Ready to take the cod liver oil challenge?

A red glass globe hangs near the front window of Apothecary Hall in downtown St. John’s. More than a century ago, it served much the same purpose as the striped pole outside a barbershop. Many Newfoundlanders back then would have struggled to read the word “Pharmacy,” but they knew what the globe meant. “It really connects us to that time—a different time,” said Keith Bailey, a local pharmacist and member of the volunteer board that operates the Newfoundland & Labrador Pharmacy Museum.The museum’s building first opened in 1910 as the pharmacy of Peter O’Mara, a founding member of the Newfoundland Pharmaceutical Society. It remained in operation until his death in 1986, but rather than see the historic storefront demolished, pharmacists raised funds to preserve it, reopening as a museum two years later. Today, the Water Street museum offers a glimpse into what a pharmacy in Canada would have looked like more than a century ago. Inside, ornate wooden cabinets stretch toward a crown-moulded ceiling, their shelves lined with glass bottles, ceramic jars and handwritten labels. Mortars, pill-making equipment and metal suppository moulds sit on the counters alongside examples of old prescriptions, which amounted to individualized recipes that physicians would send to pharmacists.The museum preserves a time when compounding sat at the heart of the profession, said Bailey. Pharmacists might have prepared only 20 or 30 prescriptions a day, but each could require weighing, grinding and combining several ingredients for one patient.“It was a very small number of prescriptions, but very customized,” he said.That accessibility extended beyond dispensing medication, Bailey adds. Before publicly funded healthcare, many people could not afford a hospital visit, so in St. John’s, that first meant a visit to Water Street for advice, basic first aid or treatment.“You go back 100 years ago; [pharmacists] were at the centre of primary care here in St. John’s because you didn’t have easy access to physicians,” he said. “Very different, very similar. We’ve kind of come full circle.”In that spirit, the museum maintains a display on cod liver oil, once a mainstay in Newfoundland households. Families took it even before researchers fully understood its vitamin A and D content or its role in preventing rickets. Visitors are offered to try a cheeky spoonful through the museum’s Tiktok-esque “cod liver oil challenge,” itself a pharmaceutical twist on Newfoundland’s screech-in tradition, where visitors drink a shot of Screech rum to become honorary Newfoundlanders Maintaining the collection is the work of six volunteer pharmacists, says Bailey. All contribute in their own way, applying for grants, hiring and mentoring summer students, or stocking the gift shop and helping develop programming. The museum operates seasonally, generally from mid-May until Labour Day, Tuesday through Sunday.“It’s a very hands-on labour of love,” Bailey says.This year, the museum is supporting a Heritage Canada-funded project on Tommy Ricketts, a Newfoundland pharmacist and one of the youngest recipients of the Victoria Cross. After lying about his age to enlist at 15 during the First World War, Ricketts returned home a national hero. Community fundraising helped pay for his education, and he eventually opened a pharmacy a few hundred metres from the museum.Despite his military fame, Bailey says Ricketts rarely spoke about the war. Instead, he became known for supporting local organizations and quietly helping people in his community. A researcher is now developing school materials, performances and a travelling exhibit exploring his life.For Bailey, that story belongs in a museum that treats pharmacy history as part of Newfoundland's broader history.“As Newfoundland has changed, so has pharmacy changed,” he says. “But at its heart, we’re exactly where we were when we started. We’re still leaders in the community. We’re connected to our community.”

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