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London, Ontario
April 6, 1929
Dear Sir:
I wish to make application for work on the frontier this summer with Frontier College.
I am a sixth year medical student at University of Western Ontario medical school, London, and expect to graduate this coming May.
Since we try our council exams in June, I will not be free till about June 15th and am under contract to begin intern work at St Joseph's Hospital, Hamilton, on October 1st, 1929.
I am a young woman, 28 years old, in perfect health as far as I know. I was born and raised on an Ontario farm, have always been used to hard work and plenty of it, and I want more. My summers have been spent at home taking a man's place in the fields. I can handle a team or hoe a corn patch or take off an apple crop better than I can sew or keep house but for all that, I can cook a good square meal. I can handle a carpenter's tools sufficiently to make shelves and cupboards, a dinner wagon or a passable cedar chest.
I took my B.A. at Western in 1926. My academic record is, I think, good.
For further information in that line, I would refer you to Dr. A. B. MacCallum, dean of western Medical School, London.
I spent a month last summer as apprentice in a doctor's office. I have worked in a medical class who were all boys but myself, and taken all lectures and clinics with them.
I have no financial resources of my own. As far possible, I earned money at school by cataloguing books, acting as library assistant, doing private tutoring work and demonstrating to a class of junior Meds, Otherwise my father financed my college course. Following graduation I am going to hoe my own row, starting with nothing but a pair of good hands, a sound body, and some brains.
I am not socially popular, there was never time for that sort of thing, but I get on well with almost everybody - children or adults. I have had some musical training gleaned mostly from choirs or orchestras and can play piano or organ and violin cello. My father is an elder of the church at home and his numerous family have served and are serving that church in different ways from Sunday School teaching to president of the Young People's Guild.
I have done some writing for the local papers and the University Gazette and am acting as historian for several organizations at the school.
I can't swim - there never was enough water near home in which to learn - nor paddle a canoe, nor use a rifle with much effect. But I can ride a horse bareback or sleep alone in the woods at night. And I have an increasing sense of humor.
I beg you to believe, sir, that the above facts are given without any idea of boastfulness, they are merely for your information. I hope they commend themselves to you as qualifications for work on the frontier, and further, I will try anything.
Following my intern work I plan to go north to establish a practice, but I would like to see and experience a little of the country first.
I am aware that most of the representatives of the College on the frontier are men, but surely there is a place for woman too. I want a job on the frontier this summer, a good hard one, and preferably under the auspices the Frontier College. Can you place me?
Yours sincerely,
E. MARGARET STRANG
Selected Frontier College Letters
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