Letters from Northern Alberta (1929-1931) (2006) (338p) [Inua].pdf

Title: Suitable for the Wilds: Letters from Northern Alberta, 1929-1931
Author: Mary Percy Jackson
Editor: Janice Dickin
Paperback: 338 pages
Publisher: University of Calgary Press (Aug 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1-55238-169-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-55238-169-4

As part of its luggage, this phrase carried the idea that the world was opening up to women, offering opportunity and adventure. Mary responded to both these calls. At first, she was interested in a posting to the Women’s Hospital in Calcutta. Due to both demographic and cultural reasons – women having many babies and taboos against male doctors touching them – a couple of years in Calcutta would have given Mary obstetrical experience the equivalent of several years’ practice in England. This appointment, however, was made only every third year and she had a year to kill. Years later, when asked by an interviewer whether her parents were not alarmed at her decision to take a posting to the Canadian frontier, Mary reminded her that she had been planning on going to India.
Her decision to go north, rather than south, came as the result of an advertisement in February 1929, carried in the British Medical Journal. It was, in effect, sending out a call for “New Women.” The job offered was “country work in Western Canada.”

Dr. Jackson has repeatedly said that one of the things prompting her to apply for an interview was the fact that the ability to ride a horse was listed as a distinct advantage. At the time of her application she was working as Casualty House Surgeon at the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and had taken up riding in the park as her only exercise on her half-day off. She thought she was becoming quite good at it. After seven years of hard study, she was eager for more air and fewer people. She also loved mountains and, upon checking an atlas to find that the Rockies were on Alberta’s western border, was even more interested. All in all, it seemed to offer the double attraction of service and adventure. Both of these promises would be borne out. Her adventures were many and within months of her arrival, she wrote, “I wouldn’t come back to England for 1,000 dollars just now! ... I know I’m doing the right job.”
- From the Introduction to the First Edition