Angels of Mercy in our Midst
Katherine Eva McKinnon
(1886-1977)
In due course, Katherine made her way from Sonya to Lindsay, where on January 1st 1914 she signed a contract as a pupil nurse at Ross Memorial Hospital and graduated on June 9th 1916, the ceremony taking place at the Academy Theatre. Five months later, on November 16th 1916, Katherine enlisted with the CAMC in Kingston, Ontario, and was soon on her way to England aboard the steamship Missanbie, and to her first posting at the Moore Barracks Hospital in Shorncliffe.
​
It was from here that Katherine wrote a series of prolific letters about her experiences; two of these detailed epistles were printed in the Lindsay Post. One of Katherine’s letters, composed on the 12th of May 1917, reveals her keen sense of awareness at the poverty and social injustices wrought by war:
Well Florence, I could not begin to describe to you the poverty of parts of London. I asked my sister to take me to some of the poorer parts, just so I could see some of the conditions, and I just felt no wonder we are having war, and how thankful we should be we have our good Canadian homes. It will be a happy band of boys and girls who are spared to return to our homes, and I do not think many of us will grumble at what is set before us. As I saw those poor, wee dirty kiddies of London streets, my mind went back to my childhood days, when I used to hide my crusts at the side of my plate so my mother would not see them and daddy would come to my rescue and eat them for me, and mother would say, “some poor little kiddies were hungry while I was wasting.”
Another letter, dated December 30th 1916, reveals how Katherine looked upon the patients in her care with kindly compassion, giving hope to those who needed it most:
The tales of the trenches are terrible to relate. Sometime I will tell you more of what the boys have told me. One poor lad told me that he prayed for death in the trenches. He said to me, “Sister, why did you ever leave your happy home in Canada to come to this awful place.” I told him it was to try and cheer a poor lonely heart like his.
Unlike some nursing sisters, who fell victim to disease and illness while on active service in Europe, Katherine apparently enjoyed robust physical health over the course of the war. Two and a half years later, in 1919, the cessation of hostilities saw Katherine being struck off strength and return to Bonnie Brae, her family’s homestead in Sonya. Katherine married George Allen in 1922, and in due course the couple was blessed with one son, Reid. With her husband overseeing the fairgrounds for nearly twenty years, it is likely that Katherine remained in Lindsay for the duration of her career. Here, she enjoyed the company of a large and extended family that included two granddaughters, three great-grandchildren, and several nieces and nephews.
On Monday September 19th 1977, residents perusing the obituaries in the Lindsay Daily Post would have come across one announcing the passing, in her ninety-second year, of Katherine Eva Allen, née McKinnon, who had died in the Ross Memorial Hospital the previous Friday.
​
A long-time parishioner at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Lindsay, the late Mrs. Allen is listed ‒ though not pictured ‒ in the 1970 church directory as living at 8 Henry Street. Her husband, George Allen, who served as superintendent of the Lindsay Fairgrounds between 1927 and 1956, had died ten years prior. (Located just behind the Ross Memorial Hospital and across from Lindsay’s old water tower, the Allen house was demolished in more recent years to make way for an expanded hospital parking lot.)
Behind this elderly women’s rimless glasses were eyes that, sixty years earlier, had witnessed firsthand the death and destruction effected by the First World War, in which she served as a nursing sister with the Canadian Army Medical Corps.
Born on March 8th 1886 in Sonya, Ontario, southwest of Little Britain, to Mr. and Mrs. John McKinnon, Katherine McKinnon grew up in a tight-knit community with the Presbyterian Church at its centre.
In the fall of 1968, Katherine joined former Ontario premier, Leslie Frost, and over eighty other Lindsay-area veterans of the First World War at a dinner reception commemorating the 50th anniversary of the war’s end. She was among the last of Victoria County’s nursing sisters who answered the call to service half a century before, and her presence did not go unnoticed. Nine years later, she was dead; her memorial service taking place at the Mackey Funeral Home before burial at Riverside Cemetery. Katherine’s blue nursing cape, issued as part of her CAMC uniform when she went overseas, is now in the collection of the Kawartha Lakes Historical Society.
October 23, 1968
