Ronald Rompkey Grenfell of Labrador

Annotation

When the 23-year-old British Doctor Wilfred Grenfell first set foot in Newfoundland in 1892, bent upon serving migrant fishermen, he had no clear idea who his patients were or how they lived there. But his first few weeks on the Labrador coast changed all that. Moved by its natural beauty and the lack of the most elementary comforts, he was seized by a desire for reform and devoted the rest of his life to the task. At first an evangelical missionary of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, Grenfell would become the instrument of philanthropic movements on both sides of the Atlantic and a beloved symbol of unselfish service.