PARSON AS SURGEON

Southland Times, Issue 20396, 27 January 1928, Page 8

PARSON AS SURGEON

INDIAN’S ARM AMPUTATED. LONG AND TRYING JOURNEY. Vancouver, December 12. An amazing story of how a clergyman acted as surgeon has just filtered through from Northern Saskatchewan. Peter Bird, a treaty Indian of the Lac La Rouge band of Crees, met with a serious accident while hunting on the Bear Mountain, on the north-east side of the lake. Stalking a moose, his gun went off, the whole charge entering the arm, which was almost severed. Owing to ice conditions on the lake, Bird could not be moved to any centre where his wound could be attended to for a fortnight. He was conveyed, not without considerable risk from ice jams, to the Anglican Indian school on the opposite shore, 30 miles distant. The Field Secretary of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, the Rev. A. H. Westgate, happened to be at the school on a visit of inspection, and, after a consultation with an officer of the North-west Mounted Police, who sledded the patient across the lake, amputated the arm, and arranged to have the Indian transported to the nearest hospital at Prince Albert, 250 miles away. The first stage of the journey was 180 miles by canoe, across five lakes and up two rivers, against strong currents and numerous rapids and in continuous heavy rain. It took six days. Four Crees took their wounded tribesman in one canoe, Mr Westgate and Miss Kelly, a school teacher, who was bound for Ireland on furlough, travelling in another. Relays of Indians were obtained on the Red River, and, when 70 miles from Prince Albert, the party fell in with a motor-truck, 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, the devotion of the canoe men, and the chivalry of members of the Forest Patrol and others along the way were in keeping with the highest traditions of the backwoodsman.’-