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.

Ronald Rompkey, a biographer, editor and reviewer, is University Research Professor in the Department of English at Memorial University. He has held positions in cultural organizations at both the provincial and national level, including the chairmanship of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council. In 2004, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada.

Ronald Rompkey's profile page

'A portrait of a complex man whose genius was made of equal parts of maddening child and authoritarian adult, Victorian dreamer and twentieth-century achiever.'

Timothy Findley

'A fascinating account of one of the great apostles of muscular Christianity and British cultural imperialism. Hero, healer, saint, dictator, would-be revolutionizer of a whole society -- Rompkey's biography captures him live and whole.'

William Kilbourn

'More than a portrait of a heroic eccentric. There is also a picture of Newfoundland at the turn of the century which reveals it as a haven of uniquely ordered sectarianism. There is an abundance of social history here and all of it worth knowing.'

Globe and Mail