She was given a remote log shack in the middle of the area she was to serve. The property was dirty when she arrived, there were no shelves, and the only place for a patient to lie down was her own bed. She was from a family which had a maid, so she was not used to cooking, nor to such harsh circumstances as she found in Canada on her arrival. She had grown up during the First World War, when food was in short supply, with not enough available for girls to have cookery lessons with at school. Cooking at her new home was not easy and happened on a wood-burning stove that needed almost continual stoking to prevent the flames from going out; for quite a time, she relied heavily on her Primus stove. She bought a rifle in 1929 so she could hunt prairie chickens and even moose to supplement her diet. Despite the hardships, she wrote to her parents a few weeks after her arrival "I wouldn’t come back to England for a 1000 dollars just now! I know I’m doing the right job."