I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but in our new season in Newfoundland,
I've been working very hard to make sure that our videos are a little less preachy than they were in Albania.
It's just that when you have a soap box, it's really hard not to stand on it.
But the best lessons are always learned from examples, not preaching.
And luckily for me, today's example is a preacher.
Probably the only preacher who ever had to flay dogs to survive though.
I want to tell you the story of a hero of Newfoundland.
If this were the turn of the 20th century, I probably wouldn't even have to tell you this story.
Chances are you'd know the name Wilfred Grenfell.
Maybe you saw him in a newspaper, maybe he came to your town to talk,
maybe one of your cousins volunteered on his boat.
He was kind of a famous guy.
But I'm not telling this story because people knew his name.
I'm sure there are many bigger people from many smaller places.
I'm telling this story because everything that Wilfred Grenfell earned in this world,
he got through the service of others.
Wilfred Grenfell was a good man.
Actually, that's bit of an understatement.
My barber is a good man.
Wilfred Grenfell was phenomenal.
He pushed the boundaries on what a good man could be.
He spent the bulk of his life in some of the harshest terrain on the planet,
for no other reason than he felt the people there deserved better lives.
There are few places more rugged than the coastline of the Belle Isle strait,
the small spit of ocean between Newfoundland and Labrador.
On these shores, frigid, windswept rocks lay bare before the Arctic mist.
Here, the wind never stops blowing.
Gusts that can knock a man over quickly numb any skin that dares remain exposed.
The winters here see minus 20 and the summers barely push above 10.
And that's before wind chill.
If you've never been to a place like this, you have no idea what it means to feel cold.
Even the landscape itself speaks to how difficult it is to live here.
Sparsely needled pine trees grow out of the craggy bogs,
barely a metre long and bent over in the wind like an old rice farmer.
Small, personal plots of ragged looking vegetables line the roads.
It's the only place there's enough accessible dirt to plant them.
You can see why the Vikings liked it so much.
But if you lived here a hundred years ago, your life would have been as rugged as the landscape around you.
In most of these communities, there would have been no roads, no hospitals, no schools,
no shops, not even money.
The only thing here is what kept those fishermen going back out to sea.
A shack to sleep in, a dock to hold your traps, and a lighthouse to keep you alive.
Everything else, you figured out real-time.
If you broke your leg, you dealt with it.
Or you died.
If your appendix burst, you dealt with it.
Or you died.
If you fell in the water even once, chances are you wouldn't get a second chance.
Being a fisherman was already one of the most dangerous professions on earth,
and this was one of the most dangerous places to be it.
In 1892, four years after he'd received his medical degree, Wilfred Grenfell applied to join the Fisherman's Mission,
a Christian organization that provided the basics of healthcare
and religious support to the thousands of suffering fisherman inhabiting the many nooks
and crannies of the then massive British Empire.
The Mission, which was started by a man named Ebenezer
who I only mention because his beard absolutely lives up to the expectations his name lays down,
outfitted old fishing boats with a mobile surgical unit, and then sent them with a doctor-cum-priest
to join the many fleets around the globe.
Sort of like an imperialistic spiritual predecessor to Doctors Without Borders,
except where the doctors were also kind of expected to fish a little on the side.
When Grenfell arrived here, I can only imagine how quickly the gravity of his situation would have set in.
There would have been thousands of people who had been forgoing medical care for months,
if not years.
Any cove his floating hospital arrived in, he'd find more need than he could ever possibly meet alone.
In his first summer in Labrador, he attended to over 900 patients across a coastline a thousand kilometers long.
That's like someone in Copenhagen and Milan having the same dentist.
But it didn't deter him.
Some people brace for the wind, and some turn to face it.
The worse things were, the stronger his resolve to better them.
He spent that first winter home speaking publicly about the situation back in Newfoundland,
talking to newspapers and wealthy benefactors and raising as much money as he could.
With the funds he brought in, by his second summer, he'd hired a pair nurses and doctors,
and started laying the foundations for Labrador's first year-round hospital.
By his third year, with another hospital underway, and now administering over 2,000 kilometers by dogsled,
Grenfell realized that there was more to well-being than simply patching up wounds when they came.
A sound being requires more than just fish and drink to stay healthy.
It requires entertainment.
Music, books, children, even.
Community.
So he started to build libraries and schools.
He built community centres, orphanages, farms and shops.
His goal was nothing less than providing a decent life for every man, woman and child of the Belle Isle strait.
It was his mission from God.
Or at the very least, his mission from Ebenezer.
Grenfell wanted to fix everything about Labrador.
Like stairs of virtue, every step he took forward was another step up.
From a single man of God on a refitted fishing vessel, he became an institution on the land.
A pillar of the community in the truest sense of the term.
And as his ambition grew, the Fisherman's Mission made it clear that they could no longer afford
what he'd aimed to achieve.
Their mandate was to provide God and gauze to the fishermen.
Not to become the centre of the community itself.
As they went their separate ways, Grenfell was forced to step up his fundraising efforts.
He conducted speaking tours of Canada, the United States, the UK and Saint John's.
He offered volunteer positions to wealthy young students looking for adventure,
and succeeded in drawing in some of the largest names in American philanthropy.
Nelson Rockefeller volunteered here.
So did B.F. Goodrich.
The donations his talks drew brought more positive development to Labrador
than almost anyone before or since.
But no matter which town he arrived in, whether speaking to students or businessmen,
he always told the same story.
In Easter, 1908, a boy was sick on the extreme rural coast of Newfoundland.
And rather than take the long, safe route, Grenfell cut across the harbor and rode along the ice.
But he'd read the weather wrong.
And by the time the ice began to melt, there was nothing he could do.
He tried to get back to land, but the slush gave out between his feet.
Grenfell and his dogs plunged again and again into the frozen icy water,
grabbing at whatever hard ice they could find to get back above the shoreline.
But it wasn't enough.
The ice broke free and floated away.
And hypothermic, staring death in the face, he turned to his dogs and shoved his knife into their necks.
One by one he skinned them, and wrapped himself in their bleeding fur.
And with the remaining parts of their bodies, he built a small signal for any passing fisherman to see.
And I know what you're thinking.
Gross.
And by some grace of God, fisherman did find him.
Gross or not, it saved his life.
And because he was Wilfred Grenfell, as soon as he was done burying those dogs, he went back to work.
Two days after he basically died on an ice floe and he was at a bedside treating a patient.
The reason I tell that story is because when you think about the people in that audience, right?
Hearing that all firsthand.
There's a man you've never met before pitching a volunteer opportunity
by telling you that the landscape where it takes place is so unforgiving that he once had to slaughter his pets
just so he could live inside their carcasses for a moment.
And it takes a particular type of individual to hear that story and think, "ooh sign me up".
But more seriously, he was clearly a charismatic guy.
It's hard to make yourself rich and famous while sailing a hospital ship in the Canadian Arctic
without being at least a little good with words.
And more than that, it's hard to make yourself rich and famous while being a good person, period.
This guy spent his life giving back, and yet he retired with presumably millions.
Not from graft or corruption, but genuine action.
He looked out for others, and in turn the world looked out for him.
In these waters he found purpose, challenge, heartache and triumph.
He found a life worth living.
That's why I tell this story.
Because he got ahead, pretty much as far as he ever expected to go,
and he got there entirely through service to man.
Now, I'm certain that Wilfred wasn't perfect.
He was human, no more or less than the rest of us.
Few who met him were willing to find fault, but I'm sure he had some.
I'm guessing the fame got to his head, he probably suffered a little bit of culture shock with the Inuit,
and his doctorate made him seem aloof to some of the lesser educated locals.
But I think you'll agree that none of that holds a candle to what he did.
It's incredibly rare that you come across a story of someone who just did good.
Who dedicated their entire life to reducing the misery of complete strangers.
And sure, maybe he did it because he thought that's what God wanted.
Maybe he did it because he thirsted for adventure.
But no matter his reasons why, he did it.
And in turn, he lived a great life.
And all preaching aside, that's pretty cool.
This is Rare Earth.
It's rare that you come across the story of someone who just did good.
Who completely dedicated themselves to 'reduzing' the mystery... ugh... 'reduzing' the mystery. Wow! Huh! It's cold.
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