Do you remember the Grenfell Mission? If so, Heidi Coombs-Thorne would like to talk to you.
Heidi is a postdoctoral researcher with Memorial University, working on a history of the Grenfell Mission in Labrador. She is looking at the relationship between the Grenfell Mission and the Inuit-Metis of Southern Labrador (1939-81).
"I'm particularly interested in the 'patient perspective' of the Mission and the experience of living under such an influential organization," she says. "Through my own earlier research, I noticed that most (if not all!) of the histories of the Grenfell Mission focus on the Mission's perspective and use exclusively Mission documents and sources. That approach omits the patients' voice and leaves a huge untold part of the history. So I'm hoping to find out what it was like to be patients of the Grenfell Mission and how the people felt about the Grenfell Mission in general."
Heidi will be conducting interviews with people who remember the Mission in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, July 3-7 2013. If you would like to participate, please contact her at hthorne@mun.ca or 709-763-4416.
Photo: Dr. Hare at Harrington Hospital from the Vashti Bartlett Photograph Collection
