324 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 



A serious menace to the industry in Alaska is the preva- 

 lence of the reindeer warble-fly. This is of particular im- 

 portance on account of the damage that it causes to the 

 hides and its consequent effect on the development of a 

 market for reindeer leather. This insect is also a serious 

 pest in northern Europe and Siberia, and affects a large 

 proportion of the native barren-ground caribou in northern 

 Canada. 



THE USE OF REINDEER IN CANADA 



Although a vast area of subarctic Canada affords as suit- 

 able range for reindeer as the areas in northern Europe and 

 Asia, where they have been utilized by man for centuries, 

 and reindeer were introduced into Alaska in 1892, their in- 

 troduction into Canada is of comparatively recent date. 

 The first and, up to the present, the only attempt to intro- 

 duce these animals into Canada was made by Doctor Wil- 

 fred T. Grenfell in connection with his famous mission in 

 Labrador to deep-sea fishermen, which includes within its 

 scope the welfare of the natives of the Labrador coast. 



During his many years of medical-mission work on the 

 coast of north Newfoundland and Labrador he discovered 

 that one out of every three deaths on the coast was due to 

 tuberculosis, and that one out of every three native babies 

 died before reaching the age of one year. Diseases due to 

 malnutrition were rife among these people. There were no 

 milk-producing animals, and milk was the great need on the 

 coast. The keeping of sheep, goats, or cattle was out of the 

 question, and this caused Doctor Grenfell to turn his atten- 

 tion to the possibility of introducing and using reindeer, 

 which had been successfully introduced into Alaska. In the 

 introduction to his account* of this work Doctor Grenfell 

 gives an excellent account of the economic value of the rein- 



* "Labrador, the Country and the People," by Wilfred T. Grenfell and others 

 ("Reindeer for Labrador," pp. 251-271), 1909. 



