“He would be called out to a birth out in the country, and he’d have a team of horses and a big buffalo robe, and on the way home he’d fall asleep and the horses would bring him home.”
Interview with Dale Bridge Williams
August 6, 2015
Dale Bridge Williams shows Jo Stanbridge photos and sketches of her family, particularly of her maternal grandfather, Frederick Ellis Conner.
Born in Gananoque, Frederick Ellis Conner studied medicine at Queen's University in Kingston circa 1895. While working in the hospital in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he met and married Margaret J. Mitchell, who was working there as a nurse.
Frederick and Margaret moved to the neighbouring village of Shellbrook where they practiced medicine and operated a drug store, and where Margaret came to be known to be as capable as her husband, as Dale explains in the audio clip.
They moved back to Ontario about 1920 or 1921 because Margaret wanted their daughter Aileen to have a chance to marry someone other than a farmer. Even the drive to Ontario proved to be full of adventures, as Dale's account shows.