A few years after his wife Alice died and with his children growing up and leaving home, Horace Wrinch married Eva May Hogan, the hospital secretary. May spent over twenty years in Hazelton and her contribution to the hospital and its success should not be forgotten.
May was Irish and had come out from Dublin in 1893 with her mother and father, the missionary ‘Father’ William Hogan (although he was Anglican). The Hogans had been living at Port Simpson when Horace arrived there in the autumn of 1900 and stayed for a few days on his way up to Kispiox. It is likely that she and Horace first met then. Horace was recently married and almost 35 years old. May was a few days shy of her nineteenth birthday. After qualifying as a nurse she came to the Hazelton Hospital as Ladies Superintendent and matron in 1912.
She took a full part in the Hazelton community, as did her mother, a highly respected and well-loved figure in the community, who had come to Hazelton in 1914 after her husband died. Both served on the Red Cross Committee during the war. May was also musical and played the piano at festivities in the community.
In May 1917 she enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps as a nursing sister and left for Europe at the end of June. Initially she was with the No. 16 Canadian General Hospital at Orpington, Kent. But the beginning of February 1918 found her in France at the 10th Canadian Stationary Hospital at Calais. She sent back a German helmet as a souvenir to her mother at the hospital. Armistice Day in November found her still there, just back from two week’s leave in England. After the war she spent some time at the 3rd Canadian General Hospital, and at other military hospitals in England, before returning to Hazelton via New York.
When May returned to Hazelton in 1919, her position at the hospital as Ladies Superintendent had long been filled by someone else and so she became the hospital secretary, taking some of the administrative load off Dr. Wrinch, who was spending more and more time in Vancouver. In 1927 she and Horace married in Vancouver. In 1936 she and Horace retired from Hazelton and went to live in Toronto. But they soon returned to Vancouver, where Horace died in 1939. May herself died in 1945.
The poignant photograph below shows a young girl with her life ahead of her. It was taken in Dublin by W. McRae a year or so before she came out with her parents in 1893. (Photo: my own collection)
