Angels of Mercy in our Midst
Canada’s Nursing Sisters learned their craft in Canada’s training hospitals, one of which was the Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay. Opened in 1902, the RMH was the gift of Scottish-born civil engineer, James Ross (1848-1913). Between the time of its opening and 1916, at the height of the First World War, almost forty nurses had graduated from the hospital. It was in the wards of the RMH that Winnifred Hardy, Tilly Mann, Katherine McKinnon, Olive Williamson, and other nurses were trained in the art of caring for the ill and wounded.
During the graduation exercises of June 9th 1916, a certain Dr. Blanchard was recorded as noting that “…the day of the old nurse is passing, and she is being replaced by the trained nurse.” Dr. Blanchard went on to describe how the young nurses were “…instructed in all departments from the kitchen to the basement to the garret,” and of how “…a nurse must have the qualities attributed to Longfellow’s Evangeline, namely Faith, Hope, Charity and Courage.”
Courtesy of the Kim Coulter Collection
Miss Harriett Leck – the Canadian-born Matron of Grace Hospital Training School in Detroit, Michigan, who addressed the graduating nurses – echoed Dr. Blanchard in saying that hospitals have an important role to play in the forming of a nursing career: “The qualifications of the ideal nurse are many,” said Leck. “She must be truthful, honest and reliable. Being reliable is not always easy, as it requires responsibility and also the doing of uninteresting and disagreeable work. She must also have a sense of humour. It is what she is that counts more than what she does. You as nurses owe much to the school where you were trained for the foundation of your training.” To this end, Miss Leck affirmed the importance of serving others. “Nursing is too broad a profession to seek only our own corner,” she noted, stating that “service for others must be our own slogan. We cannot think of our calling as a trade but as a higher profession.”
So earnestly did local women feel the call to serve in this profession that the hospital sometimes had to turn away aspiring nurses because of their age. “I am coming again,” said Tilly Mann around 1907, when she was turned down due to her young age. “Time will overcome one objection and I can overcome the other.” At this time, pupil nurses, or nurses-in-training, were paid $4 a month in their first year. This increased to $6 a month in their third and final year. Once a year, each one would receive two dresses with caps and aprons. Nurses worked 12-hour shifts every day except Sunday.
The qualities enumerated by Dr. Blanchard and Harriett Leck were the building blocks upon which the Nursing Sisters of Victoria County built their careers, both during the war and afterwards. In 1975, the original Ross Memorial Hospital building was demolished and replaced with an expansive new facility. By this time, virtually all of Victoria County’s Great War Nursing Sisters were gone, but the memory of their work lives on in the exceptional care offered by the RMH to this day.
Laura Isobel Moir Curry (1885-1933)
Winnifred Ethel Hardy (1889/1892-1978)
Dovie Matilda "Tilly" Mann (1887-1928)
Katherine Eva McKinnon (1886-1977)
Olive Susannah Williamson (1894-1970)
Resources:
"Impressive Graduation Exercises At Academy Tuesday Evening," Lindsay Post, June 9 1916, Pg. 2
"Medals Presented to Returned Soldiers," Lindsay Post, January 26 1917, Pg. 2
Ross Memorial Hospital, Historical Milestones, http://www.rmh.org/about-ross-memorial/historical-milestones1
