Looking back over forty years, I remember our kitchen at home in Souris filled with an air of anticipation and the same smells of Christmas baking that come to every home this time of year. Parcels were slipped into the house and hidden away. Now and then there was a rustle of tissue paper and frantic cries of, "Don't come in. I'm wrapping your parcel, and don't you dare peak." As always, just before Christmas, we were barred from playing in our favourite place, the basement, so we knew that our Dad was busy making a toy in his workshop there. The set up itself was a master creation with tools of every kind, each in its place in a tray in a drawer or hanging from the wall. There was a hardwood bench with a lathe and circular and band saws. The sawdust and curls of planed wood lay all around.

We didn't know it then but the toy was to be a doll's bed for my sister, Nora, but she nearly didn't get it. As my father pushed a small board through the band saw with his left hand, the saw cut off his thumb just back of the nail. It was in the evening and my mother was away. Doctor Augustus MacDonald, known as Doctor Gus to everyone was away at the time but Doctor Alfred Smallwood, our local dentist at the time and a friend of my father's, came quickly. When Doctor Gus arrived shortly after, Doctor Smallwood found the missing tip of the thumb on the hardwood bench in the basement and it was sewed back on.

I vividly recall going into my father's bedroom the next morning and seeing his bandaged thumb at the end of his outstretched hand on the outside of the covers. But even to lean over the bed and jar it, was painful to him. Later each day as he came home to dinner and again in the evening, he would soak the knarled black lump that was his thumb in lysol and hot water and scrape it. If there were any doubts or worries I don't recall hearing them. But I do remember the main thing was that there was feeling in the tip of the thwnb, the part that bad been sewed on.

I've never told the story very often. It sounds too much like a tall tale but we at our house know it is true and, of course, in Eastern Kings we know of far greater things that our Doctor Gus was able to do.

Neil Matheson in an article in The Medical Post of November 22, 1966 wrote this: "A neighbor, Roy McLean, cut off his thumb one night as he used the saw in his basement hobby workshop. The doctor picked the thumb from the shavings, washed it carefully and stuck it back on. When the time came to remove the splints, his sense of humour got the better of Dr. Gus. He startled his friend momentarily when he said with feigned horror: "Good Lord, Roy, I put your thumb on I backwards."

I asked my sister if she got her doll's bed that year and she tells me, "Yes, I got it that Christmas painted a bright red. " It must have been nearly finished at the time of the accident and he was able to complete it in time for Christmas. Wouldn't you think the familywould have treasured the doll's bed as an heirloom but no. It was used and played with until It fell apart and I guess that is what toys are for.

The picture of Doctor Gus was taken by Neil Matheson and shows the doctor in his home holding the lustre jug given to him by the McCormack family of St. Margarets as payment for a far greater operation. The mortar and pestle and glasses were used by his great granduncle, the Island's first English speaking doctor who came from Scotland in 1772. The large gold watch belonged to the Island's second Roman Catholic Bishop and the handkerchief in the left foreground was used by Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first premier, whose work Dr. Gus always admired.

Copyright
Waldron H. Leard