Dr. Baker

Writing of Dr. G. R. Baker in the Vancouver Province Sunday Magazine section, Sunday, April 6th, 1930, the late Louis LeBourdais said "His fame as a surgeon and physician has spread beyond the borders of the country and made necessary Quesnel's new hospital." "The lame, the halt and the blind arrive by train, by automobile and the old buckboard wagon. And the miracle of it all is how the doctor survives the increasing burden of work thrust upon him in the form of ailing men and women."
That was the Dr. Baker whom so many Cariboo residents remember. The man who devoted the best part of his life to the Cariboo and the people he lived. G. R. "{Paddy" Baker the man who studied under Dr. John Langton and Sir Henry Butlin at Barts and was taught medicine by Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton. [ names that mean no thing to many laymen but almost worshipped by medical men.] Gerald R. Baker, lightweight boxing champion of Bart's, football player, hunter, fisherman and friend, especially the latter.
We remember a dog sick with some malady that made his throat swell, that made him stagger. There wasn't a veterinary within telephone call. We hesitated about asking Doctor Baker, after all he was a busy man. But the dog grew sicker and sicker and our hearts grew sadder and finally we picked the dog up and carried him to Doc. Baker's house.. We'll never forget that scene. This man, this really famous surgeon's fingers soothed the animal until it stopped whimpering. There were tears in the doctor's eyes and he was not ashamed of them. " A good dog", he muttered, " a damn shame he's so sick!! And then he gave the dog a shot and after we took the animal home Doc called every day, until the pooch was once more active. And the dog never forgot the Doctor after that. Or the crow with the broken wing and the crying child and this Doctor, this graduate of Bart's putting all of his vast knowledge into practice to set the wing of a crow and cure a broken hearted child.. You wonder why the new hospital is called the G. R. Baker Memorial Hospital?? Ask his friends, ask any of the one thousand Cariboo citizens he ushered into the world, ask the many he saved from death with his magic scalpel. Ask the Indians, the Chinese, the Prospectors and trappers. Just to have Doc. Walk into a room made you feel better.. to hear his brisk " yes, yes, no thing to worry about you'll feel better tomorrow," was a more potent healer that many drugs.
Doctor Baker had been around before he ever saw the Cariboo. Before he arrived in Quesnel to amputate a man's leg he had been a shot-gun guard in Nevada on a Well's Fargo Express.. He travelled through the Yukon following his profession and hunting and mining on the side. He had doctored on the Gulf Islands and at St. Josephs Hospital in Victoria where he assisted Dr. O. M. Jones, one of the greatest surgeons of his time and a man to whom Dr. Baker gave credit for having taught him more practical surgery than he learned at college.
Many are the stories told about Dr. Baker. He was an Irishman with all of an Irishman's love of battle. His wit was as keen as the hunting knife which he usually carried in case he needed an operating tool for an emergency. Once a man came into "Doc's" office suffering from an earache and overindulgence in alcohol. The way Dr. Baker told it.." The man was drunk, my God he was awful drunk and you know I had a maternity case to go to that was an emergency and this man hung onto me and said, "Doc., Doc. I gotta have my ear fixed. So finally I hit him… Oh my, I hit him an awful blow... I shouldn't have hit him so hard poor fellow. But anyway I knocked him out and then I went to this maternity case. It was a boy, a fine boy, oh you know him. Well you know the next week this man came back to my office " How much do I owe you Doc," he said, and offered me five dollars…" you don't owe me a cent," I said. You know that he was an awful big man. I thought perhaps that he was remembering the clout on the ear I gave him.."Oh yes I owe you something," he said." I have not had an earache since you fixed it." After this stor Dr. Baker's hearty laugh would ring out and you just knew everything was alright with the world……….
Dr. Baker filed on homesteads in Cariboo and with the help of his wife Nellie Baker proved up on three of them. Many of Doc's patients worked off their bills for professional services by clearing land, building fences or cutting wood. Sometimes they paid the good Doctor with a ton of hay, a cow, a hog or a horse. It is very doubtful if Dr. Baker ever knew who owed him what or how much. T o the Doctor a sick person had to be healed, if they could pay well and good, if they couldn't pay, that was well and good also.. they still had to be healed.
Quesnel's pioneer druggest, the late Charlie Allison, said that through the years Doc ordered thousands of dollars worth of prescriptions charged to himself. "Put that on my bill, " he'd say, "poor old fellow, I don't think he has much money."
In any man's language Doc Baker was a though cooky. There was the time the temperature was 27 below zero and the Fraser was slowing to a standstill with a few sluggish ice floes barely moving southwards. Doc got a call to a maternity case across the Fraser. There was no bridge at that time so the Doctor, an expert canoeist, prepared to launch his canoe and cross to the west side. However an ice flow knocked the canoe from his grasp.." then like a fool I let the rope go too," he chided himself. 'Well I had to get to that poor woman so there was no thing for it but to swim after that canoe and I was soon in it and paddling across. When I got there my clothes clanked like a suit of armor. Someone hollered at me when I landed, "Kinda cold weather for a dip ain't it Doc?" "it was damned cold too you know," he added as an after thought.
Yes we miss Dr. Baker in the Cariboo. Possible those who have fished with him miss him most of all. Fishing with Dr. Baker was a tonic. His was the poetry of motion when it came to casting a fly. Dr. Baker's home tied flies are still the best fish getters in Cariboo. As a hunter he was without a peer.. He owned a number of placer mining properties but whether or not they paid off we do not know. It would take a mighty volume to fully describe our friend Doctor G. R. "Paddy" Baker. It would take years of delving and inquiring to find out how much good he did for people.. Like the time a man came into the Doctor's Office to have a tooth extracted. "The dentist is just upstairs, "Dr. Baker said. "Go see him." "But hell Doc. "the man said, "I'd have to pay him."..so the good Doctor pulled the man's aching tooth. "I had to, " he explained gravely, but with a twinkle in his eyes. "I couldn't let the poor man suffer, now could I?"
Well now you know why the new hospital is called the G. R. Baker Memorial Hospital. They name mountains after lesser men than Cariboo's Doctor G. R. Baker.. no mountain is quite high enough to reach the summits to which the Doctor has gone..Salud.. Home is the hunter.

Home from the hills.
The fisherman.
Home from the sea."

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