Читать книгу Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle - John Wilson - Страница 16

At the outset of the Second World War in 1939 Phyllis Munday joined the St. John Ambulance Brigade and volunteered to teach first aid classes. By May the following year, the Provincial Superintendent of Nursing asked Phyl to organize a nursing division of the Brigade in North Vancouver. Never one to decline a challenge, Phyl agreed to this one and accepted an appointment as Lady Superintendent of the 68th Nursing Division. Although she was not a nurse, Phyl knew her way around hospitals and also understood the importance of home nursing, which would be the emphasis in this position. She took courses in air raid protection and civil defence and in turn taught these courses along with first aid. She held the position for nine years with a small but effective group of nurses and an excellent doctor. As the war went on, Phyl added to her workload. She also maintained three first aid posts, which took up three nights a week, and did blood groupings. Even Phyl admitted that it was an extremely busy time. She had no car and would not own one until she was in her seventies. All her back and forth was accomplished by walking (for which she was renowned) and relying upon the rather inadequate streetcar service.

In 1982, Phyl Munday, then almost eighty-eight years old, returned to

the Homathko Icefield by helicopter, courtesy of the television show

“Thrill of a Lifetime.”

In the spring of 1948, massive rains and a melting snowpack caused the Fraser River to flood its banks. Although a system of dikes had been constructed for just such an eventuality, widespread property damage occurred from Chilliwack westward along the huge river delta. Many farms and rural settlements were flooded out, and as the river continued to rise, the province was on high alert. The St. John first aiders contributed assistance. Phyl helped patrol the Queensborough area by walking the shoreline and the dikes to check for weaknesses or leaks.

Finally the river crested. The worst of the damage had been done. Together, Phyl and her sister Betty McCallum spent ten days on flood duty at Durieu at the head of the completely flooded Hatzic Prairie. They travelled by fisherman’s gas boat over all the fences and hay fields. Their job was to look after the welfare of the people and to administer first aid as needed. It was to be many days until the waters receded and the rebuilding commenced.

In 1949 Phyl received a promotion, to Provincial Superintendent of Nursing Divisions (Betty would then assume Phyl’s former position). The same year she co-ordinated the St. John appeal for North Vancouver, to solicit funds for ski patrols on Hollyburn Mountain. She had seemingly endless resources of energy and commitment. As in her Guiding work and mountaineering, Phyl never did anything half way. She was fully committed and fully participatory.

At the age of twenty-three, Edith fell in love, and in April 1944 she married a Royal Air Force flight lieutenant and soon moved to England. Like Phyl and Don, the young couple shared a love of mountain climbing. By leaving home Edith left a gap in her parents’ lives, and this might account for some of Phyl’s incredible busyness as she involved herself in more and more activities. During the war, Don went through the motions of rejoining, but his age was against him, as was his disability. He decided to aid in the war effort as best he could, which meant abandoning much of his freelance writing and taking a regular job in the Burrard Shipyards. In 1942 and 1943 he spent some time in Yoho National Park in the Rocky Mountains training soldiers in the intricacies of hiking on snow and ice, skiing, mountain climbing, and general orienteering. Recalling his own experiences at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, Don knew these skills would be important and maybe even life-saving.

Don was also in the throes of writing a book about Mount Waddington, which would feature the Mundays’ adventures and discoveries from the time they first glimpsed their Mystery Mountain all those years ago in 1925. The Unknown Mountain had an English publisher and was launched in 1948, just two short years before Don’s untimely death.

Phyl could see Don’s gradual weakening, his fatigue and loss of fitness. She knew Don was a proud man, so neither of them spoke of it to others, and she did what she could to take the strain off any expectations others might have for him, especially when in the outdoors with friends. In November 1949 he was admitted to hospital, and six months later, on 12 June 1950, Don Munday succumbed to lobar pneumonia with bronchial asthma a significant contributing factor. His lungs and bronchial tubes never completely recovered from the effects of gassing in the trenches in France.

Phyl was devastated by Don’s death. Edith was far away in England, and for Phyl, her daughter’s absence made the situation doubly difficult. In early July, accompanied by climbing friend Neal Carter, Phyl chartered a small airplane, and they headed up the coast to fly high over Mount Munday. As the sun shone through the parted clouds, she looked once more upon their favourite country and scattered Don’s ashes as he had wished, over the wild white glaciers and snowy peaks.

“I’ve lost my anchor,” Phyl cried out. “With Don I’ve had the best thirty years. We are a team, and now, I have to carry on without him. I’m fifty-five years old, and I’m not sure that I can do it alone.” But do it she did. Phyl continued with the Alpine Club, worked for several years as an editor of the Alpine Journal, and for two more decades participated in the club’s annual camps. She established herself in what she called “the blister tent” and provided first aid to the tired feet of many hikers. As she eased into her sixties she continued to climb, although on easier and shorter trips. Without Don as a partner, Phyl did not attempt the complicated climbs. They had been such a twosome that even after all her years of serious climbing she could not face these challenges without him. It was just too poignant. Neither could she face continuing in a project they had both been working on for some years, a project very dear to her heart. Mountain Wild Flowers of Canada was in the proofing stages at the time of Don’s death. The book was to be a showcase of Phyl’s exquisite photos of alpine flora accompanied by botanical and environmental information. It was never published.

For years, beginning in her mid-twenties, Phyl suffered from arthritis in her knees. Many nights in the privacy of the Mundays’ tent she wrapped cool compresses around her sore knees to reduce the swelling. She often was in too much pain to sleep, yet would get up the next day and continue to hike or climb. Phyl made light of the situation and claimed her condition was only “a bit of a nuisance.” Her accomplishments are even more remarkable given this physical condition. But just as Phyl protected Don and assisted him with his weak left arm, he protected her so that only very few people ever guessed at the agonies she went through.

Guiding remained a constant source of inspiration for Phyl. Her responsibilities as Divisional Commissioner for the North Shore skyrocketed as more and more families moved in to the area. Finally, in 1956, the district was divided into two, reflecting the municipalities of West Vancouver and North Vancouver. Phyl retained the North Vancouver responsibility for several years longer, and served as Provincial Nature and Woodcraft Advisor through to the 1980s. In 1985, at Point Atkinson, the Girl Guides named the Phyl Munday Nature House in Lighthouse Park in her honour, an appropriate gesture that made Phyl very happy. She was pleased to have her name associated with an ongoing site to facilitate teaching Girl Guides about the wonders of the natural world.

Phyl went back twice more to Waddington, although neither time did she backpack in as she was used to. In 1955 she accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary, famed for his ascent of Mount Everest, on an airplane tour over the area. Her final opportunity came in 1982 as a result of an article titled “Whirling into Frozen Time” in Beautiful British Columbia Magazine about a helicopter trip on to the Homathko Icefield and flying over Waddington. The author interviewed Phyl after the trip and then quoted her in the article.

“Oh, I would give anything to go, and I would go to the Homathko and to Waddington. I think I would just weep if I saw the glaciers… I would love to be able to go in a helicopter so I could be put down on a glacier. I would put on my old boots with the tricouni nails on them, take my crampons and walk around for the sheer joy of it.”

As a result of Phyl’s musings, an anonymous donor paid for her to take such a visit by helicopter. A camera crew for the television show “Thrill of a Lifetime” accompanied her as she stepped out on to the Homathko glacier for the first time in almost fifty years. She wore her old boots and her Guide hat and carried her trusty ice axe. Although she had made many first ascents, this helicopter trip truly was a “thrill,” for at age eighty-eight she was frail from a recent fall and her ongoing arthritis. She was imprisoned in a body that could no longer escape to the mountains.

“If I had my life to live over again, I would step out of these awful old slippers and into my climbing boots and start off on the exact same road… providing of course I could have Don.” Phyl saw mountains and all of nature as a sacred trust. “We are only the temporary guardians of the earth and without our respect and love it can’t last.” This belief motivated her all those years when she could not climb, but could instead describe nature’s wonders to others. “I have stood on top of a mountain and seen the breathtaking perfection of the earth below.”