Jack Pickup Flying Doctor of British Columbia

Above: Jack Pickup, Queen's University Medical Class of 1942 Graduation Photo
Courtesy of Paul Banfield, Queen's University ArchivesAbove: Dr. Harold Jackson Pickup
Graduation Photo: Queen's University Medical School. Age: 23 years.

Harold Jackson (Jack) Pickup, the son of Dr. William Samuel Pickup and Dorothy Aylward Pickup, was born in Cardston, Alberta, January 17th, 1919. When he was two years old, the family moved to Fort William, Ontario where Jack attended high school. A very bright young man, he graduated ahead of his peers at the age of 16. He then went on to attend Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario where he obtained his M.D. at 23. According to his sister, Zoe Grant, he had wanted to become a Navy physician, but his services were needed at the Fort William Tuberculosis Sanitorium and he was not free to leave. After a brief stay in Dryden, Ontario, he read an advertisement for a post in a place he had never heard of, Alert Bay, British Columbia. He asked among his colleagues, "Where's Alert Bay?" The reply was, "It's in British Columbia". He asked, "Does it snow in British Columbia?" The reply, "No, it doesn't snow in British Columbia." He then approached the local Postal clerk, "Where is Alert Bay?" to which the clerk replied, "I don't know!" Jack said, "Don't you have a list of all the towns and villages in Canada?" "Yes." "Well, Look it up!"
It wasn't there! He asked, "If I wrote a letter to Alert Bay, would it get there?"
"Yeah, I think so!"
-Excerpt from speech made by
Dr. Pickup at his Alert Bay Retirement Party (September 1992)

IRENE: Today is January 12, 1998. My name is Irene Ross and this morning I'm interviewing Art Lightfoot, who is the former Hospital Administrator. But I don't want to start with this hospital. I want to go back a little bit.
Where did you get your training to be a hospital administrator?

ART: Well, I had a different training. I was in the Second World War. I was overseas. I was wounded. I had a lot of credits, so the DVA trained me in Hospital Administration.

IRENE: And was your first job in Alert Bay, in St. George's?

ART: No. They did it a little differently then, Irene. When I got back, they put me in North Vancouver Hospital initially. But as I lived in Nanaimo, I asked them for a change of venue. So arrangements were made with Nanaimo Hospital. I signed a five- year agreement to stay in the hospital and they would put me through each department of the hospital.
In the meantime, they were setting up a formal course for Hospital Administration and I would have to take that before I could graduate. Well, I spent the five years in Nanaimo and that's where I met my wife, Carola. I met her under somewhat different circumstances. I was taking my training in Surgery at the time and it was my first attendance at a C-Section. I was outside the sterile circle. And she was the receiving nurse for the baby. I saw this girl (the receiving nurse) across the room and I saw her big blue eyes and that got me.
So, after the Surgery (it was successful - the baby lived). Dr. Alan Hall was the surgeon and Dr. Larry Giovando was the assist. I got sick after that and when I got out of the toilet, I went back to the Nursing Station to meet the nurse and that's how it all started. We were married in 1948 while I was still taking my training. Anyway, while there, (I guess they felt sorry for me), the laboratory was by contract to a fellow by the name of George Darling. He asked me if I would manage it for him while I was still doing my training. Then the doctors Hall and Giovando asked if I would work for their clinic in my spare time. So I had really three experiences. It was great fun!
After five years I thought I better try my wings somewhere. I had been in contact with a gentleman by the name of Percy Ward who was the Inspector of Hospitals for British Columbia, as well as the secretary of the North Vancouver Hospital. In those days, there were secretaries to the Boards of Management. There weren't Hospital Administrators. So he said, "Revelstoke."
So I applied to Revelstoke and was getting all set to go, when he phoned back some time later and said, "St. George's Hospital in Alert Bay is in dire need of someone, more than Revelstoke. Would you consider it?" So I said, "Sure, I'll go anywhere. I have to get my feet wet." Subsequently, I was interviewed by them and they said, "Come right away." Well, this was all very well, but I said that I needed several months. We'd had twins and Carola was pregnant again. She was due in October and they wanted to go in June. I said I can't do that. They said, "September the first. Get on the boat, the old Union Steamship, the Catala out of Vancouver and get here. We're desperate." So I said okay. I accepted the position and went to Alert Bay. St. George's Hospital was originally an Anglican Church Hospital but was now a society.

IRENE: The old hospital. It was built just after the turn of the century, wasn't it?

ART: Then one burned down. This was the third hospital built on the beach. It was an older type construction building. What the society had done was purchase the Air Force Hospital that was stationed in Port Hardy. Workers took it apart piece by piece, moved it across the Straits to Cormorant Island which Alert Bay is on and set it up again.

IRENE: What year was that, 46 or 47?

ART: No. It was moved before 1950 and I got to Alert Bay in 1951 just in time to clean up the debris left around between wings. It had been operating over a year.

IRENE: How large was it?

ART: It had the capacity of 100 beds with all the necessary hospital facilities.

IRENE: So it wasn't a cottage hospital.

ART: It was the typical barrack-type hospital. It had a main corridor with wings going out from the central core. But it had all the departments - X-ray, laboratory, maternity ward, Pediatric ward. It had the whole works including kitchen, operating room etc.

IRENE: How many beds were you actually operating?

ART: We started out with 75 beds. You have to realize that we served a very wide area. It wasn't like today's world where you have quick transport. You either got to the hospital by boat or by plane. The airlines were very, very busy. In fact, the passenger service from Vancouver to Alert Bay was initially by the old Stranraer Aircraft. You know the ones with the double wings and the wires between the wings. The hospital had only two doctors at the time. The main doctor was Dr. Jack Pickup. I went to his retirement party in 1992. It was a great reunion. Jack is dead now - two years ago. But I was at Alert Bay for 3 � years. I said I'd stay for a year. After a year I was so mired down in everything that I couldn't leave.

IRENE: Who was paying the bills in that hospital, the Church?

ART: Initially in the old hospitals, the Church. The dock in front of the hospital was set out for the Anglican Mission boat COLUMBIA. And Heber Green was the principal Anglican priest in that area. In 1949, St. George's hospital served 50% Indian population and 50% "other". You have to recognize that at the low season, we were possibly treating 5,000 people. But in the fishing and logging era, we treated up to 25,000 people. We had people coming from all over the place. What is little known about it is that we treated some major accidents. One was the crummy from BC Forest Products that came down the mountain the other side of the Strait at Beaver Cove. It had twenty fallers in it. It lost its brakes or its gear box or something and it smashed at a great rate of speed into a bluff at the bottom of the road at Beaver Cove. Oddly enough, I didn't hear about this until about 7 o'clock that night. Dr. McLaren, who was one of Jack's assistants, Carola and I were playing Scrabble at my house when the telephone rang, and the operator said there's been a terrible accident at Beaver Cove and Jack Pickup is flying in there. Well, he flew in there in an old Seabee with Ed Bray a pilot with the local airline, knocking a float off a wing when they landed. It was so rough. The truck was a terrible mess. Some of the men had jumped from the crummy on to the road and were just road burned and scarred up. There had been three people in the front of the truck and one man was very badly injured. The weather was getting worse and the people at the Cove didn't know what to do. So they put it on the air, on the CBC, asking for assistance for any ship near to come in and take these people to the hospital at Alert Bay. A large tug was fortunately taking some logs down the Strait and it immediately dropped its load and went into Beaver Cove and that's how the injured men got to the hospital. Well, Jack and McLaren worked all night with the hospital staff. I didn't have to ask the nurses to come to work. They'd heard the news and all came to the hospital. So after that it was just a matter of having a triage set up and deploying the nurses by shift. We lost one man that was too badly injured. The rest were saved, which was quite an accomplishment for a little hospital out in nowhere. Jack Pickup did a wonderful job. He sewed and mended and did all the right things he was trained to do.

IRENE: He must have been quite an outstanding fellow.

ART: He was different. He was an assertive man. He had a high, high degree of medicine. He had trained at Queens University, I think. He had taken Radiology besides other things, and he was very good at surgery. But he was an isolated loner. Nobody could live up to his standards. So the other doctors had an awful time. His office was right in the hospital, in one wing of the hospital. So we had immediate communication. We had lots of arguments but I really enjoyed him. The more people argue, the better I like it.

IRENE: You need an unusual person in a place like that.

ART: That's true. But there were lots of things that happened at the hospital. One day we ran out of water and I went and looked at the water tank. We had an Artesian well, a sub-well, and it was pumping water into the tank. The well was working fine. The water was dribbling out. So I told the engineer/handyman - whatever to dig up the pipe and see what was happening. I went down to the seashore and there was no water running into it. He did. And he said, "look at this!" There was a connection on one side of the hospital running across hospital property through the Indian cemetery to the south part of Alert Bay. He asked, "What do I do?" I said, ""Shut it off." I shut off all the water to south Alert Bay. And that's how they got a water system at Alert Bay. By the back door. I guess they were forced into it. There was a lot of hanky-panky that went on. We were paying tremendous amounts of money for oil to heat the place. When I went to look at the heating plant, Vancouver General Hospital couldn't have used that much oil. So I put a lock on the tank and asked for it to be delivered during the day. There was only one oil truck. Oddly enough, when we came to check the oil, the lock was broken and we had this great bill for oil. And it was as much as Nanaimo Hospital was paying for fuel. So I whined and complained. Bert Peck who was the manager of the Pioneer Timber Company and Russell Mills, who was the manager for Canadian Forest Products, who were on the Board of Trustees, got together and Bert Peck donated a truck and a tank and said to go and pick your own oil up. And our oil bill went down from about $1400 to $400 per month. The amounts spoke for themselves. So there were lots of little incidents like that. But it was a pioneer hospital and I really enjoyed it. It was right adjacent to the cemetery and so we could scare our kids saying if they weren't good, that's what would happen to them.

Published with permission from Campbell River Museum, Campbell River, BC. and Art Lightfoot, Campbell River, BC.

Interview with Art Lightfoot, Administrator, St. George�s Hospital, Alert Bay, 1951 - 1955
by Irene Ross

Webmaster: Marilyn Crosbie

In Response to Many Inquiries Regarding My Planned Biography on Dr. Pickup

I have set a target date for publication: Fall 2010.

I would like to set an earlier target date, however, until I can afford to semi-retire (2010) I do not believe I will be able to find the necessary time to organize the material I have collected over the years into a publishable book.

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