Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell (1865-1940) was a medical missionary to Newfoundland and Labrador. Adrift on an Ice-Pan tells the story of Grenfell's 1908 travels by dog sled in Newfoundland to see a patient who needed immediate attention. Greenfell took a short-cut across a frozen bay, but the ice broke up beneath him, leaving him stranded with his dogs on an ice floe drifting out to sea.