The adventures of an early Island veterinarian—and, yes, he made barn calls

When Dr. Maurice Clark moved to PEI in 1953, he was one of only a handful of veterinarians on the Island. He would slog through mud and snow, travelling all over western PEI—treating farm animals while usually attired in a jacket and tie. “It was the thing to do,” he says. “Occasionally they would get quite dirty, too.”

Now 84, Clark is retired—although when I met him at his tidy Kensington home, the living room coffee table displayed copies of the Canadian Veterinary Journal and other publications about animal health

I CAME TO Prince Edward Island in 1953, from Ontario. I had missed the ocean, having gown up in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in the Magdalens.

When I first got here there were five new veterinarians, I believe, recruited by the provincial department of agriculture. It quickly changed to four—veterinarians would come for a brief time. After getting stuck in the mud a few times or storm-stayed in a blizzard somewhere, they would head off somewhere else.

There was nothing established. We had no offices, no clinics to operate from, no lab service, x-rays, none of the things that we have become dependent on. All we had was a carry-all case, some instruments and syringes, stomach tubes for horses and cattle, and odds and sods like that—things you could carry in the trunk of a car. Everything was begun from scratch. The department of agriculture paid an annual subsidy that was supposed to supplement your income but really only tied you to a very low fee schedule.

For two years I was alone, all by myself in the western part of the province. Then my old classmate Russ Furness decided to move to PEI from Pennsylvania, and we formed a partnership here in Kensington.

Providing service to a territory that ran 100 miles east to west, and the full width of the Island, kept us very busy. And of course, depending on the time of year, how you got to some of the calls varied greatly. In summer and fall it was pretty easy going. But November was always a bear-cat—loads of rain and mud everywhere. There were just two bands of pavement: one that went to Summerside, and one that went to Charlottetown. Everything else was mud road.

In the course of the year, you could do calls by car, truck, Jeep, snowmobile, snowplow, a few by air, and a few by boat.

Sometimes I would fly with Elton Woodside—he was known as “the flying farmer.” He had a landing strip east of Kensington here. His major contract was delivering mail to Pictou Island, but any excuse was good enough for a flight. One winter, we were totally snowed in and he took me up to Alberton, in the northwestern part of the Island, a couple of times. I don’t recall any money having changed hands. He just loved to fly.

Once—I guess this would be in the late 1950s—the federal government hired me to do a test for tuberculosis and brucellosis in the whole region here. You needed somebody with you to restrain an animal while you got a blood sample, and I was working with a high school student called Lee Sudsbury.

One time we got to an area where the road was blocked with snow, so we borrowed a horse and sleigh. We did what we had to do, but by the time we returned the horse, it was snowing and the wind was coming up. We couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of us. At Stanley Bridge, the roads were totally blocked, so we left the Jeep and started on foot.

We decided to head for New London, where there was a telephone central operated by the Campbell family. Lee and I got there by about seven o’clock, and Mr. Campbell was milking his cow. He hitched up a horse and gave us a ride to Ivan Pickering’s, and then we borrowed a horse from Ivan and started towards Kensington, which would be three miles or so, but the horse got bogged down in the snow.

We had coveralls on that were wet; the temperature had dropped and the coveralls had frozen. They were almost like in a mini suit of armour. You’d move your arm and hear the ice break on the coveralls.

Eventually, we managed to get the horse into a neighbouring barn, and the family put us up for the night.

Another time after a call, I walked eight or eight-and-a-half miles home, through many snowbanks that were 10 or 12 feet high. It was quite a hike.

Mostly I would treat cattle, horses, a lot of swine, some sheep, a bit of poultry, and that was about it. We got an occasional dog to spay, a few to inoculate against distemper, but very little in the way of pets. By the ‘60s, though, pets were becoming sufficient in volume that we’d hold a couple of office hours a week in the evening.

In the course of my career, I easily would have done 30 or 40 thousand farm visits. Sometimes it was for a single animal, but it wouldn’t be unusual to treat something else that you would observe when you were there. Occasionally, it might be a major outbreak and you might have 50 animals to treat or prescribe for.

I suppose the total number of animals I saw would likely range into the hundreds of thousands.

Back in ’71, herd health was brought in as part of the veterinary program, and a laboratory was to be established. I was approached to see if I would join the department of agriculture and help with that. Setting up a laboratory required staff, which we didn’t have, so I went back to veterinary school in Guelph, Ont, for a full calendar year in pathology and diagnostics. We managed to get money to build a lab and equip it, and a budget to staff it.

Around that time there was talk about a fourth veterinary school for Canada. I was president of the provincial veterinary association in ’72-73, and we stayed out of the very heated argument about whether another school was really necessary. We just put together our very best argument for our location: Should there be another school, we have the spot for it.

We listed in minute detail all the things we had to offer to a new school—not only a sustainable agricultural animal population, but fair-sized communities with lots of pet work by this time. Plus our coastal proximity offered great advantages for people in marine work.

Eventually, a delegation came to visit us, and we showed them around and fed them some good Island food and they seemed duly impressed. And eventually it did take hold.

I stayed with the department until the late ’70s, and then I went back to private practice—I was fed up with bureaucracy.

Certainly some things had changed in private practice. The number of farms was down, but the average size of the herd was up. We no longer had herds of eight or 10 or 12 cows, which we had a lot of, back in the early days. Also, pet practice was growing even more, taking up more time. I had no great background or experience in pet medicine, so there was quite a learning curve for me in that area.

Over the years, knowledge of animal health has improved tremendously. Some of the old-timers would say to me, “We never heard of these diseases until you guys came around here.” I used to joke, “We brought them with us!” There’s also been tremendous progress in the antibiotic world.

By the time I retired, in 1997, there were hundreds of vets on Prince Edward Island. The vet school at UPEI was going full blast by then, too.

My granddaughter is studying science, and her desire is to go on to veterinary medicine. It’s satisfying to see her following the same path.