This story was told to me by my Aunt Mary Kettles in 1993.

Charles Kettles, my grandfather, had a farm on the 7th line (now Leitrim Road) and was building up his Holstein herd. He had bought a registered bull named Paul Count Pegee. The day of the accident was Thursday, December 19, 1929. Tom, a Home Boy working on the farm, after taking the children to school by horse and sleigh, returned to the barn just in time to hear Charlie yell “”Tom, Paul”” He saw Charlie being tossed in the air inside the bullpen and bravely entered and pulled him out. Charlie was initially unconscious but later became more lucid.

Doctor Evans came in the afternoon and told the family that Charlie had to go to the hospital. He was dressed in warm clothes and put on a mattress on a single horse sleigh. Two men from neighbouring farms headed off with him to the Ottawa Civic, more than 20 kilometres away. Storming badly, it was a long rough trip on snow-filled roads. Charlie was in bad shape and had no sedation. Late that night on their way home, the two men stopped at the Gorman farm (present intersection of Heron and Walkley) where they woke the owner and were given food for themselves and the horse. Meanwhile at the hospital, Charlie was diagnosed with a fractured skull.

Things then went from bad to worse. Three days later, daughter Jean, age 3, was brought to the Civic with pneumonia and put on the same floor as her father. On Christmas Day, Mary, age 10, arrived seriously ill, also with pneumonia, and was put in the same room as Jean. Luckily, all three improved and, in time, were declared out of danger. Charlie remained on the farm until his death in 1961 whereupon Tom, now the owner of a nearby farm and never forgotten, was asked to be a pallbearer.

This is only one of our family stories that involves the Civic Hospital. My siblings and cousins, their descendants, are always grateful for the part the Civic played in their care and, ultimately, their survival.