CLERIC AS DOCTOR

Evening Star, Issue 19772, 24 January 1928, Page 5

CLERIC AS DOCTOR

AN AMAZING JOURNEY. An a maxing story of how a clergyman acted ns surgeon has just filtered through from Northern Saskatchewan. Peter Bird, a treaty Indian of the Lac La Rouge hand of Crees, met with a serious accident while hunting on tho Boar Mountain, on the north-east sido of the lake. Stalking a moose, his gun vent off, tho whole charge entering the arm, which was almost_ severed. Owing to the conditions on the lake, Bird could not he moved to any centre where Ids wound could be attended to for a fortnight. Ho was conveyed, not without considerable risk from ice jams, to the Anglican Indian school on the opposite shore, thirty miles distant. The Field Secretary of tho Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, Rev. A. H. Westgate, happened to bo at the school on a visit of inspection, and, after a consultation with an olfi-Ti- of tho Northwest Mounted Police, who sledded the patient across tho lake, amputated the arm, and arranged to have the Indian transported to the nearest hospital at Prince Albert. 250 miles away. Tho first stage of Die journey was ISO miles, by canoe, across five lakes and up two rivers, against strong currents and numerous rapids and in con. tinnous heavy rain. _ It reek six days. Four Crees took their wounded tribesman in one canoe. Mr Westgate and Miss Kelly, a school teacher, who was hound for* 1 Ireland on furlough, travelling in another. Relays of Indians wore obtained on the Red River, and, when seventy miles from Prince Albert. the party fell in with a motortruck, driven by a Forestry Department employee, who undertook at once to carry the wounded man the remaining part of the journey. “Throughout a long and trying period,” said Mr Westgate, “the Cree was never heard to complain. He carried with him the remains of a tattered New Testament, given him many years before by a missionary, and appeared to prize it more than anything else. His patience and fortitude under acute suffering, tho devotion of the canoe men, and the chivdry of members of the Forest Patrol and others along the way were in keeping with the highest traditions of the backwoodsman.”