Bones to Ashes

Ryan twirled and downed the last of his pasta. “Now that I think about it, I vaguely recall rumors of leprosy in the Maritimes. But it was always hush-hush. I think there was a leprosarium somewhere out there.”

“Yes. Sheldrake Island.”

“Nah.” Ryan’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “This was a hospital. I’m thinking New Brunswick. Campbellton? Caraquet?” Ryan swallowed, then air-jabbed his fork in sudden realization. “I’ll be damned. It was Tracadie. There was a lazaretto in Tracadie.”

“The town of Tracadie? As in Évangéline? Obéline? Bastarache?” I was so shocked I sounded like a moron. Or a teacher calling roll.

“Trendy burg.”

“No one ever heard of Tracadie. Now the place is in my face every time I turn around.” I pushed back my chair. “Let’s see what we can dig up online.”

Ryan’s eyes dropped to his plate. Sighing, he laid down his fork. I knew what was coming.

“Time to go?” I tried for cheery. Failed.

“I’m sorry, Tempe.”

I shrugged, a false smile slapped on my face.

“I’d rather stay.” Ryan’s voice was very quiet.

“Then stay,” I said.

“I wish it was that simple.”

Ryan stood, touched my cheek, and was gone.

Hearing the door, Birdie lifted his head.

“What happened tonight, Bird?”

The cat yawned.

“Probably a bad move.” I rose and gathered our plates. “But the nookie was great.”

After showering, I logged onto the Internet and Googled the terms “leprosy” and “Tracadie.”

Ryan’s memory had been dead on.

30

I SURFED LONG INTO THAT NIGHT, CHASING LOOPS INTO LOOPS into loops. I explored the history of the Tracadie leprosarium, or lazaretto in local parlance. I read personal stories. Educated myself on the cause, classification, diagnosis, and treatment of leprosy. Worked through shifts in public policy concerning the disease.

With regard to Tracadie, I learned the following.

In 1849, after five years of staggering mortality, the New Brunswick board of health recognized the inhumanity of forced quarantine on Sheldrake Island. A site was chosen in a backwater called Tracadie, and meager funds were appropriated for the construction of a lazaretto.

The building was a two-story frame, upstairs for sleeping, downstairs for sitting and dining. Privies were out back. Small and basic, the new digs must have seemed lavish to the seventeen individuals who survived the island.

Though still imprisoned, the sick now had some lifelines to the outside world. Families were closer and could manage visits. Over the decades, doctors showed varying degrees of commitment. Charles-Marie LaBillois. James Nicholson. A. C. Smith. E. P. LaChapelle. Aldoria Robichaud. Priests came and went. Ferdinand-Edmond Gauvreau. Joseph-Auguste Babineau.

Despite better conditions, the number of deaths remained high in the early years. Moved by compassion, a Montreal-based nursing order, les Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph, volunteered to care for the sick. Arriving in 1868, the nuns never left.

I stared at grainy images of these brave sisters, somber in their stiff white wimples and long black veils. Alone, in the dark, I pronounced their musical names. Marie Julie Marguerite Crére. Eulalia Quesnel. Delphine Brault. Amanda Viger. Clémence Bonin. Philomène Fournier. I asked myself, Could I ever have been so selfless? Would I have had the fortitude to sacrifice and to such degree?

I pored over patient photos, scanned from the archives of the Musée historique de Tracadie. Two young girls, heads shaved, hands hidden under their armpits. A bushy-bearded man with a concave nose. A babushkaed granny with bandaged feet. Circa 1886, 1900, 1924. Fashions changed. Faces. The expressions of despair remained ever constant.

Eyewitness accounts were even more heartbreaking. In 1861, a lazaretto priest described a sufferer’s appearance in the end stage of the disease: “…features are not but deep furrows, the lips are big running ulcers, the upper one greatly puffed and turned up towards the seat of the nose which has disappeared, the lower one hanging over the glossy chin.”

The lives of these people were too painful to imagine. Despised by strangers. Feared by family and friends. Exiled to a living tomb. Dead among the living.

Now and then I had to leave the computer. Walk the rooms of my home. Brew tea. Take a break before I could continue.

And, always, my thoughts were plagued by the question of Harry. Where had she gone? Why didn’t she phone? My inability to contact my sister made me feel restive and helpless.

The lazaretto was rebuilt three times. Repositioned slightly. Expanded. Improved.

Various treatments were attempted. A patent medicine called Fowle’s Humor Cure. Chaulmoogra oil. Chaulmoogra oil with quinine or syrup of wild cherry. By injection. By capsule. Nothing worked.

Then, in 1943, Dr. Aldoria Robichaud visited Carville, Louisiana, site of a four-hundred-bed leprosarium. The Carville doctors were experimenting with sulfas.