When Bells Toll in the North

In 1932, outport Newfoundland was rife with poverty. The many small communities that dotted the Great Northern Peninsula were particularly vulnerable to hunger and disease. When two brothers from Englee were suddenly stricken with typhoid fever, a call was put out to the Grenfell Mission in St. Anthony. Carl Hammerstrom, a young American doctor, answered the call and travelled to Englee to take the two men back to St. Anthony for treatment. The young doctor would face his greatest challenge yet when the ship he and his two patients were travelling on became storm-bound on the Grey Islands en route to St. Anthony. Time grew short for the two patients, and the doctor feared they would die before rescuers could come.

Freeman Baxter Cull was born in 1949 in Englee, on Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, where he completed his high school education. He taught school for a year and a half, after which he studied navigation for six months at the College of Fisheries in St. John's, Newfoundland. In 1969 he secured employment with the Canada Post Corporation. He has served as postmaster in Englee for a quarter of a century. His early summers were spent as a fisherman with his late father, and his days out of school in the winters, as a logger, giving him firsthand experience with both walks of life. His hobbies are carpentry, organic gardening, voice, and music. Freeman Cull is married to the former Glenda Joan Thompson of Bay Roberts, Newfoundland. They have four children: Hollis, Nicole, Terri-Lynn, and Alison.