Nursing in Alberta

of Service 'Ghe 1Cistor~ of .'nursing in Albert~ THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY LIBRARY j-{eritage of Service 'Ghe '}(isto11J of '11ursin3 in Alberta 'J-(eritage of Service 'Ghe j-HstorH of 'nursing in Alberta TONY CASHMAN Published by The Alberta Association of Registered Nurses Printed by Commercial Printers Limited Edmonton, Alberta Introduction This book has hundreds of authors, about six hundred I would think. If you can stand one more paraphrase of Mr. Churchill's resounding comment of 1940: Never in the history of Alberta has so much original research been done by so many. It started about the time of the Churchill remark. The Al berta Association of Registered Nurses was then gathering material for the book Three Centuries of Caruidian Nursing. Miss Birtles' diaries were brought to light at this time. Marion Moodie was prevailed upon to write her fascinating memoirs of Calgary General in the 1890's. So much material was gathered that Kate Shaw Brighty, then president of the AARN, engaged Eugenie Myles to put it together and it was mimeographed - they couldn't afford to print it - under the title A History of Nursing in Alberta. Margaret Fraser brought in some more things in the 1950's. The project was revived again in 1964 when local chapters of the AARN were asked to research the history of nursing in their own districts and the alumnae associations were asked to help retrace the progress of nursing education through the history of their own schools. Digging localized history is unsatisfying work. The results often seem trivial and disappointing and hardly worth the bother. The project might well have foundered in grassroots discouragement at this point but it didn't. The hard-sought information came in, and when it was added to the material gathered earlier, the story began coming into view. It was a revelation. The story of nursing in Alberta was a more exciting story than anyone had imagined. It was more in spiring, more amusing, more human and more important. It showed as much "invention" as a biography of Thomas A. Edison. It had more significance for the growth of Alberta and the growth of the nursing profession across Canada than anyone had realized. The local committees and alumnae groups also brought in the names of nurses who had worked in times that are now historic and could be interviewed for further details. In the personal con tacts with the past we had a break, because the secret of eternal youth seems to be membership in the Alberta Association of Regis tered Nurses. Through these interviews I had the pleasure of meet ing and knowing such lively people as Iva Marshall McLeod, the pioneer nurse of Cold Lake, and Mrs. Sigrid Hoyme Magee, who, on September first, 1905, had a holiday from Strathcona Municipal Hospital for the inauguration of the province of Alberta. Nurses like Mrs. McLeod and Mrs. Magee are witnesses to everything related in this book. And from this technique there may arise a misunderstanding. It may· seem that some nurses are mentioned by name when others just as worthy are not. In cases like this, the names are given to certify that the information is reliable, that someone who "was there" has given it. It might also appear that some institutions get more space than others; St. Joseph's Hospital in Radway, for example. It was Radway's good fortune to have two sparkling biographers who were nur sing there in the twenties and thirties, but what they wrote about St. Joseph's was true of similar hospitals of the time. In addition to the hundreds who gave stories, there were some who were pressed into service as sort of technical advisers and special acknowledgment is due them. Dr. M. R. Bow, deputy minister of health from 1927 to 1952, was helpful on many points. For advice on Alberta's unique district nursing service, we had tech nical assistance from Kate Shaw Brighty, Blanche Emerson and Mrs. J. R. Heffernan, the former Miss de Turbeville. Mrs. Rachel Young advised on mental nursing. Elva Taylor and Mrs. Winnie Roscoe formed an advisory committee on the Indian service. Help with the new era was always available from Mrs. Helen Sabin and Mona Staves of the AARN head office, Marguerite Schumacher, Frances Ferguson, Jean Clark Tronningsdal, Ruth Thompson and Jessie Morrison did some remarkable detective work in the old minutes of the AARN. And Isabel MacMillan, editor for Com mercial Printers, was unfailingly kind in fitting in late additions. If the book is half as good as the story it will be a good book. Tony Cashman Edmonton, 1966 The Chapters THE BEGINNINGS I The First Nurses, 1859 1 II The Old West Passes 7 III The Smallpox 12 IV 1871 -1889 15 v Two Firsts at Medicine Hat 23 VI First Student at Calgary General 29 Vil The Nineties 35 THE NEW CENTURY Vil/ Hospitals Run Training Schools and Vice Versa 42 IX Town and Country Hospitals 66 x Nurses On Duty, Mostly Private 93 XI The War and the Founding of the AARN JOB X/l Flu Epidemic 121 BETWEEN THE WARS XIII Nurses Equal Hospitals 126 XIV Nurses Individually 156 xv Nurses Collectively I73 XVI The Weir Report I81 XVII Alberta's District Nurses I90 XVIII The Thirties 208 XIX The Second War 229 IN PARTICULAR XX The Indian Service 244 XX/ Mental Nursing 265 XX// The Specialists 277 XX/// Nursing Missionaries 293 THE POST-WAR XXIV 1945, The Modern Era Begins 304 XXV 1954, The Future Begins . 326 CHAPTER ONE Nursing in Alberta began in 1859. Because of the ladies involved, Alberta was able to start with a legacy of the advances made in nursing up to that time. Because of the date, the history of nursing in Alberta is a participation in the events which then transformed the techniques and the standing of the nursing profession. The advances up to 1859 had been accomplished within religious orders, and the ladies who began nursing in Alberta were Grey Nuns. Within the year of their coming to Alberta there would be four historic breakthroughs in Florence Nightingale's campaign to make nursing a respected profession for laywomen, and make the nurse the trusted executive in any health program. The success of the Nightingale campaign is seen in the photographer's window. In today's nervous world, in which man views his future with alarm, there is no sight so reassuring as a photographer's window full of pictures of the latest graduates of the nearest school of nursing. It's a sight for sore minds; a covey of young women radiating individually and together the calmness, the warmth, the under standing, the humanity, the confidence and the knowledge of their profession. Every year a new crop brings new hope and the photographer puts the evidence in his window. But on August third, 1859, there wasn't a photographer in the world who would have put up a gallery of nurses. A purist might quibble that there weren't any commercial photographers then, but even if there had been they wouldn't have put nurses in the window on August third, 1859. That was the day the Grey Nuns started on their journey to bring nursing to Alberta. Sister Lamy, Sister Emery and Sister 1 Alphonse left St. Boniface, the suburb that predates Winnipeg, for fifty-two days on the oxcart trail to Fort Edmonton, the trading capital of the remote northwest. Their destination was a further fifty miles beyond Edmonton, at a mission on a lake. It bad been called Devil's Lake by the gentlemen adventurers of the Hudson's Bay Company but when Reverend Father Thibault built a mission there in 1842 he thought it .should have a more distinguished patron than the Prince of Liars and had called it Lac Ste. Anne, for the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Father Thibault had built his mission for the Cree Indians back at this lake to be well removed from the Blackfeet who came to trade at Edmonton. He had built it there lest the catechism lesson be interrupted by a resumption of the centuries-old feud between Crees and Blackfeet. The feud was still very much on in 1859, which made this a rough district for ladies. However, the Grey Nuns were a pioneering order, founded by the niece of a famed Canadian ex plorer. In 1844 they had come to Winnipeg from their mother house in Montreal when no other order would attempt it, and they had shown the cheerful toughness of their sanctity by taking the risque songs the boatmen had sung on the journey and rewriting them as hymns. Their order had been founded by Mother d'Youville, a niece of the renowned adventurer La V erendrye. The year of the founding was 1738, the same year that La Verendrye was in the west on his historic trading mission to the Mandan Indians. To finance the humanitarian work of the Grey Nuns, Mother d'You ville pioneered such commercial projects as the first ferry in Canada. She has now been beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, the second step on the road to sainthood, and may be come the first Canadian saint. In August, 1859, the three nuns of her order were bringing to Alberta, over the oxcart trail, a tradition of hospital care and nursing administration which religious orders had started in France in the sixteenth century. The tradition had been transferred to New France, had taken root in Quebec and become part of the Canadian heritage.

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