Kirkina Mucko

Having lost her legs as a child, and possibly her parents, she was raised in a series of mission homes, hospitals and boarding schools.

After losing family members in the 1918 flu pandemic, Mucko trained as a nurse and midwife, providing services for her community until her later years.

[1][4][notes 1] Later, she was taken to the Indian Harbour Hospital for surgery to create proper stumps, where Wilfred Grenfell, the mission doctor, met her when she was around four years old.

[3] A letter dated 9 November 1902 from Kirkina to a Massachusetts family who had sent her a doll, said her legs would be completed within a week by Dr. John McPherson,[8] who was part of the mission staff.

[20] In the 1918 flu pandemic, she lost her husband and some of her children,[2][notes 3] deciding in the aftermath to study nursing and midwifery at the mission.