In the mid-1920s young Eden Robinson was hand-logging on Philip and Emily Tompkins’ farm at Halfway, a remote Peace River community at the midpoint between Fort St John and Hudson's Hope, when a tree came down on his head. The force of the impact pushed Robinson downward onto a sharp snag which entered his mouth from below. This was a bad bush accident, leaving Robinson with a nasty scalp injury and serious jaw damage. With the nearest doctor and hospital in Pouce Coupe 100 miles away, transportation to medical assistance was out of the question. Alice Summer (née Tompkins), then a child, remembers the young man being carried into the house, placed on the dining-room table, and given hard liquor to dull the pain. Working in consultation with Dr Archibald Watson of Pouce Coupe over the telegraph, Alice's mother, Emily Tompkins, sterilized a moccasin needle with boiled snow, and stitched up the head wound with silk thread. Turning to Robinson's other injuries, Emily used tweezers to remove the wood chips embedded in the roof of his mouth while her husband Philip walked over to the Robinson home for adhesive tape to bind Robinson's lower jaw.

This dramatic story, which has survived well in folk memories of the region, spotlights the healing talents of one lay woman, Emily Tompkins, a war bride who had worked in a greeting-card factory in Bristol, England, before immigrating to a new life on the Canadian frontier.