I told Ann all about the hospital and the girls and about Thelma. Ann felt quite bad about Thelma and she wants to put a letter in with one of mine. I told her about nearly falling backward when I tipped my wheelchair onto its back two wheels. I told her all about Dr. Lear and Nurse Betty and Lillian and then I told her my big secret. I want to be a physical therapist like Lillian. Ann thought that was a wonderful goal, to be a physical therapist and help people.
Then just as she was leaving, I gave her my Heidi book because she likes it so much and, really, I don’t need it anymore.
Epilogue
In May 1938 Noreen went back to school, insisting on walking with Ann, Yanni, Edmund and James. The first time a fellow student called her “a gimp,” Noreen felt herself shrink inside, but Ann touched her arm and smiled, and Noreen ignored him.
Noreen soon fell into the routine of school, and before long her classmates fully accepted her for herself. Bessie and Noreen never regained their friendship, Noreen feeling they had nothing in common anymore.
Through hard work and despite some grumpy exercise sessions, Noreen was able to walk without crutches by the time she started high school in 1939. Because her legs were still weak, she wasn’t able to take physical education classes, but she learned to play Ping-Pong, and became good at it. Her mother continued to massage Noreen’s legs and this weakness eventually passed by the end of high school.
By then a more pressing concern than polio had gripped the country — the war with Germany. Industries geared up to produce war supplies. Men rushed to join the armed forces, factories hired back their workers and, as the long drought ended, farms began to grow food needed for the troops. With so many men away at the war, women pitched in to work in the factories. Thus the war pulled the country out of its depression.
In 1941 James, Yanni and Ann’s second-oldest brother, Michael, enlisted with the Saskatoon Light Infantry to go overseas to fight. The bond between Ann and Noreen grew even stronger as they worried about their brothers fighting overseas. Ann’s family was also concerned about their eldest son and brother, who was in the Polish army and had still sent them no word.
Ann and Noreen, now high-school students, decided to volunteer at City Hospital. There Noreen helped with returning soldiers who had lost their mobility through the loss of limbs or from spinal injury. She worked very hard with one young soldier, Thomas, who had lost his right leg, encouraging him as he learned to walk with crutches, and entertaining him with stories of her own battle with polio. The experience of helping Thomas strengthened her desire to become a physical therapist.
While the war dragged on, the fight against polio also continued. Noreen and her grandfather avidly followed all the reports on the treatments and vaccines being developed. Noreen’s grandfather was heartened to see that Sister Kenny’s treatments were gaining more respect from doctors, especially in Minnesota, where she set up clinics for polio patients.
Throughout this time, Noreen kept in contact with Thelma and Edna and Eugene, though she never heard again from Henry or Julie. Six months after Noreen left the Regina hospital, Eugene was out of the iron lung, though he would never be completely well again. He experienced ongoing lung problems, and in 1955 he came down with pneumonia and passed away.
In 1943 Ann and Noreen finished high school. Ann began to apprentice with a seamstress, and soon found a position with the Hudson’s Bay Company in their ladies’ department, doing alterations and sewing for customers.
Noreen saw the need for physical therapists increase as more war wounded returned home to Canada. But there was another obstacle for her to overcome before she could realize her dream; the only program in Canada for training to be a physical therapist was at the University of Toronto. Remembering her loneliness at the Regina hospital, Noreen balked at the thought of leaving Saskatoon and her family and friends. But then she remembered Amelia Earhart and realized that people “fly” in different ways to fulfill their passions. Finally Noreen made arrangements to go to Toronto. She stayed with Dr. Lear and Nurse Betty for the two years she attended university, from 1943 to 1945.
In late 1944 the Lute family received word that Yanni had been killed in France. Noreen, who had leaned on Ann for support during her struggle with polio, now became a support for her friend. She took the train home for Yanni’s memorial service, sadly remembering the composed young man who had so gallantly kissed her mother’s hand after being given a glass of lemonade. Ann’s eldest brother was presumed killed. It was a great sorrow for Ann to not know where he lay buried.
In February 1946 James and Michael returned from the war to tearful hugs and much cheering from family.
Noreen graduated from university in June of 1945. She worked for three years at City Hospital in Saskatoon as a physical therapist, all the while maintaining a friendship with Thomas, the soldier who had lost his leg and who now worked in the city of Saskatoon’s traffic department. Noreen left work upon their marriage. In time she and Thomas had five children, three boys and two girls. Unfortunately, Noreen’s beloved grandpa never got to see his great-grandchildren, as he died of a heart attack in 1951.
Letters and visits between Thelma, Edna and Noreen continued.
Edna had spent a further year recovering from polio in Regina’s Grey Nuns hospital after Noreen left. She eventually learned to walk with crutches, but was never able to get rid of them entirely. During her time in hospital, she became close to the “bad breath” doctor, and after she left the hospital, they began to date. His bad breath must have improved, as Edna married him in 1949. They did not have any children, so Edna looked upon Noreen’s children as her own. She became their honourary aunt, and visited Saskatoon frequently.
Thelma also stayed in the Regina hospital for a year, until she was placed in an institution for disabled children through the Children’s Aid Society in Regina. She was never able to walk with crutches and remained in a wheelchair all of her life. Art continued to be her passion, though she also worked for the Saskatchewan Council for Crippled Children and Adults, educating both the government and individual companies about the plight of handicapped people trying to live in a world not suited for them, and the need for wheelchair ramps and other devices to ease the way.
In 1953 all three women spent a few days together in Regina, celebrating the success of the Salk polio vaccine that everyone hoped would make the summer fears of polio extinct.
In 1978 Thomas died unexpectedly of a heart attack. With her children now grown, and two grandchildren newly arrived, Noreen went back to City Hospital to work as a physical therapist. She continued this work until she was sixty. At this time, she began to experience fatigue and pain in her joints and muscles. She discovered that Thelma and Edna were also having difficulty, so they suspected it was a result of their having had polio. By the mid-1980s they learned that doctors had given a name to their symptoms — post-polio syndrome. Having thought they had conquered their polio, it was a blow to discover that the disease still affected their lives.
Noreen took on lighter duties at the hospital, but continued to work until she was forced into a wheelchair by her symptoms. And she didn’t let her limitations stop her from helping others. She and Ann would spend an evening together knitting scarves, hats and mittens for children. Ann never married. Instead, she threw herself into her dressmaking career so fully that eventually she opened her own ladies’ wear store.
In 1988 Edna passed away, followed by Thelma in 1994.
Noreen’s family came together for a reunion in July 1995 to celebrate her seventieth birthday. Her brothers Edmund and James and their families came, along with Noreen’s five children, fifteen grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Ann attended as an honourary aunt.
As Noreen looked around at the people in her backyard, people she loved and who loved her back, she realized that she had indeed been as brave as Amelia Earhart — she had flown and followed her own course, and while polio had stricken her and changed her life forever, perhaps the n
ew directions she had taken had made her a stronger and wiser person in the end.
Noreen died of a stroke in 2001 at seventy-six years of age.
Historical Note
An Egyptian carving from 1350 B.C. shows a man with a cane, a withered leg and a permanently dropped foot. This is believed to be the first recorded case of infantile paralysis, commonly known as polio.
During many summers from the late 1800s to the late 1950s — particularly in the key epidemic years of 1937, 1946, 1952 and 1953 — parents kept their children away from communal swimming pools, movie theatres, playgrounds, churches and other places where people congregated, in the hope of keeping the children safe from the feared disease of infantile paralysis. Mothers would go through a daily ritual of having their children bend their chins to their chest, checking for any stiffness, since that was one key symptom of polio. In 1937 the severity of the polio epidemic delayed many school openings in Ontario and Saskatchewan.
Poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis is an ancient viral infection of the intestinal tract which causes flu-like symptoms. In many instances people’s infection was so mild that they did not realize they had had polio, but a small number became severely ill. The virus would start with a fever, or with a cough and sore throat for a couple of days. Patients would then begin to feel better, so many thought that they had just had a cold. Then signs of paralysis would show up in a minority of the patients.
Polio was a devastating worldwide disease that baffled doctors because it struck the youngest and healthiest, from babies to teenagers. It would paralyze muscles that allowed a child to swallow, breathe and walk. Parents often saw their healthy children reduced to living in an iron lung, walking with braces or spending their lives in wheelchairs or in a bed in the family home. Treatment for paralysis included long stays in orthopaedic hospitals, strange immobilization frames of wood and canvas, and even stranger and fearsome stays in iron lungs.
In Australia in the 1930s, a nurse named Sister Kenny was developing a new treatment of massage, hot wool wraps for limbs, and mobility exercises for patients, rather than the popular immobilization treatment most doctors favoured (the treatment described in Noreen’s story). In 1937 Sister Kenny took her treatment to Europe and Minnesota, and in 1943 opened clinics to treat polio patients. But the best treatment was to rid the world of the disease of poliomyelitis.
Another hardship for parents, in addition to seeing their children paralyzed, was the cost of treatment. In 1937 Canada was in the grip of the Great Depression. Jobs were scarce and many families were forced to rely on city relief programs for food. The Prairies were particularly hard hit, as farmers had watched their wheat crops shrivel from drought between 1930 and 1937. There wasn’t money for hospital expenses. In 1937 the Saskatchewan and Ontario governments began providing free care for polio patients and soon many other provinces followed in their footsteps.
By the mid-1940s medical researchers knew that polio was caused by three viruses and that patients who had had polio were now immune to the particular strain they had contracted before. At the University of Pittsburgh a young scientist, Jonas Salk, was working hard to create a vaccine against polio. He grew all three types of the virus in monkeys and in test tubes. Then he set out to find the best way to grow the virus in the large amounts required. After many tests, he found an ideal growth medium. Soon afterward he discovered how to inactivate the virus with formaldehyde. He now had the means to create a killed-virus vaccine.
In 1953, after successful animal tests, Dr. Salk immunized 160 children and adults in Pittsburg, including himself and his own three children. His vaccine was found to be safe and effective. In 1954 and 1955 widespread immunization took place in Canada and the United States.
While the Salk vaccinations were proceeding, another American scientist, Albert Sabin, was working on an oral vaccination for polio, and in 1957 the first oral vaccinations were given. Between the Salk and the Sabin vaccines, polio has all but disappeared from most of the Americas and Europe, with only the occasional outbreak in groups of people who for various reasons decided not to be immunized.
As polio patients celebrated the vaccines, they did not know that another obstacle would eventually be placed in their path — post-polio syndrome. As they aged, many polio patients suddenly found themselves easily tired and suffering from muscle weakness and pain, a legacy of their illness. But these people had already beaten polio, and many have decided not to let the latest challenge of the disease take away their enjoyment of life.
Today, polio vaccines have been made available worldwide. Only a handful of countries, such as Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, still have cases of polio. The World Health Organization is working hard to bring the vaccine to the poorest and most isolated people in the world. In 2010, as this book went to press, large vaccination programs were occurring in Tajikistan and west and central Africa, in response to both ongoing and recent flare-ups of confirmed polio cases.
Hopefully, soon, polio will be a disease of the past.
Famous People Who Had Polio:
Paul Martin: twenty-first prime minister of Canada
Franklin D. Roosevelt: thirty-second president of the United States
Neil Young: songwriter
Joni Mitchell: songwriter
Donald Sutherland: actor
Alan Alda: actor
Jack Nicklaus: championship golfer
Arthur C. Clarke: science fiction author
Images and Documents
Image 1: Children line up with their pets for the Hudson’s Bay Company pet parade and fun show.
Image 2: During the Depression, years of drought caused severe erosion of farmland. Dry soil blew into drifts that covered machinery and buildings alike.
Image 3: Nellie Carson (right) was Saskatchewan’s first female pilot. Beside her stands fellow aviator Grayce Hutchinson.
Image 4: A polio patient on a Bradford Frame.
Image 5: A nurse assists a child lying in an iron lung constructed at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto during the 1937 polio epidemic.
Image 6: A young child with leg and arm braces is strapped to a Bradford Frame.
Image 7: Children with polio are kept busy with crafts and reading.
Image 8: An example of a tatted ornament made by the author.
Image 9: Children had their arms kept in splints to keep the bones and muscles immobilized, so that the healthy muscles did not pull the weaker ones out of alignment.
Image 10: A child with polio is being treated with hydrotherapy in 1948.
Image 11: A physiotherapist uses a toy to encourage a child with polio to try walking using hand rails. This therapy was used in the polio outbreaks of the 1950s.
Image 12: The front of the Bessborough, a Canadian Pacific Hotel built in the 1930s.
Image 13: The ballroom of the Bessborough was an elegant place to go for a meal or afternoon tea.
Image 14: Canada in 1937, the year of one of the major polio epidemics that struck the country.
Credits
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
Cover portrait: Teenage girl (14-15) posing, close-up, portrait, George Marks/ Getty Images, 57260423.
Cover background: Red Cross Children’s Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta, Glenbow Museum Archives, ND-3-5048d.
Image 1: Hudson’s Bay Company pet parade and fun show, Photograph A-945, by Leonard A. Hillyard, courtesy of Saskatoon Public Library — Local History Room.
Image 2: Saskatchewan Archives Board, SAB R-A15077-1.
Image 3: Aviators Grayce Hutchinson and Nellie Carson, Photograph PH-99-23 by Dixie Photo, Regina, courtesy of Saskatoon Public Library — Local History Room.
Image 4: Child with polio on Bradford frame, Canada, 1937 (Annual Report, 1937), The Hospital for Sick Children, HSC-AR1937.
Image 5: Nurse with child in “Iron Lung” constructed at The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, during 1937 polio epidem
ic, The Hospital for Sick Children, HSC-973.33.1c.
Image 6: Child with leg and arm braces strapped to Bradford Frame, Canada, 1937, The Hospital for Sick Children, HSCgs-981.19.1.100.
Image 7: Children with polio keeping busy in hospital bed, Canada, 1937, The Hospital for Sick Children, HSCgs-981.19.1.102.
Image 8: courtesy of the author.
Image 9: Children in hospital bed with arm splints, Canada, 1937, The Hospital for Sick Children, HSCgs-981.19.1.103.
Image 10: Child with polio being treated with hydrotherapy, Canada, 1948, The Hospital for Sick Children, HSC-973.39.1.
Image 11: Mrs. E. Marr, physiotherapist, with Gifford, 2 1/2 yrs old, at the walking bars in the polio clinic at the Sudbury General Hospital, 1953, Chris Lund/National Film Board of Canada/Library and Archives Canada, A-116675.
Image 12: Bessborough Hotel Exterior, Photograph PH-94-101, courtesy of Saskatoon Public Library — Local History Room.
Image 13: Adam Ballroom, Photograph CP-8750 by Creative Professional Photographers, courtesy of Saskatoon Public Library — Local History Room.
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