Images of our past
Laurie C.C. Stanley-Blackwell & R.A. MacLean
File: NP017
Page: 123
Margaret Smith Ballantyne and her son C. 1937
Margaret Ballantyne, known locally as “Namie” was renowned in the Ballantyne and Cape George area as a midwife. Born in 1848, she was a schoolteacher by training, but served her community in the dual roles of doctor and nurse. It is estimated that she delivered approximately two hundred children between 1875 and 1927. At the advanced age of eighty-seven years, she delivered her last baby, a ten-pound infant at Ballantynes Cove. Ballantyne was an intrepid soul, seldom daunted by deep snow and rough roads. One story tells how she rolled down a steep hill in a buffalo robe coast so that she could reach the expectant mother in time. Margaret Ballantyne was a part of a venerable tradition of Antigonish county midwives.