Alberta doctor pioneered health care in a least developed nation
One of the first things you’d notice about Helen Huston was her ready smile, which persisted for all her 96 years. Conversations with her were punctuated with laughter and as a young person she was often the instigator of fun. The ability to see the humorous side of things helped carry her through many tragic events and difficult situations in her missionary service.
Dr. Helen Isabelle Huston passed from this life into the presence of Jesus on March 1, 2024. She was a most remarkable saint, a woman who reached out with the love of God to those in need. She was my friend, and at her memorial service I was impressed again by the stunning reach and integrity of her witness for Jesus.
For 32 years “Dr. Helen” (as many called her) served the people of the Gorkha district of western Nepal as a missionary doctor. There were 500,000 people in the district, most of whom had never seen a doctor. Most lived with poverty, lacked clean water, and suffered malnutrition and disease in childhood.
Once Dr. Helen’s presence became known, they would walk for days to see her, up and down mountains and across rivers.
Dr. Helen worked long hours in challenging conditions to serve these people, delivering babies, performing surgeries, treating burns from open cooking fires and injuries from falls in the mountains, initiating community medicine and building a hospital at Amp Pipal on the side of a mountain. She pioneered medical care next to the towering Himalayas at a time when that previously closed nation was just opening to the outside world.
Born and raised in rural Alberta, she was the youngest daughter of a United Church minister. As a teenager she wondered how God could use her and sensed a calling to be a missionary doctor. The Hustons served several central Albertan communities which later became the core of her support.
She graduated with her medical degree from the University of Alberta in 1951, one of a handful of women to do so at that time, and was sent out by the United Church of Canada to India.
Though she had grown up in the faith, she felt unprepared spiritually. But in India she experienced the new birth in Jesus. This personal relationship would be the bedrock of her service and her foundation for the rest of her life. Some years later she was posted to the United Mission to Nepal, and there sensed deeply that God had called her to that nation and people.
After her retirement she continued to reach out through involvement with the Nepali community in Edmonton and with Interserve, the organization under whose auspices she concluded her missionary service.
Among many awards and recognitions, Helen Huston was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. She received these honours in the hope that publicity would garner awareness and support for her beloved Nepali people. In her characteristic humility she didn’t display these awards, and the Order of Canada was found carefully put away in a shoebox after her death.
At her memorial service I was moved to hear the testimony of attendants in care homes where she resided, former neighbours and people to whom she reached out in care and friendship. Her service was decades in length, but her love of Jesus and her desire to serve Him in the lives of all she met was lifelong.
With gratitude I imagine my friend Helen in that long gallery of faith, “the great cloud of witnesses,” who encourage and spur the rest of us on to faith in Jesus and fruitfulness through Him.
Shelley Utz of Kamloops, B.C., is an ordained minister with the Free Methodist Church in Canada. Read more of these columns at FaithToday.ca/HistoryLesson. Photo of Helen Huston by John Cline.