A. Stewart MacDonald D.F.C., M.D. C..M.

knowing much about how the civil service worked, I was unaware that an overseas veteran, or one with a pension

. had a preference, and I was surprised when, after the interviews, only Dr. Hubert McNeil] and I had our finger- prints taken.

After a couple of weeks, I was informed that I had gotten the position of Senior Pension Medical Examiner (S.P.M.E.) and Senior Treatment Medical Officer, (S.T.M.O.) and that I had to go to Ottawa for further training. I was also allowed to continue going to the Eldon office until a new doctor could be obtained, a circumstance which did not occur until the next spring.

Little did I know that the two positions were run by different departments in Ottawa, and that they were never on good terms. Any time I was called to Ottawa for an extra week’s training on some new method, there was ill feeling in the pension department. The 21C of the treatment which was three floors above the Pension Department wanted me to go up to the Treatment Department to Visit the new head of the department, Dr. Arnold Jones. The Pension Department told me if they wanted to meet me they could call me up to Ottawa. When the 21C heard this, he arranged for me to go to his house for supper and meet Dr. Jones. Dr. Jones was certainly an extrovert. He came into the room and spoke to me as if he had always known me. We always remained good friends.

Dr. Jones was an Orthopaedic Surgeon from Montreal. He was in the army and used to interview the troops. He was telling me about his dog who could add, subtract, multiply, and do square roots by barking the answer. If Dr. Jones said, ”three plus four,” the dog barked seven times. If Dr. Jones said, ”what is the square root of twenty-five?" the dog barked five times, and so on. The soldiers got a great kick from this. He told me the dog was

167