Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book was an impulse buy, but it was fun. As a young woman, a recent graduate of nursing school in Vancouver, BC, Ms. Harold landed a job at a pretty good $90/month, it being 1935 and during the Depression! The only catch: She would be working on a remote island north of Vancouver, teaching and nursing in a First Nation's village. It was lonely, it was cold, transportaton was as likely to kill you as transport you and people her own age were hard to find. However, she remained for two years, made friends and found a new understanding of the independent, interesting people from all over the world who found their way to this remote patch in the Canadian Pacific. In writing her memoir, Ms. Harold did not sugar-coat her youthful reactions to circumstances through the hindsight of the over 50 years which passed between the time of her service and her telling of the tale. Her incredible poise when faced with the conditions she must work and live in is a real testimant to her determination and sense of adventure. (As often happens, or did before letter writing became a threatened art...saved letters to her mother during that time filled in many details she might have forgotten when she came to write the book.) I enjoyed this very much.
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Hughina Harold paints a powerful picture of a world that no longer exists in this compelling first-hand account of her experiences as a young teacher/nurse in a remote B.C. village in the 1930s. Fresh from nursing school in Victoria and eager to get started in her career, Harold could not have imagined the challenges that awaited her on isolated Village Island on B.C.'s majestic coast. When she left her home in Victoria to share with two elderly missionaries a drafty, leaky floathome that tilted with the tides, the clash of cultures "Miss B." experienced could not have been more extreme. Ferried in unreliable boats to remote outposts to treat the sick, attending births in the most primitive conditions, and teaching-from standard, middle-class textbooks-children who had never even seen a car, this gutsy young woman "witnessed things that should not be forgotten." Totem Poles and Tea-now updated with original photos from the Harold family collection-ensures that they will not.
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