a number of years and tkaes a great interest in the education of the children at the Far North Mission. He will soon join his wife here, having been granted a leave of absence. 

4 Nov. 1912 | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The two children, who are being education in the Southampton school through the generosity of Mr. Halsey, are Alfred, aged 11 years, and Alice, aged 15, children of Edward Evans, a reindeer herder employed by Dr. Grenfell. As they were under 16 years of age and not accompanied by their parents, they wre temporarily held by the immigration inspectors in Boston, where they arrived October 15 on the auxilary schooner George B. Cluett. The vessel was twenty-four days on the passing from St. Anthony's, and during the most of the time was best with furious gales and heavy seas.

Helen I. Halsey on board The Geo. B. Cluett

Archibald Ash of Red Bay, N.F. and John Newell of St. Anthony's were also passengers who made the trip to Boston. This is Mr. Ash's second visit to the United State. He has attended Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and will re-enter that school to take a course in electrical engineering. His previous study was in mechanical engineering. On his return to Labrador he was given the work of making plans for a public building and he prepared the same in a faultless manner. Mr. Newell will study carpentry. When they have completed their studies, they will return North to engage in teaching. 

L.I. Presbytery to Meet

23 September 1909: Brooklyn Daily Eagle

"The opening session will be held on Tuesday at 2 PM. At 3:30 B.C. Milliken of NYC one of the assistant secretaries of the Board of Foreign Missions, will speak, and at 4:30 PM Jesse Halsey of Southampton, who has spent the summer assisting Dr. Grenfell in Labrador, will tell of the work accomplished."

"Dr. Halsey went up to Labrador to take up plumbing"

“Dr. Halsey tells of one family that had five children ill with diphtheria and four dollars cash. they chose two children out of the five to to have diphtheria anti-toxin at two dollars per; the other three children died.”

Clamming in Labrador

"The Boss & the Gang (College Students from U.S. College)"

Repeatedly, I asked Joe Souley, John Patey, and the other fishermen who worked at the time “on the Room” (mission) if there were no clams in the harbor. The bottom at low tide looked just right for long clams, but they always said, “No.” One day I took a bucket and spade and went up to the “top” of the harbor (a mile) and came back with some good-sized one. The mud was full of them. When I showed them to Joe, he blurted, “Skipper, them are no clams, they be Cocks and Hens.” “Don’t you ever eat them?” I asked. “Not if we can help it, all durin’ the Starvation Winter we had nothin’ else, and never ate ‘em since.” Our reasonably meager diet was often increased by clam bisque, clam-pie, and fried clams; soon other Mission folk followed and after a meal at our house, Joe and some other of the harbor folk followed suit—but gingerly. They had had enough.

They didn’t know that many other groups, Indians and settlers, have survived starvation winters by the same means as is attested by the great shell heaps long the coast from Maine to Florida.

Joe Souley was a great person. He could neither read nor write but he knew a lot about life and human nature. He has sailed the seven seas and could describe ports, like Liverpool, that I had seen so accurately that I trusted his description of those I had not seen. And year after when I saw Yokohama, and Fuji, it looked just as Joe said it ought to.

Joe had worked in a copper mine up the coast at Tilt Cove and knew how to use dynamite. He taught me how to blast, but he couldn’t temper drills. They would be too soft and not hold an edge, or too brittle and break. I had watched Andy Jagger in the blacksmith’s shop on the way home from school, blown the bellow fro him, broken his twist drills, and learned many things from him. I remembered that he heated things he wanted to temper to a “cherry-red” and then dipped them in oil. Just what color cherry-red was while in a forge fire memory didn’t say, but trail and error demonstrated that it could be done.

Great boulders stood in the way of our pipe lines and cellars and much blasting was indicated.

(After his first Cottage Hospital was under roof, the Doctor, so he told me, had thought of a cellar and got a miner to blast—the roof was damaged! So we did our blasting first.)

Joe would have me hold the drill, then with a giant sledge he would begin to strike while I turned the drill in the hole. Then brave man, he took his turn holding while I . . . swung the sledge, fortunately for him I never missed—my old grandfather coming to the rescue. (I am a great believer in atavism—or whatever it may be called. Cap’n Harry, my grandfather, was a skilled mason (he built most of Greenwich Village in New York, over a hundred years ago.) He once was known to have cut the center out of a millstone to convert it into a well curb, cut it—on a bet—in thirty minutes. He knew how to swing a maul; I’m sure he was there fifty years later, for my help. (What’s fifty years among Yankees?)

--Jesse Halsey
1912

Dr. Grenfell's Schooner | July 4, 1912

The Montreal Gazette

Mission Schooner Arrives | Boston Evening Transcript

October 15, 1912

Progress of the Labrador Work | June 4, 1910

Boston Evening Transcript

"In the early days . . ."

a Presbyterian sermon

"For the Early Days"

from "Down North" | c1941

One day in the late spring of 1907, I was riding to the University on one of those (then) novel double-decker trams that ran in Glasgow. (The paper, this very day as I write, shows a picture of two bombed and gutted standing inert on the car-track) when I noticed a meager item on an inside page of an evening paper of how a mission doctor in Labrador had been carried off shore on an ice flow and had lived to tell the story. That was the first I ever heard of Grenfell. Two years later, I was on his staff—not as preacher but as plumber.

It happened like this. He came to Princeton Seminary to speak for a week at Chapel. Chapel was a dreary performance held at the end of the afternoon with a handful present and a cut and dried professorial performance in exegesis as diet. I seldom went. But hearing that Grenfell was coming that day, I went and took several other fellows along. The place was filled the second day; and before the week was out the crowd jammed the largest hall on the University campus.

In one of his talks he told the story of that ice pan experience (of which I had read on the Glasgow bus), in another he intimated that students sometimes would “down” with him in the summer to do odd jobs. I made an appointment at the house of the professor where he was staying. “Yes,” he took students along to help; “What was I going to be?” “A preacher!” “No, he didn’t need a preacher, they had too many on the shore already. “Well,” I ventured, “What do you need?” “A plumber,” he snapped back, “a plumber for our new hospital.” I signed up, then and there, knowing that water runs down hill and inheriting from my practical builder-mason-grandfather, a manual knack for doing things, and knowing how to solder and wipe a joint, and a few other things, from a Yankee blacksmith who had a shop on the back street where I used to stop in to blow the bellows and fuss around on the way home from school.

In May (Divinity Schools have a short term), I started out for Labrador. It took nearly a month to get there, for it was a late season and the ice hugged the land so that schooners and mail boats couldn’t get “down along” shore. When we reached St. Anthony all set “to plumb” the hospital, I found that the hospital wasn’t even built. The Chief was like that: ambition always running ahead of any possible performance on the part of his helpers.

Not only was the hospital unbuilt, not even a foundation was in, no excavating done either. So after putting a new window in the log bunk house for light and air (terribly dull tools they had and my new plumber’s kit didn’t fit the wood working job, all their tools were dull except the axes; a Newfoundlander can build a ship with his ax and after I had fussed for half a day with brace and bit (dull in spite of my file) and key hold saw pecking at the logs, Old Skipper Joe Souley came along and in ten minutes with his ax cut the hole in the side of the bunk house where I installed my window.

There being no one more capable available, I set about excavating for the new hospital cellar. We struck solid rock. I knew nothing about blasting—except that one did it before building. (The Doctor having finished his first hospital realizing that it needed a cellar, undertook to blast one and blew off his roof.) Skipper Joe (my friend of the ax) had worked in a mine; he knew how to blast! But he didn’t know how to sharpen drills. Here my Yankee blacksmith came to my aid; (by quasi proxy). I had watched him and had a dim notion of how it was done and after considerable experimenting—just the right heat “cherry red” dipped at the right moment in oil, the drill was just the right temper, not too hard to be brittle and break under the sledge as it bit its way into the rock and not too soft—not cutting at all but just further blunting itself.

I would hold the drill; Joe would strike it with the big sledge, strike with an unerring accuracy; when my turn came to strike and he to hold, like the brave man he was, he held the drill while I swung the sledge, fortunately for him I never missed—my old grandfather coming to the rescue. (I am a great believer in ativism—or whatever it may be called. Cap’n Harry, my grandfather, was a skilled mason (he built most of Greenwich Village in New York, over a hundred years ago.) He once was known to have cut the center out of a millstone to convert it into a well curb, cut it—on a bet—in thirty minutes. He knew how to swing a maul; I’m sure he was there fifty years later, for my help. (What’s fifty years among Yankees?)

When the holes were drilled we began to blast. It was cold; dynamite will not explode when it is “frozen.” Joe would build a fire in the forge and put me to blowing the bellows, with a pail of water on the coals. When it began to boil he would pile sticks of dynamite cob-house fashion on the pail there to “thaw.” “Let out a reef, Skipper,” Joe would say. I would accelerate and the sparks would fly all round the pail and all over the dynamite. “No harm, Skipper, she can’t bust abroad without the cap.” When the sticks were sufficiently softened, Joe would cut a length of fuse and fasten on a cap (detonator) to the end of the fuse. The cap is a hollow tube an inch long made of soft, malleable copper. Joe would take the thing between his teeth (he had two that met) and craunch the cap on to the fuse. (When it became my turn (under his tutelage) I used the pliers (as Dupont suggested). Not so Skipper Joe Souley—“Teeth’s quicker.” Then we would insert the cap and fuse in a stick of dynamite, put it down in the drilled hole in the rock on top of one, two, or three other sticks of dynamite and then with a stick, tamp dirt into top of the hold. Then we’d pile a lot of logs on top with a few lengths of old anchor chain to (hold her down), light the fuse and run. At least I would run, Joe was too old, or too fat, or to lazy, or too proud to run. He would amble along and maybe get behind the forge house before the blast brought down its concomitant shower of small rocks and gravel.

It took all summer to build the hospital cellar and frame up the hospital. In the fall, I came back to Seminary in New York, bringing an esquimoux boy to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to learn lathe work and other things that I didn’t know much about. Theology played second fiddle, I fear, that winter. I got hold of an old friend who was a master plumber and heating engineer and learned to figure radiation, etc., etc., ad infinitum (to use theological language). By the next spring I had collected in Boston a schooner load of radiators, boilers, pipe fittings, tools, tile, linoleum, and what-not enough to plumb and heat the new hospital and the old hospital and several other hospitals and mission buildings at various stations along the shore.

In May (this is 1910), I graduated as a Bachelor of Divinity, was married, and in June set out for Labrador on a honeymoon.

There we stayed three summers, two winters. There our two older boys were born. There I would still be if I had been a doctor instead of a preacher. When the plumbing work was done, I became business manager for the mission. When the expert accountant, Price, Waterhouse recommended that the business office be put in St. John’s Newfoundland, rather than on the field, I lost interest in the business job, even though they had been interested in me. I had been buying thousands of dollars worth of supplies of all kinds, running a big schooner on several voyages back and forth as her skipper and how I ever kept out of jail with my accounts, I don’t quite know (or off the rocks with the schooner). It always puzzled me to make up a set of books that would balance and no wonder Price, Waterhouse wanted an accountant and not a preacher.

--Reverend Jesse Halsey

Jessie Luther | Providence, R.I., 1916

In Retrospect

Another important event for all of us is associated with that year [1911]. This was romance, the marriage of Dr. Little and Ruth Keese after three years of happy association. They were married by Mr. Jesse Halsey at the assistant doctor’s house, and the union of two persons so beloved by everyone was hailed with joy. The wedding was one of the simplest and most beautiful I ever witnessed, just a small gathering of friends brought together informally in the little room decorated with spruce boughs and yellow-leaved birch branches. Ruth Keese, in her familiar blue linen gown, and Dr. Little, in well known tweeds, entered the house together and after chatting with guests came forward with joined hands to stand before Mr. Halsey when he entered in his clerical gown to perform the short ceremony. In the dining room Mrs. Grenfell had prepared a beautiful table for the wedding feast, to which all members of the staff contributed. Then, after congratulations and best wishes to the newlyweds, we left them.

Each of these four summers would in detail be a story in itself, not only because of incidents but personalities closely interwoven with them. In addition to those who already made the background, there were others. Mr. Jesse Halsey, only briefly mentioned at the end of my second year, was a Presbyterian minister who came for a year of volunteer service not only to give spiritual guidance but to install plumbing, a shining example of practical Christianity who dressed in overalls for emergencies and donned his clerical down when occasion required.

from Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission, an annotated edition of a travel journal that Luther wrote from 1906 to 1910, edited by Ronald Rompkey (2001)

Jessie Luther | April 1952

Afterword

From time to time, a reminiscent word has come to me across land or sea, and I have met face to face some old associates nearer home. But whether they are far or near, I feel that among all who have shared the experience of life in the Mission, and especially those who labored together in the early difficult years, a bond exists that will endure. To those now living who shared this experience and to the families of those who are now a memory, I send greetings.

from Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission, an annotated edition of a travel journal that Luther wrote from 1906 to 1910, edited by Ronald Rompkey (2001)

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | July 1911

Dr. Grenfell’s Letter

Boston, Mass.

May 19^th, 1911

…It has been delightful to hear from Mr. Halsey, the Princetonian in charge of our mechanical work, of the splendid results accomplished by the aid of the boys who were sent to New York for one year’s mechanical training,--heating apparatus installed, water supplies laid on, machinery ably handled. To two of these young men he most earnestly desires that we should give another winter’s opportunity, and he has promised to remain during the coming year that he may do their work, if some friends are willing to defray the expense of sending them once more to the Pratt Institute next winter.

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | July 1911

Items from the New England Grenfell Association

…A letter from Mr. Halsey of St. Anthony gives the following items: “The pipe cutting machine that the New England Grenfell Association provided has been invaluable and without it we could not have done the hospital with its heavy three inch and four inch pipe. This also will be used in installing the orphanage heater given by Mrs. Proctor which we could not finish last fall. It was getting late and cold to work under the building and as the grates for the boiler didn’t come I gave it up until spring. In the summer we can do a better job, putting more of the pipes under the floor by digging, which was impossible after the frost came last fall. In the cellar of the old pat of the hospital I put a water tank (for air pressure) and as the old well only furnished two barrels, or less, a day, I ran a pipe below frost to the little brook west of the hospital and that has supplied the twenty barrels that they use daily, most of the time, though sometimes no water was running and it all had to be carted from Mr. Ashe’s brook, which is no fun in bad weather! Next winter we must have a proper water system. It means a lot of blasting and the building of a reservoir but it would save much work and more worry.” Another opportunity offered to help in this work. Mr. Halsey will make good use of the college volunteers this summer we are sure in giving them a chance to serve in this line.

…The land about the school house needs to be laid out. One of the Yale volunteers for this summer has been commissioned by Dr. Grenfell to organize under Mr. Halsey the old boys of St. Anthony into a “Self and Social Improvement Society.” The land needs paths, drainage, etc., and in the fall trees (such as are native to that soil) planted; also could have the red kalmias, the fireweeds, etc., planted in rows and bunches and the plot laid our artistically with local natural plants. This would give an admirable evening work and would be a real lesson and uplift. The boys could have their own society with officers of their own choice, all in miniature. For this purpose we sent via the “Lorna Doone” a couple of light wheelbarrows for carrying earth and soil, etc., and a half dozen of boys’ garden spades, and also two picks and spades for men. It may be possible soon for the children of St. Anthony to keep a few hens and for this the “agricultural fund” given by interested people yearly may be drawn upon. Possibly other friends would like to make gifts for this definite purpose….

E. E. W., Secretary

June 10^th, 1911.

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | October 1911

Items from the Grenfell Association of America

The results from some of the articles in the July number of the Magazine have been very satisfactory. We have received a cheque for $35 to pay the vacation expenses of the one of the twins at the School for the Blind in Halifax; I wonder if any other office has had a gift for the same purpose? The article asking for supplies for the industrial work has brought responses to the amount of about $30; Mr. Halsey’s appeal for the students at Pratt Institute has brought another $30. These funds are being held for the express purposes for which they were given.

J. L. G., Secretary.

20^th September, 1911

Items from the New England Grenfell Association

We rejoice that the piping for the new reservoir was sent, and we learn from Mr. Halsey that he has been able to build the new reservoir by the great help of the splendid volunteer work given by the college men who went to St. Anthony this summer, all of whom have given labour of the kind that resulted in furnishing this most needed water supply for the buildings the coming year. Think what it will mean to the hospital where heretofore the supply has never been equal to the demand, and twenty to thirty barrels a day have had to be brought in in pails and buckets. The New England Grenfell Association has furnished the money for this piping ($137), and the balance of the thousand dollars for the fittings of the buildings. Every two dollar membership helps in these necessary equipments. We hope the coming year may add many new names to our membership list here in New England. The supplies for the hospitals annually and for the various machinery call for our annual renewals of contributions.

E. E. White, Secretary 

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | January 1912

Dr. Grenfell’s Log

September 12, 1911

Mr. Jesse Halsey has joined the permanent staff, and every one is perfectly delighted. Our “Saint in overalls” is as acceptable as a blaster of rocks as he is when he presides over a wedding ceremony at which he has satisfied us all in marrying Doctor John Mason Little, Jr., who is our doyen of surgery, to Miss Ruth Keese, whom we all know as embodied sunshine.

If there is one event of the season over which we rejoice more than another it is this event, which we trust will give us a further probability of being able to keep them both with us for many more years to come. To the Miss Littles also who by presiding over the Children’s Home, have enabled the good Miss Storr to a furlough to England we offer many thanks.

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | April 1912

Annual Report of the Grenfell Association of America

The schooner Geo. B. Cluett sailed from New York on her maiden trip on August 1^st, 1911, carrying a very large cargo of miscellaneous supplies for the Mission stopping at Boston and Halifax to add still more to her already full cargo. She had been chartered by Mr. W. R. Stirling of Chicago for a pleasure trip to Labrador, with the understanding that he should take on his outward trip these supplies and leave them at the various mission stations, which he did. After this the vessel took the party well up on the Labrador coast, returning to Boston early in October, having proved herself with a few exceptions all that could be expected of such a boat.

She made her second trip to the North, leaving Boston in November, which seemed a hazardous, but absolutely necessary step to take, at this season of the year. She was loaded with the winter’s supplies of coal, food, and building materials, as well as having on board Mr. and Mrs. Halsey and their baby. She made the trip safely and expeditiously to St. Anthony, and returned to St. John’s, where she was chartered to carry a load of fish to Pernanbuco, Brazil. She made this trip in 30 days, leaving Brazil for the West Indies, arriving at Barbadoes in eight days, making a record trip between the two ports for a vessel of that kind.

Her next venture will be to carry a cargo of molasses from the West indies to St. John’s, after which we hope she will again be in New York, ready to take the furnishings for the new Institute to St. John’s, returning once more to the United States for the summer’s supplies for the Mission. After this it is hoped to charter her for the summer.

….A Special Study and Survey of the Needs and Possibilities of the Mission.

—In view of the action taken at our meeting a year ago regarding the possible taking over of the management of the Labrador Medical mission by the Grenfell Association of America, it was deemed advisable to send and expert in such matters to Labrador to make a careful study of the situation and report the exact condition at each point where work was being carried forward under the direction of the Mission. Mr. Cecil S. Ashdown, a representative of Price, Waterhouse & Company, was selected to do this very important work. He left New York early in June for St. John’s, spending the summer making a careful survey of the entire field, which he has embodied in a most exhaustive report. Too much praise cannot be given to Mr. Ashdown for the painstaking manner in which he performed his duties.

… A result of this survey has been the formation at St. Anthony of a special committee which reports monthly to our Executive Committee, and Dr. J.M. Little, who was with us two years ago, has been appointed officer in charge at St. Anthony, and is chairman of this committee.

… Rev. Jesse Halsey, who has been connected with the Mission for some time under a merely nominal salary, has been chose as purchasing agent and general business manager of the entire Mission.

The purchasing of supplies, which in former years was done almost wholly from the field, has been transferred largely to this office in the interests of economy. We might also add that this has brought an added degree of responsibility to our office.

Willis E. Lougee, Secretary

5^th March, 1912.

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | April 1912

On Little Things

January, 1912.

Yours gratefully,

Wilfred T. Grenfell

Note by the Editor—After this article had been sent by Dr. Grenfell to the magazine, the Rev. Mr. Halsey brought to Dr. Grenfell’s attention a “little thing” which is so badly wanted as to deserve a special paragraph to itself. Mr. Halsey writes (and Dr. Grenfell add, “I hope very much we may get this”): “Here is something we need most of all to make a ‘go’ of the shop—one chain mortiser, number 3 standard, with compound table and a set of chain saws from a quarter of an inch to once inch ¼, 3/8, 7/16, 1/2, 5/8, ¾, and 1 inch.

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | July 1912

St. Anthony, Newfoundland

April 20, 1912

Dear Mr. Editor,

The snow is still piled here around all our buildings. One of the cottages is absolutely shut in by a wall twenty feet high. All winter long it has been snowing and adding to our pile. The trees on the hill-top back of the Mission settlement are entirely buried and only here and there a green tip stand s out to modify the unrelieved whiteness of the whole landscape.

While the winter has not been as cold as last by the thermometer, it has been much more disagreeable. Three or four heavy snow storms with high winds and low temperature have made us realize what a northern winter really can be when it tries.

The month of February, however, was very mild, and during that time we were hauling out our firewood with the reindeer. Owing to the deep snow and the inaccessibility of the moss on which the deer feed, the have not been in the best of condition this winter and consequently could not pull as heavy loads as they sometimes do. They have however, pulled a creditable quantity of firewood for us.

The gasoline wood-saw given us last year by Mr. Rosenwald has proved one of the most useful of acquisitions. Last fall all the winter’s wood supply was sawed up during odd afternoons by some of the older boys, and as soon as the snow has gone the wood that has been hauled this winter will be sawed up and have a chance to season a little before it is needed for next winter’s firing. We really need a large woodshed in which we could store the firewood a year ahead; it would then be possible to burn seasoned instead of green and half-green wood during the winter.

The fuel question is one that is of grave importance, and we hope that the Geo. B. Cluett will make trips enough in the future to bring us a sufficient quantity of hard coal so that we shall not have the dread of fuel famine that we have always had formerly. We also need a sufficiently large quantity of soft coal from Sydney, which we may be able to sell to our employees. They find it very difficult to get firewood, and we might save much of their time by providing them with coal at cost.

We are expecting this summer to get down a large cargo of soft coal from Sydney for this purpose as well as for our own use. We find that hard coal is the most economical fuel for our use and it is absolutely necessary that we have enough coal to run the hospital and orphanage heaters. Wood is very expensive before it reaches our wood fire: hauling costs so much. In winter when it is necessary to give out work for poor relief we might cut wood here, but otherwise it would be much better and cheaper to rely on coal for fuel.

Doctor Little has been more than busy at the hospital all winter. Without the assistance of another doctor he has done all the travelling besides the regular hospital work. While he has been away, Miss Brown has been “doctor in charge” at the hospital. More patients than usual have spent the winter at the hospital. There have been a great many cases of tubercular bones, hip disease, etc., which are of a very discouraging nature, as it is rather depressing to doctor and nurses, day after day, to see the same faces without any improvement in condition.

The carpenter shop has been running full force all winter, making doors and sashes for the new buildings, the erection of which we are contemplating next summer. These will be a hostel or rest house where friends of patients who come here in the summer may be entertained at a moderate cost, or a house in a part of which we may be able to entertain friends of the Mission who come from the States or Canada, and who would come in increasing numbers if there were adequate accommodations for the entertainment in St. Anthony.

We also expect to build during the coming summer a small marine railway or slipway where our won boats and those of the fishermen may be dry docked for repairs. During the warmer days of the past month we have been finishing the upstairs hall or assembly room of the school house and the unfinished downstairs school room. The room upstairs is to have a large fireplace and will be fitted up with games and will be used as a reading and recreation room for the fishermen who call on us spring and fall, and for the use of the young people locally.

We also expect to have shower baths installed in the school house during the coming summer. The grounds will also be graded and fenced when our student volunteers visit us this summer.

Through the kindness of Mr. Stirling some changes have been made in the Guest House, which have made it much more comfortable during the past winter. Adequate heating facilities have been arranged; a bathroom is now being installed, and a new coal stove, several additional windows, and other minor changes are contemplated before our summer visitors arrive. Indeed, it would be difficult to overestimate the benefit of Mr. Stirlings’s visit to us last summer. We have felt since then that we had “at the other end” a friend who thoroughly understood conditions and needs here and who was intelligent and interested. We have never doubted the willingness of our friends, but naturally, when one has visited this coast he understands as never before the needs that we are seeking to meet. By his words of kindly encouragement and by his many generous gifts we shall long remember Mr. Stirling.

The night school has been carried on by Mr. Fallon, Mr. Blackburn, and myself, since the first of January. Three nights a week we have had serious study work and on Friday nights Mr. Fallon has given the boys some sort of an entertainment, either with phonograph, magic lantern, or games. Mr. Blackburn has conducted the book-keeping class for young men. The day school, under the charge of Miss Appleton with Miss Copping’s assistance, has prospered. During the coldest weather the school was divided, part meeting in one of the vacated wards of the hospital and part in the orphanage. When the weather made possible, school was held in the school house with a curtain drawn across the room as a partition.  Another winter adequate heating facilities will have been installed in the school house.

Mr. Forbes and Mr. Evans have given a recital at the church for the benefit of a new organ. The Methodist choir, under Mrs. Halsey’s direction, have given us special music at Christmas and Easter, with an excellent concert at the time of the sports.

As is our custom, the early part of March the sports were held for two days. People come for miles around to contest for the valuable and useful prizes that are offered. A spirit of real “sport” is growing, however, and there are some who contend for the joy of the contest rather than for the prize to be gained. This spirit is especially noticeable in our boys who have been at school in the States and have seen real sports in our schools.

If I may be allowed to make a request or two, I would suggest that some of our friends who send us magazines keep the files intact, tying a year’s subscription together, as so many people ask us for magazines that contain the other parts of continued stories.

Some kind friends of my own have been keeping files of McClure’s, Scribner’s, Century, Harper’s, and the World’s Work for several years and when the file is complete they tie them in one bundle and send them to us, and this winter I have had great pleasure in looking through these magazines, month by month. They happened to be two years old, but this did not matter greatly as to the interest with which I read them.

On the Strathcona people have asked me for the Youth’s Companion or the Ladies’ Home Journal of the week or month before that they might read the opening chapters of a continued story.

We are expecting a larger number of student volunteers than ever this summer and will have a very busy season no doubt with all the new work that we have in prospect. We are anxiously awaiting the snow to disappear that we may start our spring work.

Yours very truly,

Jesse Halsey