Hon. Fabian Manning: Honourable senators, today I am pleased to present Chapter 66 of “Telling Our Story.”

Dr. Cluny Macpherson was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on March 18, 1879. He received his early education at Methodist College and at McGill University Faculty of Medicine, from 1897 to 1901, where he earned his degree in medicine. He began his medical career at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

In 1902, he returned to Newfoundland, where he joined the Labrador Grenfell Mission, begun by Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, and ran the hospital in Battle Harbour, Labrador. Macpherson later became a director of the Newfoundland and International Grenfell Associations. He helped develop the Seaman’s Institute — later called the King George V Institute — another Grenfell project.

Returning to St. John’s a few years later, Dr. Macpherson opened a private practice, and eventually became the leading practitioner in Newfoundland. Macpherson started the first St. John Ambulance brigade in Newfoundland after working with the St. John Ambulance Society. When World War I broke out, members enlisted in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, and he organized the volunteers into an ambulance unit which served throughout the war.

At the start of the war in August 1914, Macpherson was commissioned as the Captain and Principal Medical Officer of the newly formed Newfoundland Regiment. He saw active duty in Belgium and France, at Salonika and later at Gallipoli, as well as in Egypt.

The German army used poisonous gas for the first time against allied troops at the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium, on April 22, 1915. In response to the actions of the Germans, Macpherson began researching methods of protection against the poisonous gas. Before that, a soldier’s only protection was to breathe through a handkerchief or small piece of fabric soaked in urine.

Using a helmet, taken from a captured German prisoner, Macpherson added a canvas hood with eyepieces and a breathing tube. The helmet was treated with chemicals that would absorb the chlorine used in the gas attacks. It is said it is thanks to his medical training, knowledge of basic chemistry and some clear imagination that Macpherson invented what was at first called the Hypo Helmet and later known worldwide as the gas mask. In June 1915, Macpherson’s helmet was the first general issue gas countermeasure to be used by the British Army.

His invention was the most important protective device of the First World War, protecting countless soldiers from blindness, disfigurement or injury to their throats and lungs. For his services, Captain Macpherson was made a companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1918.

During World War II, Dr. Macpherson served in ship convoys in the North Atlantic. During his lifetime, he received many awards for his duty and service. To name a few, in 1913, he was appointed a Knight of the British Order of St. John of Jerusalem; in 1955, he was appointed a Knight of Justice; and in 1964, he most deservingly received the Canadian Forces’ Decoration.

In 1902, Dr. Macpherson married Eleanora Barbara Macleod Thompson, of Northumberland County in Ontario, and they had two children. Their family home at 65 Rennie’s Mill Road in St. John’s, where he served as secretary, treasurer and registrar for the Newfoundland Medical Society, now has historic designation.

Dr. Cluny Macpherson, another proud Newfoundlander and Labradorian who proved to us all that, yes, one person can make a difference and change the world.