Country Doctors

Dr. Frank Martin; he was our medical doctor — well, up to the time he passed away. He was quite a character. He bought one of the first cars that was in the community. He bought a car in 1928... . But he was very, very short on the grain and you just had to take him a certain way.

The fella that came after Dr. Martin was Dr. Charlie Johnston. And he was one of the smartest doctors, I guess, ’twas ever in the country.

But I remember one time a cousin of mine in Little Sands — that’d be 20 miles from here — his young boy was in the woods cutting wood and he got his leg cut off... . Dr. Johnston went up and he put the leg together. And I think there was just one cord holding it. And he put it together and the fella got walking again.

But Dr. Johnston went down in January to see him and it was crooked. He got Dr. Brehaut from Murray River to meet him in Little Sands and I took him with a horse and sleigh. It’d be 26 miles from Eldon to Little Sands. And he broke the leg, put it back together, and that boy went in the navy afterwards.

Dr. Brehaut said after the operation, he said, “There was never a man on Prince Edward Island that had the set of hands like Dr. Charlie Johnston.”

Family

There was five in our family. We lost our father when I was two years and a half old. My father was 45 years old when he died, and he had quite a bit of sickness before he died, and we were very poor.

We were fortunate to have a wonderful mother. Every one of the family had a college education but myself. And it wasn’t my mother’s fault. She was bound I was going to go to college but I was bound I was going to go out and make money for her. So, in 1915, my oldest brother went overseas in the First War. I wasn’t of military age at that time and he kept writing to Mother, saying, “Don’t let Cameron go to enlist, whatever you do. One of us is enough over here.”

In 19 16, I was very uneasy. I couldn’t join the army without my mother’s permission, so she said, “To satisfy you, would you like to go out on the harvest excursion? I’ll get by.” But she borrowed the money for me to go out on the harvest excursion. Oh, it’d be 20 or 30 dollars, I guess.

I went out, and my first pay-Cheque was 260 dollars. I sent 200 dollars to my mother and I kept 60 dollars for myself. And myself and another Island boy, we went to the lumberwoods that year in northern Saskat- chewan. We worked there for five months for 45 dollars a month. And we

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