Discussions

was born at Kingspark Nova Scotia on 30th November 1879. He was a fifth generation Canadian and received his basic education there.  
 
His first love was the sea, but a serious football injury curtailed any dreams of mariner life he may have had.  
 
In 1897 he moved to Winnipeg and was employed in a Doctors office where he was paid $3.00 per week to sweep the floors and rend the fires.  
 
Working in a medical environment caused him to choose medicine as a career. Knowledge of Latin was a requirement and so Dr. Bigelow leant it on his own. In 1903 he graduated from the Manitoba Medical College with an average mark of 80.  
 
He married Grace Ann Carnegie Gordon in 1906 who was born 1st June 1877 at Montrose Scotland. They had one child named John Todd, “Jack” born in Brandon 22nd October 1909, but died 3 years later in Brandon on the 30th March 1913.  
 
Later there were two sons and two daughters. Wilfred G. Bigelow was head of the Division of Cardiovascular Surgery, Toronto General Hospital, and Associate Professor, University of Toronto. Dan Reid Bigelow was an orthopedic surgeon in Winnipeg. One daughter, Mrs. Millard J. Grant, lived in London, Ontario, and the other, Mrs. N. Keith McKinnon, in Toronto.  
 
His first practice was in Souris Manitoba where he is supposed to only have made $37.00 in six months. He then moved to Hartney where he did not do much better having to sleep above a store that only had scant heating.  
 
Dr. Wilfred Abram Bigelow, who was a pioneer horse, and buggy doctor who combined general practice, and surgery in rural Manitoba with his wife Grace Ann, a nurse, and midwife.  
 
In 1906 as a young doctor he moved to Brandon and began his career as a surgeon. He allied himself with Dr. H. S. Sharpe, Dr. L. J. Carter, radiologist, and later with Dr. R. P. Cromarty from Toronto.  
 
In 1915 Dr. Bigelow Sr. and his associates founded the first private medical clinic in Canada it was called The Bigelow Surgical Clinic, which was located at 9th Street and Rosser Avenue. It served a large section of the west for fifty years  
 
In 1918 he brought in Dr. S. J. S. Peirce, who had been pathologist to the Winnipeg General Hospital, thus jointing a clinical leg of bacteriologist, pathologist and biochemist and completing the clinic.  
 
There were no other clinics complete in Canada at that time."  
When sold it became the Clement Block, and is now the home of the Canada Trust, and TD Bank.  
 
He loved, hunting and fishing, an avocation that took him from coast to coast, and were pursued with the same vigor that marked his professional activities.  
 
Dr. Bigelow became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 1913, the year of it’s founding.  
 
Grace Ann died in Brandon on 30th August 1958 aged 81 years, Dr. Bigelow died in Brandon on 13th August 1967 aged 87 years, and John Todd, “Jack” are all interned in the Brandon cemetery.  
 
Source: http://mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/bigelow_wa.shtml