Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 7.
Footnote to History
A doctor ministers to the people of the Gatineau
Dr. Harold James Gugy Geggie, Gatineau general practitioner for 55 years, died Tuesday, 4th May 1966, in the Wakefield hospital he founded. He was 79.
Founder of the 30-bed Gatineau Memorial Hospital, a senior member of the Canadian Medical Association, and patriarch of a family of four doctors, Dr. Geggie always referred to himself as a “simple country doctor".
It was as a hard-working country doctor that he became revered in the Gatineau Valley, the only practice he ever had. "l graduated one day and came here the next,” he often said.
In the early days, Dr. Geggie kept three teams of horses in his_ stable, using them for a sulky, buggy and shanty cutter. He frequently wore out all three teams in a single day, travelling up to 100 miles. Before a bridge was built across the Gatineau River in 1915, Dr. Geggie often spent five or six hours barging across the river with a team of horses.
Dr. Geggie arrived in Wakefield to assist Dr. Hans Stevenson after graduating from McGill University. He later married Dr. Stevenson's daughter, Ella Gertrude, who survived him by a year. The couple had three sons, Hans, David and Stuart, all of whom became doctors and returned home to assist their father.
Dr. Geggie is also remembered in the Gatineau Valley as the owner of the first automobile, a model T Ford.
Until his death, Dr. Geggie still dreamed of opening an enlarged 50-bed hospital. The present hospital was opened in 1951 in the old David Maclaren home. lt often made room for seriously ill patients when space could not be found in Ottawa hospitals.
Dr. Geggie once recalled that when he first arrived at Dr. Stevenson's office there were only 13 bottles of medicine on the shelf. "We used to make up our pills and tinctures and powders every night. We didn't even have aspirin."
On many occasions he reached remotely situated families hit by typhoid, diptheria and scarlet fever to find coffins piled high.