60 Years for Grenfell
The Legacy of Edith Sloan Griscom
by Kevin F. Daley

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In 1919, Edith Sumner Sloan, a high society girl from New York City, decides to pack up her things and head north, to Newfoundland and Labrador. She volunteers for the International Grenfell Association, and teaches in a one-room schoolhouse in a small fishing community. Though accustomed to comforts few at the time had, Edith wastes no time settling into the rugged life of the Great Northern Peninsula. She throws herself wholeheartedly into her teaching position, working with tenacity and enthusiasm to help improve the lives of her young students. As well as educating children of all ages, her role sees her providing essential healthcare in an area where doctors and nurses are almost non-existent. After marrying the American ornithologist Ludlow Griscom, she goes on to fund the education of a young Newfoundland boy in the States. Edith later supervises a program that provides clothes to the needy, and late in life helps create and stock school libraries in both Newfoundland and Labrador. In so doing, Edith becomes an integral part of life in several coves along the Strait of Belle Isle. Based on extensive excerpts from diaries, letters, and photographs gathered by her youngest grandchild, Sixty Years for Grenfell tells the heartening story of Edith’s life, and her legacy more than a hundred years on. Compelling, thoughtful, and deeply researched, there exists perhaps no better firsthand capture of what life was like in Newfoundland and Labrador a century ago.

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The youngest grandchild of Edith Sloan Griscom, Kevin F. Daley grew up listening to her stories as she recounted them in fine detail at her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at her summer home on Cape Cod. None ever interested him so much as the tales of her rugged life in the Canadian North. For him, “Newfoundland,” “Labrador,” and “Grenfell” were always words charged with magic. On his latest visit to Northern Newfoundland, Daley made a concerted effort to find the places described or photographed by his grandmother, also hiking Burnt Cape and the limestone barrens of Sandy Cove in order to trace the steps of his grandfather and his botanist colleagues. Although he never knew his grandfather, he shares his interest in birds, particularly enjoying bird photography. He is a retired teacher and a landscape painter. Daley lives in the small town of West Paris in the state of Maine.

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Kevin F. Daley