A View of the Mountains

by Morris Gibson

Chronicles the emigration of Doctors Morris and Janet Gibson and daughter Catriona to the town of Okotoks in the Canadian Rockies and the establishment of their frontier medical practice.

222 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 1983

Reviews

[Manybooks]

James Herriot (this being the pen name of Alfred Wight), the British veterinarian and celebrated author of All Creatures Great and Small (and its sequels), he wrote under his pseudonym the warmly and appreciatively worded preface for A Doctor in the West, calling Dr. Morris Gibson’s memoir regarding immigrating to Okotoks, Alberta from the United Kingdom in the 1950s and there setting up a joint medical practice with his wife Janet (also a physician) warm, funny and touching. And after Gibson visited our Social Studies class (I attended school near Okotoks from 1978 until 1985) when I was in grade eleven (in the spring of 1983, when A Doctor in the West was newly published), talked about A Doctor in the West but then also told us that he was both close friends with James Herriot and that A Doctor in the West was also very similar in scope to All Creatures Great and Small (which I had just finished reading and had absolutely adored), yes indeed, I of course immediately bought a copy of A Doctor in the West, read the entire book in one night and with me definitely enjoying A Doctor in the West and Morris Gibson as the author of A Doctor in the West quite as much as All Creatures Great and Small and as such also totally agreeing with Herriot’s glowingly positive as well as encouraging assessment.

For Gibson’s style is gloriously similar to James Herriot and that just like Herriot’s stories of his veterinary practice are not a dry accounting of one animal emergency and disaster after another, Morris Gibson also writes A Doctor in the West fluidly, lyrically (that both Gibson and James Herriot make landscape pretty much a character, and for Morris Gibson in A Doctor in the West this being the Southern Alberta prairies, the Foothills, the Rocky Mountains). And with A Doctor in the West combining humour (often self deprecatingly so), a warm family story of the Gibsons immigrating from the UK, from Yorkshire, to Okotoks, Alberta and the day-to-day ups and downs (both triumphs and tragedies) of Morris and Janet's joint medical practice, the featured text for A Doctor in the West is delightful and has been as much of a reading pleasure in 2026 as it was for teenaged me in 1983 (and that I will also now want to read Morris Gibson’s other memoirs, as I never knew that A Doctor in the West is in fact part of a series, and that A Doctor in the West is actually considered to be the sequel to One Man's Medicine, which I have not read but which supposedly covers Gibson's university days, his marriage to classmate Janet, how the Gibsons set up practice in Hull, Yorkshire but became disenchanted with the UK National Health Service and subsequently decided to emigrate).

And just to point out that there is also an alternate title for A Doctor in the West called A View of the Mountains (but that these two books have exactly the same contents, are as such basically totally akin and alike).

[CindySR]

Round up to 3.5 stars

In the short Acknowledgements paragraph at the beginning of the book the author thanks "James and Helen Herriot for their warm encouragement". So I knew it would be good, and it is!

In 1955 Dr. Morris Gibson and his wife Dr. Janet Gibson become frustrated with the British National Health system and decide to move to Canada. They want to work where doctors are needed and find themselves in Okotoks, Alberta Canada. They and their daughter begin a new life on the Canadian prairie with a view of the Canadian Rockies. Fun and drama ensue.

Dr. Morris writes a bit like his friend James Herriot.

[Audrey Richmond]

If you’re interested in the early days of Canada’s west from the viewpoint of a Scottish couple who have emigrated to practise their medicine by way of a small town’s invitation you will most certainly enjoy this book. Published in 1983, it is set in the early 1950s when a middle aged couple and their 11 year old daughter leave London, England and work their way to Okotoks, Alberta, from a busy city lifestyle to one of wide open prairie and a borrowed uninsulated wood structure for their first home. They are introduced to their first life risking house calls through deep snow drifts and winding mountain trails, encounters with a grizzly and even learning to speak “Canadian”. It is their daughter’s first experience in dealing with members of the opposite sex having only been educated thus far in private schools.
The medical stories are very interesting given the time and place and deal with such things as hypnosis, thalidomide babies, new surgeries and of course farming accidents.
The pace of the writing matches the pace of the new lifestyle. It’s a charming story of emigration and it’s challenges along with the hopes and dreams for the future.

[A…]

Really good memoir. Immigrant doctor husband and wife team settle in a tiny town in Canada to escape socialized medicine in England.