John Gregory was born in 1751 in England and died in 1817 in Montreal. In 1773, he moved to North America, and formed a partnership with fur trader James Finlay, who had considerable experience in the field. On February 22, 1778, Gregory married Isabella Ferguson in Montreal, and they had several children. Little is known of his life as a fur trader, but he did spend some time on the Sturgeon River (Saskatchewan). In 1790, he was named one of the representatives of the North West Company at their annual meeting in Grand Portage, where the wintering partners exchanged their furs for trade goods. Gregory was elected into the Beaver Club in Montreal in 1791.

The Grenfell Labrador Medical Mission was a medical mission led by Wilfred T. Grenfell with the support of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen (the Fishermen’s Mission). In its beginnings in 1892, the mission consisted of a single hospital boat, the Albert, which travelled along the Labrador coast during the summer. Grenfell immediately felt that a more robust program was needed to address the poverty he saw in Labrador and began fundraising in order to offer services that were beyond the scope of the Fishermen’s Mission. Grenfell delivered services to hundreds of fishermen of British descent, as well as some Inuit, Innu, and Southern Inuit people. The next summer, in 1893, Grenfell and his colleagues built the mission’s first hospital in Battle Harbour, Labrador, acquired a second medical vessel, and began work on a second hospital in Indian Harbour. Early supporters of the mission included Sir Donald A. Smith (the first Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal) and Thomas G. Roddick, both of whom donated medical ships.

As the mission grew, its mandate expanded from providing medical services to developing infrastructure and industry that would offer Labrador residents greater autonomy and quality of life. The Fishermen’s Mission withdrew support from the mission in 1912, leading Grenfell to incorporate it as the International Grenfell Association in 1914. Eventually, the headquarters of the mission moved from Battle Harbour to St. Anthony, Newfoundland. In the late 1930s, the mission employed over 60 permanent staff and roughly 100 summer volunteers to run six hospitals, seven nursing stations, and four hospital ships, as well as boarding schools, an orphanage, industrial centres, community farms, and a co-operative sawmill. Grenfell also helped to establish a seamen’s institute in St. John’s Newfoundland, as well as summer schools and co-operative stores that were developed but not run by the mission. The Grenfell Mission’s textile industry had a particularly wide reach; its hooked rugs made with repurposed silk stockings are still considered collector’s items.

Though Grenfell began his fundraising efforts in Canada, he later found greater success in the United States, including recurring speaking engagements at Yale University. Though Grenfell initially highlighted stories about Labrador’s Indigenous peoples, he later shifted his emphasis to the mission’s work with Labrador’s settlers of Anglo-Saxon descent, hoping that their shared heritage would appeal more to potential American donors. The International Grenfell Association continued to provide medical care to Labrador and parts of Newfoundland long after Grenfell retired in 1932, and eventually transferred all its facilities and equipment to the provincial government in 1981. The government health service for Labrador and northern Newfoundland still bears the mission’s name as the Labrador-Grenfell Regional Health Authority.

At least three of the boarding schools run by the mission were part of Canada’s residential school system: Lockwood School in Cartwright, Labrador; St. Anthony Orphanage and Boarding School in St. Anthony, Newfoundland; and Yale School in Northwest River, Labrador. Inuit, Innu, and NunatuKavut survivors of the schools took legal action in 2007 and 2008 to obtain reparations for the abuse, neglect, and erasure of their cultures and languages that they suffered as children enrolled in the schools.

Wilfred Grenfell was a doctor and medical missionary born in Cheshire, England. He studied medicine at London University. After graduating in 1887 he joined the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen (the Fishermen’s Mission), a British charitable organization dedicated to providing material, medical, and spiritual support to fishermen at out sea and settled in remote locations. In 1892, Grenfell lead the first medical mission to Labrador, backed by the Fishermen’s Mission. The mission, later known as the Grenfell Labrador Medical Mission, provided medical support to fishermen stationed along the Labrador coast and to their communities, including some Inuit, Innu, and Southern Inuit communities. Grenfell established Labrador’s first hospital in Battle Harbour in 1893, supplemented by medical vessels that traveled between settlements. In addition to his work as a doctor, Grenfell took an active role in fundraising for the mission, writing books and arranging speaking tours, especially in the United States. In 1909, Grenfell married Anne Elizabeth Caldwell MacClanahan, who took an active role in the mission and with whom he had a daughter and two sons. After the Fishermen’s Mission withdrew their support from the mission in 1912, Grenfell incorporated the organization under the name “Grenfell International Association” in 1914 and continued fundraising efforts. By the time of his retirement in 1932, the mission had expanded to six hospitals and four hospital ships, as well as several nursing stations, boarding schools, a seaman’s institute in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and a number of cooperatives designed to help the fishing communities generate wealth and become more self-sufficient. Grenfell was awarded the Order of St Michael and St George in 1906 and knighted in 1927. He died in 1940 in Vermont.