Collection of Facts for History of Nursing Alberta
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COLLECTION OF FACTS FOR HISTORY OF NURSING ALBERTA -- 1864-1942 ALBER'l'A ASSOCIATION OF REGISTERED NURSES Suite 5, 10129-102nd Street Edmonton, Alberta C 0 L L E C T I 0 N 0 F F A C i:1 S -for- HISTORY OF NURSING { ALBERTA - 1864 - 1942. \ ! ! I FOREWORD Grateful acknowledgement is ma.de to &lperintendents of Schools of Nursing; Medical Superintendents and Secretaries of Hospitals for their assistance in procuring material and giving access to early hospital records; To Alumnae Associations and the Registrar of the A.A.R.N.; To Dr. Heber Jamieson, Archivist of the Medical Association Library; The Canadian National Railways; and for the help and enthusiasm of nurses throughout the Province. ( KATE SHAW BRIGlfl'Y, Convener, History of Nursing Committee, Alberta Association of Registered Nurses. F.dmonton, Alberta, December lst, 1942. -2- General: Records of the Homen's Missionary Society of the United Church of Canaaa, Wesley Building, ~oronto. Records c£ the Women's Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, 100 Adelaide Street, Toronto. The Salvation Army Hospital Records, Women's Social Secretary, 20 Abbott Street, Toronto. Archbishop's Western Canada Fund. "Occasional Paper" October 1913; August 1917. "Fifth Annual Report, 1914. "~e Canadian Nurse • " Mount Edith Cavell. "Place Names of Alberta," published for the Geographic Boa.rd by the Department of the Interior, Ottawa, 1928. Encyclopaedia of Canada, Volume ll, 1935, page 261. Alberta Government Publications: ( The Registered Nurses' Act - Revised Statutes of Alberta, ch. 306 - 1942. The Public Health Nurses' Act - Revised Statutes of Alberta, ch. 191 - 1942. The Municipal Hospital Act - Revised Statutes of Alberta, ch. 189 - 1942. The Health Insurance Act - Revised Statutes of Alberta, ch. 208 - 1942. Annual Report, Department of Health, 1919. "The History of the Department of Public Health" - Dr. M. R. Bow and F. T. Cook. \ "History, Administration, Organization and Work of the Provincial Department of Public Health and Boards of Health. 11 "Municipal Hospitals ," by Whiston, Arthur K. ... - r . - .. - -~ .. - ~ A HISTORY OF NURSINu m ALBERTA Settled I!llCh later than most of the other provinces of the Dominion, Alberta does not enter into the story of nursing in Canada as early as her more easterly sisters. Her record is nonetheless one of which to be proud. Unfortunately IlEllY an interesting incident related to such a subject cannot even now be satisfactorily recorded, so quickly do early ~vents dim in the me:oory of even the oldest old-timers now living. Nevertheless many fascinating pictures incidental to the development of nursing in the territory that is now known as Alberta can still be discovered. In the last century vast distances between western settlements soon ma.de most imperative the need for hospitals ( and medical ~d nursing services. :a.it the factor of distance also ma.de the regular establishment of such services an almost impossible feat. There were mny difficulties in the way, des- pite the fact that illness was on the increase as the penetra- tion of new settlers into the north-west grew deeper and deeper. l Among the first white men to venture across the west- em prairies were the traders and employees of the Hudson's Bay Trail- Company. So the first medical man to practise his profession Breakers in the North-West Territories was an employee of this Company . He was the late Dr. W. M. Mackay, a graduate of &linburgh University of Scotland. In 1864 Dr. Mackay arrived at York Factory on fudson's I Bay, to become the first physician to the Company of Gentlemen -2- Acventurers in the North-West Territories. For thirty-four years he traversed the lonely stretches of land vest of the bay, spending a great deal of his time in what is now- northern Alberta. In 1898 he retired to F.dmonton. During the seventies the Royal North-West Mounted Police had established a number of crude emergency hospitals Police at their various posts in the north-west. Dr. George Kittson Hospitals and Dr. Barrington Nevitt had been appointed respectively chief surgeon and first assistant surgeon to the force. Both are known to have reached Macleod, where the first police hospital in what is now Alberta was erected. It is interesting to note at this point that one of ( the first trained nurses in the north-vest arrived in Macleod some years later. She vas Miss Emmeline Alexander. Graduating from the Montreal General Hospital, she was attracted by the call of the west. In 1899 she reached Macleod. Here she con verted an old frame building on the banks of the Old Man River into a. hospital, and here began the practise of her profession. Dr. Nevitt had ma.de Macleod his headquarters for four years, retiring in 1878. Like his successors, he ma.de his first concern the medical ca.re of members of the fo~ce. But he also treated the white traders and the Indians who came to him for help. Other western posts to have police hospitals were Fort Walsh in 1875, and Calgary in 1882. In 1886 Lethbridge had a ) mine hospital, and three yea.rs later the police also construct ed one there. Among the later medical members of the force who -3- saw service at the various posts were Dr. Herchmer, Dr. John D. lauder, Dr. George Allan Kennedy, Dr. H. Y. Baldwin and Dr. E. A. Braithwaite. Soon the building of railways and the enterprise of commercial companies were to make imperative an improved hos pita.l service. So the colourful scarlet coat of the police doctor and the ingeniously but inadequately equipped police hospital were to give way to quiet civilian clothes and larger up-to-date hospitals staffed by female nurses. First of the little settlements in that part of the North-West that is now Alberta to know such a change lra.s, First -fittingly enough, named Medicine Hat. In this town was built, ( Civilian in 1889, the first regularly-equipped hospital in the ~erritor Hosp::i.tal. ies, the first orthodox hospital in all that great lonely sec tion of prairie and bush, out of which Alberta and Saskatchewan were later to be carved. Several romantic legends account for the name of Medicine Hat. They all have to do with that fearful, some what mysterious personage so important among the Indian tribes, the medicine 116ll. According to one of these legends, for in stance, a mighty gust of wind blew the elaborate head-dress of the medicine man into the swift '-raters of the South Saskatche wan river. Shorn of his cro"Wiling glory, the medicine man f led into the Cypress Hills, there to be heard of no more, and only the little settlement that grew up on the site of this tragedy commemorated him by taking the name "Medicine Hat. " -4- Be the legend what it may, this little tovn not only built the first general hospital in the north-west, but here, too, was fostered the first established tradition of nursing in the Territories. Four years after the hospital opened its doors to the public, a carefully-directed school of nursing was begun, again the first vest of Winnipeg. When, in 1894, a young lady entered the Training School for Nurses at the Medicine Hat General Hospital, this was one of Nurses at the rul.es to which she mist subscribe: large. Every nurse will be expected to perform any duty assigned to her, either as a nurse in the hospital, or when sent to private cases among the rich or poor, in any part of the Terri tories. Of a long and elaborate list of rules to which the ( prospective nurse in Medicine Hat in the gay nineties mist con- form, this one is the m:>st significant. It is significant of the complex mode of life that was then being more and more rapidly assumed by the north-west prair·· ies, where hopeful settlers, more poor than rich, were streaming in by the hundreds to a territory that had hitherto seen few l vhite men other than traders, trappers and the labourers who laid the first railways. It is significant too, of the vast area served by this first hospital, an area bound on the south by the international border, on the west by the mountain ranges, on the north by the unknown stretches reaching to the very Arctic. Fast of Medicine Hat, a man in need of up-to-date hospital care had two choices. He could get that care either in Medicine Hat or in Winnipeg. -5- Incorporated, then, in 1889, the Medicine Hat General Hospital had seen four years of service before the nursing school was opened. Desperate need for caring for the sick had driven a Erected in number of public-spirited citizens of the to\m to press for the 1889. erection of a hospital. Subscriptions to the a.mount of over $13,000.00 were taken, a substantial grant received from the Dominion Government, and lesser ones from the Northwest Legis- lative Assembly, the Northwest Land Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Led by Mr. John Niblock, Superintendent of the lccal Division of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the little group of (Photo pioneers pressed forward with their ambitious project. Il'J the graphs) ( end of 1889, a handsome and serviceable structure had been er- ected. Built of cut stone, it had two full storeys with a mansard roof permitting rooms on the third floor for the nurses and for an isolation ward. On January 9th, 1890, the hospital opened its doors to the sick. A more timely date could hardly have been chosen, for a severe epidemic of influenza held the town in its grip.