The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2001, Blaðsíða 21

Vol. 56 #3
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
147
Willingdon, of Wales. When Lady
Willingdon opened her house, Emily was
sent there to run it as a hospital. Lady W.
moved into the “small” gatehouse (the
gatekeeper then being in military service),
taking only her butler with her, and leaving
the other servants to help in the hospital, or
to perform other war-related duties. All
furniture was taken out of the house, and
all fine rugs rolled up. In went army cots,
ten to twenty cots per room, and other
hospital equipment. In an impressive dis-
play of support, the whole town turned up
as volunteers, to tend the sick, tend the
grounds, cook and clean.
Wounded were moved in in large num-
bers, and Emily was worked to exhaustion
as matron. In the midst of confusion, a tiny
elderly lady approached to be given
instructions. Emily, not even looking up,
said "You can scrub these floors. There's a
bucket over there—everything has to be
disinfected. The lady got down on her
knees and disinfected ward floors. Day
after day she showed up and resumed her
task.
After several days, the wounded had all
been accomodated, the place had settled
down to routine, and Emily's floor scrub-
ber approached her. Emily was nearing
exhaustion - once again. This time it was an
invitation to tea - at the gatehouse! Lady
Willingdon could see that her supervisor
had worked, around the clock, even harder
than she had done scrubbing her mansion
floors!
At the appointed tea-time, Emily set
out along the path to the gate-house, to
find that the walk was fully five miles!
Lady W. had made the walk, rain or shine,
adding ten miles each day to the task of
scrubbing the floors. They became the best
of friends, with renewed respect for one
another.
Emily spent most of the war at
Willingdon till hospital space was freed up,
then went to a hospital at SouthSea, where
she remained till 1919.
Before leaving Britain, Emily was
invited to London, where she was decorat-
ed for her wartime service by Queen
Alexandra, the Queen Mother.
Homecoming to Wadena
Emily finally came home in an
exhausted state, and got a new job right
away. When a new Wadena hospital was
built in 1919, in Wadena, Dr. Rawlins rec-
ommended her. In those days, the matron
was hospital administrator as well as chief
nurse. Emily found that the hospital com-
mittee, all farmers, had built an entire
building of nothing but bed wards—no
kitchen, no dispensary, no waiting room,
lounge or laundry. Furthermore, the com-
mittee had assumed the matron would be
on duty 24 hours, but provided no room
for her to rest up! Emily made a comment
about “dumb farmers,’’and then proceeded
to re-make the plans of a facility already
built. I always wondered why the waiting
room of the old Wadena hospital was so
very tiny. It was because it was originally
intended as a single-bed patient room—
John Harvard, MP
Charleswood St. James-Assiniboia
Chair, Northern & Western Caucus
3050 Portage Ave.
Winnipeg, MB R3K 0Y1
Ph: (204) 983-4501
Fax: (204) 983-4728
www.johnharvard.com
Room 774 Confederation Bldg.
Ottawa, ON K1A0A6
Ph: (613) 995-5609
Fax: (613) 992-3199
harvaj@parl.gc.ca