Meet Dr. Horace Wrinch...			...Hazelton pioneer

The non-Native population began to grow. Dr. and Mrs. Wrinch moved to Hazelton in 1903. They built a house and the doctor made most of the furniture for it. The house also served as a medical facility until the Hazelton hospital opened a year later. The people of Gitanmaax donated 99 acres of their reserve land. The hospital was funded jointly by the Metropolitan Church of London, Ontario and by the local community. It began with twenty beds, two nurses, a housekeeper, a handy- man, and Dr. Wrinch. The first addition was built in 1907, in response to the population boom caused by the railway construction.

use BACK button to return Dr. Wrinch with graduating nurses

In 1904, Dr. Wrinch initiated the nurses' training programme, which continued until 1932, complete with residence. One of its graduates was Constance Hankin, the first non-Native girl born in the Upper Skeena region. In 1910, Dr, Wrinch was ordained as a minister and added pastoral duties to his workload. He drew on his experience of farming to establish a vegetable garden to provide food for the patients. Later, fruit trees, chickens and dairy cows were added. In 1914, the community raised $7 000 to purchase X-ray equipment - the identical model used in the Mayo Clinic. No local fundraising project ever failed to reach its target. In 1931, a new hospital was opened and in that year the World's Hospital Convention in Toronto named Hazelton as one of the ten best hospitals in all of Canada. Dr. Wrinch continued to travel great distances to serve patients in outlying areas. He was accustomed to performing surgery on kitchen tables and never lost a patient. On one occasion he removed an 80-pound tumour from the body of a woman who lived on for another twenty years.

The Nurses Residence

During the devastating Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, he was often seen, wrapped in furs, snatching a brief nap in his cutter at the side of the road; he always appeared for duty at 6:30 the next morning. More than fifty people in the Hazeltons caught the disease and all but four survived. This was a significantly higher success rate than in most areas of the world stricken by the epidemic.