Dr. Hubert A.W. Brown was born in Toronto in Sept., 1881. At age 18 he went to South Africa with a Canadian cavalry battalion. After completing his training as an M.D. at the University of Toronto, he married Winnifred M. Gartshore in 1912. During 1914-1918 he served as a medical officer in WWI in Europe. In the years 1919-1930 he had private practices in Toronto as well as Cookstown & Queensville, Ont.

In 1930 Dr. & Mrs. Brown moved to Fort St. John with their five children: Gordon (16) , Ruth (14) , Joan (11), Bunty (9) , & Dick (5). The trip was made in a 1928 Chevy car pulling a two-wheeled trailer which carried the necessary camp gear. Leaving Toronto on May lst they arrived in Edmonton on the 30th of May where provisions were restocked for the trip north. It seems that the rainy season was just beginning & due to the lack of gravelled roads it was June 30th before they arrived in Fort St. John. Dr. & Mrs. Brown were not impressed with the town & so continued west to camp on the hill above Tea Creek for a few days to dry things out & think the situation over.

Before his arrival in Fort St. John, permission had been granted to the Sisters of Providence to build a hospital here but they could not proceed until there was a resident doctor, a situation of which Dr. Brown was not aware. When the word got around that the doctor had arrived with his family & planned to stay, construction of the first hospital began.

Dr. Brown served the community with much help from Red Cross nurses with outposts at Grand Haven, Rose Prairie, & Cecil Lake until early 1934 when he accepted the job of Indian Agent. In the summer of 1934, Dr. Kearney arrived to share the medical responsibilities.

Dr. Brown's hearing had been deteriorating due to an old war injury & in January of 1945 he suddenly went completely deaf, necessitating his giving up the Indian agency. In the Spring of 1945 Dr. & Mrs. Brown moved to Parksville on Vancouver Island where he continued to practice medicine until his death in July of 1950. Mrs. Brown continued to live there until her passing in Dec., 1972.

Dr. Brown was a great lover of the outdoors and the backwoods. In the years between 1900-1912 he spent some happy summers around Lake Temagami in Northern Ontario as a staff man at Camp Keewaydin, which specialized in canoe trips for teenaged boys. In later years his family spent enjoyable summer holidays at Lake Temagami. (In 1979 the Brown "children" & families had a reunion at the old family campsite at Sandy Inlet on Lake Temagami.) After becoming Indian agent in Fort St. John, Dr. Brown enjoyed the pack-horse trips to the Halfway & Moberly reserves to pay treaty after which he made several trips into the mountains to inspect traplines which he planned to purchase for the Indians. He loved studying and mapping new country, and spent many enjoyable hours through the winter months talking to old-timers, trappers, and Indians, comparing maps and planning new trips. He was a meticulous planner and organizer; his equipment and grub lists were a work of art.

The doctor's main hobby was guns, and many Fort St. John old-timers will recall his shooting range situated west of the present Fort Motors & running west almost to the Chiulli farm. Often the fusillade that was heard from that direction caused townspeople to wonder if it wasn't "one of them Martins & Coys a-feudin' again ". He was more of a ballistics expert than a gunsmith & many friends used to come around to compare loads & sight in their guns.

He had a short pistol range at his home in Parksville where he enjoyed experimenting with his new loads and burning up a little gun- powder on sunny days.

Written by Dick Brown for the FSJ Museum

[ Back ][ Main Index ][ People Index ][ Next ]