by Andrew Taylor
Winnipeg
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For many years Dr. John Henry Richard Bond and his wife, Annie, occupied an unattractive two-storey house they had purchased at 167 Donald Street on their arrival in Winnipeg. It lay on the east side of the street, just north of Broadway. The structure was a box-like building faced with dull red insull brick siding, and graced with a ginger-breaded verandah across the front, which extended close to the street line.
Dr. John Henry Bond, circa 1901.
Source: First Aid Bulletin, 1924, p. 5.
They had come from Chicago in 1903, a middle aged couple of about 45. He secured his membership in the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons the year of their arrival, and later became a charter member of the Manitoba Medical Association.
For the greater part of my life I have had an enthusiastic interest in Arctic history, and my curiosity about Dr. Bond developed from that source. I was offered a very small carton of books about twenty years ago. Some had no name attached to them, but others had belonged to John Bond, of whom at that time I had never heard. Scanning a dog-eared manuscript journal, I noticed that it recorded a journey down the Mackenzie River at the end of the last century. That was all I needed to conclude the purchase.
Rather casually I began making inquiries around the city to discover what I could about John Bond, and it added up to very little. His two medical associations provided the few vital statistics commonly found in obituaries.
Of course, the obvious place to have started was the Manitoba Archives, where they have information about everyone. I had by this time examined the Mackenzie River journal more carefully and discovered that it recorded the travels and adventures of five Americans (including Bond) who had made a trip to the Klondike from Edmonton to Dawson City in 1898-99. Surely the Archives would have a file on a Winnipeg doctor who was also a Klondiker in the days of the gold rush. But, no! The Archives had a file on Bond, but it was on Annie Bond, who had established the Children’s Hospital in Winnipeg in 1909. The people in the Archives had a photograph of her portrait done in pastels in 1922 by the distinguished western Canadian portraitist Nicholas Grandmaison. They knew nothing about Dr. J. H. R. Bond. They did not know that he was a Klondiker. They did not know that he was Annie Bond’s husband. In fact, I don’t think they knew she had a husband.
Dawson City, Yukon, around the time of Bond’s arrival in July of 1899.
Source: Provincial Archives of British Columbia
But I persisted and somewhere along the way, I discovered that he was a graduate of Edinburgh University. So, I wrote to its archivist, and was informed that Bond had been born in Portsmouth in 1859, that he was an Edinburgh graduate in Medicine (1881), and that he had gone to Edinburgh from the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon. This was a school established by government officers (both civil and military) who were serving overseas on limited salaries which prevented despatching their sons for “old school tie” educations. At the United Services College, the boys could secure comparable educations, for it was patterned after Eton and Winchester. Its discipline was exceedingly strict, and it was run like a military college. Some extremely distinguished graduates came from that school, including Rudyard Kipling, who refers extensively to the school’s activities in his autobiography, Something of Myself, (1937) and in one of his novels, Stalky and Company, (1899).
The smaller of the two manuscript journals in my little collection was a very brief account of a journal aboard a New Zealand schooner—the Hurunui—in 1882. It covered a voyage from London to New Zealand, and had been written by the ship’s surgeon—Dr. John H. R. Bond. This long sea voyage started immediately after his graduation, and appears to have been related to a pulmonary ailment he had contracted in the years he spent at “Auld Reekie” while earning his degrees—M.B.,C.M.—at Edinburgh.
The vessel arrived at Christchurch in New Zealand after a voyage of 96 days. He found employment there almost immediately as surgeon in Auckland General Hospital. He also found the Matron at the Hospital a most attractive and interesting young woman of 24—Annie Alice Crisp. They became close friends.
Annie was two years older than John, having been born to a farming couple in Warwickshire in 1857. She began her nursing career as a student in Birmingham Hospital. She later became a military nurse at Netley Hospital near Southampton, a hospital initiated by Florence Nightingale following the Crimean War.
Annie was one of ten young nurses posted to the Middle East and South Africa. They became the first British nurses to serve with troops in the field. She is reported to have attended fighting troops in Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa, and had campaign medals to prove it.
Meanwhile, her father became unwell in England, and, in search of a more salubrious climate he and his wife emigrated to New Zealand. Following the conclusion of the South African wars, Annie was aboard ship, bound to join her newly widowed mother, when the London Gazette announced that she was among the ten nurses who were to be awarded Queen Victoria’s newly minted Red Cross Medal at Buckingham Palace. Of course, she could not attend, but later the medal was presented to her by the Governor General of New Zealand at a special investiture.
The Auckland Hospital was quite a large institution having about 100 beds. John had been promoted to Head Surgeon and, as they seemed to be running the place, he and Annie decided to get married. This they did on 27 October 1888.
Among the collection of Bond books in my possession are two printed volumes. One was published in London, and seems to be a ceremonial manual connected with the Masons. Part of its extremely long title is The Perfect Ceremonies of the Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch. It is dated 1877 and extends to 112 pages. The second volume was published in New Zealand in 1885, and is entitled Ambulance Service. A Manual of Instructions Adapted to the use of Volunteers. It was published by A. Simpson, Christchurch, in 1885. Both are small red books, and each bears the signature of “John H. R. Bond. M.B., C.M.”
Bond was extremely active in the Masons in New Zealand. In the announcement of his imminent departure for America in 1890, the following eulogy was published:
... We take this opportunity of bearing testimony of the high esteem in which you have been held for your integrity as a citizen, your skill as a physician, your zeal as a Mason, and your loyalty for the highest prize that Masonry can bestow, the Master’s Chair ... (District Grand Lodge, Auckland.)
Annie and John sailed from New Zealand on 6 October 1890 aboard the 1700 ton Zealandia bound for San Francisco. The ship stopped briefly at Honolulu, then proceeded directly to her objective, arriving there on 6 October. Dr. Bond made brief daily entries on this voyage in the same log book in which he recorded his own trip from London to New Zealand in 1882.
It is presumed they headed directly to Chicago, where Annie was reported to have a brother actively engaged in the development of the Pullman car for use on the railroads. They found a residence in Chicago at 123 - 51st Boulevard, where they lived, as far as I know, for the next thirteen years, establishing a private practice there.
Great excitement was rampant in Chicago at this time, as it was the site of the World’s Columbian exposition. This included a British exhibit, which was given in charge of Mrs. Annie Bond. She met many of the exhibits’ visitors, among whom were quite a number from Winnipeg. They highly recommended the city to her. Coupled with John’s knowledge of it from his brief visit, they decided to move there ten years later. It is not known if they visited Winnipeg during the interval. Chicago’s industrial smoke may still have been worrisome to John.
Chicago was a busy industrial centre in those days, which probably caused a recurrence of the lung trouble from which Dr. Bond had suffered in Edinburgh. This time, he prescribed a much more arduous cure than the voyage he had previously enjoyed. He joined the group of four Chicagoans previously mentioned who were heading for the Klondike. It is this journey that his important journal of 1898-99 covers.
He wrote it in a shiny black covered exercise book, measuring nine by seven inches, and three quarters of an inch thick. It contained something less than three hundred lined pages, of which he used 180. It lies before me now as I write, and is unquestionably the most important item in the very few of Dr. Bond’s papers still extant. It has had a rather precarious life since he purchased it just before their departure from Edmonton.
His handwriting is small, but neat. It is obvious that Bond wrote hurriedly, as is habitual with most medical men whose minds operate far faster than their hands can transcribe their thoughts. The first entry was inscribed on Monday, 23 May, 1898. Bond wrote: “Sent good-bye telegram at 2:30 p.m. Left Edmonton at 3:30 p.m. for Athabasca Landing.” It is written in pencil for the first 19 pages then suddenly, the inscriptions are in ink. They continue in ink until near the end of October 29th (p. 75), by which time the temperature had dropped to -33 degrees F., so the ink bottle froze up! All the remaining entries are in pencil.
The date of the party’s departure from Chicago is not recorded, but we do know that they travelled north-west to St. Paul by train, then north to Winnipeg. There Bond was given his first sight of his future home—a rowdy, muddy, rapidly growing little town.
I had assumed at first that in order to get to the Klondike the men would have gone directly west to Edmonton, but I was wrong. They went to Calgary first and then north to Edmonton.
In the Edmonton Bulletin of May 23, 1898, I found the only printed reference I have seen to Bond’s Klondike journey. It read:
Dr. J. H. R. Bond, E. B. G. Torch, H. A. Duggan, A. Bennett, and H. Allen, from Chicago, expect to start out today for the landing (Athabasca). They take three boats.
The little group travelled overland from Edmonton by horses and wagons as far as Athabasca Landing. The voyagers had acquired about seven tons of supplies and equipment when they began their two thousand mile journey. Everything was loaded onto three wagons drawn by teams of horses. They arrived at the Landing six days later, reloading everything into the three small boats, on one of which Bond had painted a name—the Annie A. (after Annie Alice Bond). They had had to paint and caulk the boats beforehand, but before they got away, they decided to dispense with the boats in favour of a scow, which most other travellers were using. The Hudson’s Bay Company had a store there, and there was also another—Ross’s Store. They had spent a week at the Landing before finally starting in their heavily loaded scow on 6 June. Some of the heaviest items in their cargo were pieces of mining equipment.
Nothing specific is mentioned in the journal concerning the relationship of Bond to the group, but one gathers in reading through it that he had been hired as their medical man, to provide professional care and attention in case any of them fell ill or suffered injury.
Running the scow through the rapids of these swift flowing uncharted northern rivers was at times extremely hazardous. They were full of exposed rocks and even more dangerous submerged ones. The men from Chicago seemed to know little about handling boats. But the man from Portsmouth could not have avoided learning a very great deal about them. Consequently, the party began to rely more and more upon their doctor’s judgment in deciding between running a rapid or unloading their cargo and portaging everything to the foot of the white waters. In that latter instance, the empty scow would be let down by a line held taut by the boatmen along the shore. Usually, when they came to a rapid without completely reliable information before hand, Bond would walk along the bank beside it, accompanied by one of his men (Torch most frequently), and they would size up the watery prospect together. That Bond’s judgment was good is evidenced by the fact that they never had a bad accident with their scow, although there were a few instances in which it was well filled by the rough waters that spilled into it. Running these rapids must have been a thrilling and exhilarating experience for all.
Although the route they had chosen to follow to the Klondike was by no means the easiest of a number of available routes, they had plenty of company as they swept downstream, occasionally with the aid of a sail. They passed and re-passed other scows, and quite often chose to camp ashore with them. In the evening round the campfire the “oral history” flew thickly: (this is a modern euphemism for what was commonly known as b.s. in the old days). They called at all the Hudson’s Bay posts along the way, as well as those of private traders and missionaries.
On 6 September, they reached Fort Norman and were well on their way on their journey, having sailed more than 1500 miles along the Athabasca and Mackenzie Rivers, and across the chain of great lakes beaded along their route.
Their next course was westward up the Gravel (later the Keele) River to a pass in the Richardson Mountains, before descending along the Stewart and its tributaries into the valley of the Yukon River. This was a leg of the journey on which they had no further need of their scow. They joined a large tent camp on the west bank of the Mackenzie River, and began the task of building several heavy sledges from the timbers in their scow, on which they could haul their equipment and supplies up the extremely rough and steep valley of the Gravel River.
Their only power to move these sledges was manpower. I did some man-hauling in the Antarctic years ago, and have always felt it would be difficult to find a more soul destroying labour than plodding endlessly up a snow field pulling a load of several hundred pounds.
Bond estimated the distance from Fort Norman to Stewart City on the Yukon to be about 650 miles, half of which would be uphill. They had to relay their loads from one tent camp to the next. They could only carry about a quarter of the total load at a time, so he considered they travelled the distance eight times in making the entire move. It was extremely arduous labour, and they seemed to move at a snail’s pace. They lost about four days by storms and blizzards. And they discovered they could live without some of the heaviest items in their freight, among which were weighty pieces of mining equipment, which had already cost then much blood, sweat and tears. They spent the entire winter at the task, arriving at the pass in the Richardson Mountains on 21 April, 1899, where another carpentry camp was assembling another scow for each party to enable them to continue the journey west down the long slope of the Stewart River into the Yukon River. Timber had to be found and cut by hand into boards with crosscut saws.
Bond’s little party had been together at this point for nearly a year, engaged in seemingly endless and exhausting labours. Their patience and tolerance were wearing a little thin. Tempers became short. On one occasion, Bond was attacked by one of his companions, who had a knife in his hand. A struggle ensued, and he managed to subdue the man before anyone was injured. But it was a sign that the journey should end as soon as possible. They reached Stewart City on the Yukon on 29 July, supplementing their monotonous diet with freshly caught salmon. A couple of days later they reached Dawson City.
The last entry in the journal in pencil is a brief one on 7 August, 1899. Bond was evidently busy visiting some of his colleagues in hospital. A few brief entries in ink, made aboard ship in early September, completed Bond’s record of the trip. He returned south to Seattle, and then travelled east to Chicago by train to be reunited with his wife. The trip seemed to have served Bond’s purpose, for I have found no reference to any recurrence of trouble with his lungs, and he was destined to live many more years before his long and active life ended. The date of his return to Chicago was not recorded, but it was probably towards the end of September, 1899.
Annie was an active industrious woman of forty when her husband had left her in Chicago for the Klondike. She had not been idle. When John departed perhaps rather hurriedly, he left his medical practice in charge of a colleague. Annie’s experienced eye soon noticed that it was being neglected and it became essential that she do something. She took the rather drastic step of removing it from that doctor’s hands, and then ran the practice herself, which from her long well of experience she was quite capable of doing. She turned it back to her husband upon his return.
In 1903, they made the transfer, exchanging the murky atmosphere of Chicago, for the pure air of Winnipeg, broken only by disenchanting aromas of abattoirs, and occasional steaming horse-turds.
As mentioned, they set up shop at 167 Donald Street, where Dr. Bond began his Winnipeg practice, in conjunction with a 4-bed private hospital on the upper floor. The Bonds became active in both the social and professional life of the city. They belonged to several golf and country clubs, most of which lay on the outskirts of the city. He took great pride in polishing the brass radiator of the Ford car that he had acquired. They went for plenty of walks along the banks of the Assiniboine, towards the west end of the city onto Maryland Bridge. He enjoyed lawn bowling, and like most Englishmen, wherever they settle, he enjoyed cricket. In fact, he was for several years secretary of the Manitoba Cricket Association, running tours of cricketers frequently into Saskatchewan. A number of his reports and papers on cricket were published.
While they had lived in Chicago, X-rays had been discovered by the German physicist, William Konrad Roentgen, in 1895. This was an event of great importance in the medical world. Their discoverer was unable to determine the nature of the rays, but it was soon found that they had a power of penetration into other substances, including human tissue. It became possible immediately to witness the internal bone structure in a human body, and to distinguish between healthy and diseased tissue, which immediately opened up a broad field of diagnosis in internal medicine. It had a special importance in treating diseases of the lungs.
Annie Bond, as painted by Nicholas Grandmaison, 1922.
Source: Winnipeg Art Gallery
With the American genius for adapting such discoveries to practical use manufacturing plants for the development of X-ray machines sprang up across the country, particularly in New York and Chicago. Having twice suffered serious pulmonary problems, nothing was more natural than the immediate interest taken by John Bond in this modern medical marvel. Before leaving Chicago, he had acquired a portable apparatus which became the heart and core of his newly founded practice in Winnipeg. He was one of Canada’s X-ray pioneers in the west.
Many scientists and doctors developed a concurrent interest in this new field of which so little reliable knowledge was available. The precaution of shielding the body of the operator by curtains of lead from the cumulative ill effects of the X-rays was unknown. John Bond paid for his with his sight in later years. He lectured to students on radiology at the medical faculty of the University of Manitoba, and also published papers in medical journals.
Upon their, arrival in Winnipeg, Annie became aware of the extremely high mortality rate among the city’s children. She clearly saw the need to focus more attention on the problem, and towards this end pressed for the establishment of a Children’s Hospital, which became a fact in the year 1909, in rather cramped quarters. She was an extremely competent and knowledgeable woman, rather aggressively pushing towards the solution of whatever problem occupied her attention.
In New Zealand, she had seen the need for a school of nursing, and long before she left that country she had established one. In Winnipeg, she saw the same need, with the same result. Plans were soon in hand to establish the Children’s Hospital in more appropriate quarters. The result was the erection of a large four storey structure on spacious grounds south of the western approach to Redwood Bridge on the bank of the Red River. It was festooned with screen verandas and had all the appearances of a large sanatorium, which indeed it was. Annie Bond had remarkable organizing abilities, and was closely connected with the Children’s Hospital through the most productive years of her life. She was given great credit for the establishment and successful operation of the hospital, and was highly regarded in the city.
One of John Bond’s lifelong interests was teaching First Aid classes, as is evidenced by his 1885 New Zealand manual on the subject, still part of his papers. He taught for many years at 167 Donald Street, and I have met a number of people recently who had happy memories of their little instructor. Among other organized groups, he taught the Canadian Pacific Railway’s First Aid Team, which in 1925 (the last year in which Bond was in private practice) was nationally recognized for its efficiency.
It is sad to relate that he was forced to retire from his medical practice in that year on account of his diminishing eyesight at the age of 66, which was then considered a rather advanced age. Doubtless, his blindness was caused by the extended exposure of his eyes to the unshielded X-rays. He was destined to live with his blindness another twenty years.
Both Annie and John passed away at the same age of 86; she died in 1943, he in 1945. During most of the years of John’s blindness, Annie was beside him to lead him about and to aid him in countless other ways. But for the last two years of his life, he was alone in his perpetual darkness. A day nurse came to visit him occasionally. But, like most very old people in those days (if not today) he was out of circulation, and few paid much attention to him. During these years, they both suffered the loss of income, and there were no government pensions for oldsters such as there are today. They lived frugally.
Among their few friends, the Bonds gave the impression that they were living a poverty-stricken existence. Some brought hampers to their door, rang the bell and ran away so that they could not be recognized, to prevent the hamper being returned by two individuals too proud to openly accept charity. Bond had written his last will and testament about a year before his death, and in the light of the above, it is a rather surprising document. It was dated 17 July, 1944.
They had no children, so it was quite a simple document. John’s bank account had a balance of about $25,000 in it at his death, which was an immense sum in those days—probably in excess of a quarter million dollars today. This he left to the British Government to help pay for World War II. He willed the house at 167 Donald Street to the Salvation Army, which apparently had no immediate interest in the structure, so it was placed on the real estate market. It was purchased by Robert G. Laurie, another person of whom I had not previously heard.
The Winnipeg telephone book indicated that Laurie was still alive and lived in St. Vital, just across the Red River from my own home. I called him up on a Sunday morning in October, 1973, and talked with him for some considerable time. Before concluding, he agreed to meet me soon to talk further about 167 Donald Street, where he and his family had lived for seventeen years; he was keenly interested in the books of Bond’s that I was to show him. But, he could not see me immediately, as he was packing to leave the next day to visit his son at the coast. He would be back in three weeks, when we could arrange a visit. But he was not back in three weeks, for he died there a few days later. As it happens, that was the very last day I could possibly have contacted him—his last full day in Winnipeg—to gain the important information he was able to pass on to me.
When Laurie bought the house, naturally it was an absolute shambles. Not only was the furniture disarranged, but the place was cluttered up with a jumble of papers, letters, files, pictures and photographs—a veritable archival treasure. Aware of Mrs. Bond’s close relationship to the Children’s Hospital, where she had been cared for throughout her terminal illness, Laurie very sensibly gathered all these stray items together and packed them into half a dozen large cartons. These boxes, which included the papers and pictures collected and accumulated in their lifetimes by Annie and John Bond, were deposited in one of the basement storage rooms in the Children’s Hospital. According to Laurie, none of the Bond papers were left in the house at 167 Donald Street.
This was a stimulating conversation that I had with the old gentleman, for he was then 82 years of age, but very bright and alert. It was unfortunate that we were not allowed to meet, for he would have clarified the point unequivocally whether or not he had ever seen the little bundle of books I now have in my possession.
When I purchased them, I asked the vendor a few questions about them, questions which fitted in with others I had asked Robert Laurie. The latter said he had moved out of the Donald Street house in 1963, having sold it to some developers, who meant to demolish it to pave the property and turn it into a public parking lot. In the course of the demolition, the books were found by one ofthe workmen hidden in the interior of a partition wall.
The workmen had been instructed to burn whatever they could, then haul the remainder off to the city dump. There were a few items of furniture which they apparently considered too good to destroy, so they built a small shack at the rear of the lot and stored them there temporarily. The little parcel of books, which were tied together by cord, was also deposited there.
The plans of the developers were modified and they did not proceed with the paving immediately. In fact, it was not started until 1970. The little shack, containing all that remained of the Bond papers, was left there unattended through rain and shine, winter and summer for seven years. Any passing vandal could have flicked a cigarette butt or a match on it and it would all have gone up in smoke. Had the bundle of books been placed such that water could have soaked them cumulatively, there might not have been much left of them that was legible. Had any mice or other rodents had a literary taste the books could have been ruined by such nibblings. But they weren’t.
In 1970 some workmen, undoubtedly a different crew from those of 1963, were told to make a bonfire at the rear of the lot and burn the shack and its contents. This was well under way, when one of the men noticed the little bundle of books tied together with binder twine on the fringes of the fire. The flames had just begun to lick at the books. The man retrieved them with a stick, and took them home. It was two years before he sold them to a Winnipeg bookseller who in turn sold them to me. Had it not been for that workman’s alert action, they could all have been incinerated, as indeed it was intended they should be. And then history would never have known much of the life of John Bond, especially. The books have had a charmed life.
My initial interest in the Bonds had begun in 1972. Thirteen years previously, in 1959, the Children’s Hospital was moved from its spacious location on the banks of the Red River near Redwood Bridge into much smaller quarters within the developing medical complex surrounding the Winnipeg General Hospital. This may have been more convenient for the medical fraternity, but for the child patients, it was perhaps of questionable value, and for the papers of Dr. John Bond (and those of Annie Bond) it was a disaster, for they seem to have completely disappeared at that time.
I have been told that there was an abundance of storage space in the old quarters near Redwood Bridge, but that in the William Avenue complex, space was at a premium. Due to this shortage, it would seem likely that the Bonds’ belongings were either burned or hauled out to the city dump. What a sad waste!
From all my inquiries, I have only contacted one man (Dr. Harry Medovy) who revealed that he had seen the boxes in the old building. He had been a paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital in the twenties. He knew and admired Annie Bond well. He learned of the boxes of Bond Papers in the basement, and went through them in search of memorabilia concerning Annie, resurrecting some very important items which undoubtedly would have gone the way of all the other Bond materials. He found a number of photographic portraits of her at various ages through her long life. And he, presumably, removed her five medals, which were subsequently framed by the Nurses Alumni, and for many years hung in one of the hospital buildings (The Nurses Residence) on William Avenue. Dr. Medovy did not have a very high opinion of John Bond professionally, who he would not have known well prior to the latter’s retirement in 1925. Dr. Medovy was 21 years of age at that time, which is an age at which a young man has little professional admiration for anyone older than himself. Bond was an old man then, wizened and white bearded, burned out and blinded by the X-ray service he had provided for twenty years for Winnipeg doctors and their patients. Dr. Medovy had no idea, when I spoke to him, what might have happened to the boxes of paper after he had searched through them.
The former Children’s Hospital building near Redwood Bridge is now operated as a home for senior Ukrainian citizens. Its manager assured me that nothing had been left in storage in the building after the hospital was moved to William Avenue when they took over in 1959, and that they were not there at this time.
One can only speculate why my little lot of books were hidden inside the partition wall of the house on Donald Street. Robert Laurie assured me several times that he had removed all the Bond Papers from the house and sent them to the Children’s Hospital, so we may safely assume that he didn’t hide them. It seems improbable that Annie could have done so before she died, but it is possible. Had she done so, there would have been little chance of John finding them in his blindness. He himself could have hidden them and forgotten where he had put them, or he could have forgotten all about them. I am going through a stage like that myself at present.
The Klondike journey was one of the great events in John Bond’s life. He was proud of having made the trip, and he was even prouder of the manner in which he did it. He was not only the boatman of the group, he was its leader, almost from the start, as the notice in the Edmonton Bulletin proves. The Klondike was a popular topic of discussion for many years and many thousands scattered across the continent had made the trip along one route or another. People were always ready to listen to first hand accounts of it, so John may have for the moment become the lion of many social gatherings. Both the Bonds were to some extent jealous of the public adulation given each other. Annie may have been a little disenchanted with his popularity at first, a little jealous of it in the second place, and at length, she may have become quite resentful of the constant attention being given her husband.
Situations like this persisted year after year, in the instances when they occurred in their own home, Bond inevitably would fish out his journal and other books to back up his statements. Annie may have decided to put an end to such exhibitions by hiding the books. No one knows the hiding places in a home better than its chatelaine.
We shall never know the circumstances. We can only be content that whatever happened, it is fortunate that it ended as it did.
There are long gaps in the lives of John and Annie Bond which remain unknown. For what is known of their lives in England and New Zealand, I am deeply indebted to many individuals and institutions, far too numerous to mention, that have kindly provided me with information that contributed to this account. But I cannot neglect acknowledging three of the principal sources of such material—first, Robert G. Laurie just before his death; second, Miss F. M. French, New Zealand’s Pacific Librarian, in the Auckland Public Library, New Zealand; and thirdly, Dr. Audrey Kerr, Head and Professor of the Medical Library, University of Manitoba.
In greatly expanded form, I wrote the biography of Dr. John H. R. Bond under the title Annie Bond’s Husband, about ten years ago, but no one in the medical industry has shown any interest in publishing it.
The books and diaries (1882-1908) of Dr. John H. R. Bond.
Source: Andrew Taylor
Page revised: 3 October 2014
