Dodd, Dianne E. (Author)
Canadian Journal of Health History/Revue canadienne d’histoire de la santé
Volume: 39
Issue: 2
Pages: 235-280
Some 60-plus Canadian women who served as nursing sisters in the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC) in the Great War died during their service and constituted the first female casualties of the new Canadian nation. Initially praised for their courage, but soon forgotten, professional nurses fit uneasily within the post-war dichotomy of male soldiers and mother-mourners. Seeing themselves as soldiers, nurses sought to highlight their service and their role in opening the way for a greater role for women in the Canadian military. In this article, the author examines commemorative initiatives for these nurse casualties at the local level, where personal and community sentiments were more likely to be expressed than at the national level. Official bodies, principally the Imperial (later Commonwealth) War Graves Commission (WGC) and the Canadian military, bestowed military funerals and WGC tombstones on nurses – something that surprised many community and family observers. Still, in according nurses identical treatment to their male counterparts, officials ignored their role as the first female military officers. Nurses themselves and their families, colleagues, and communities showed no such reticence. Families added personal inscriptions onto uniform WGC tombstones, which provided a window of understanding on early nurse/military officers’ view of their service, and erected their own tombstones and plaques. Communities afforded nurses a prominent role in local initiatives, often placing nurses’ names at the head of town cenotaphs. They also told their stories at local museums, kept their records, and even featured them in performance art. Towns, colleagues, local historians, families, and artists, enriched by the record keeping and devotion of nurses’ descendants, have ensured the nurses’ stories have been kept alive.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Mann, Susan;
(2000)
War Diary of Clare Gass 1915-1918
(/isis/citation/CBB000102542/)
Thesis
Moran, Heather L.;
(2008)
Stretcher Bearers and Surgeons: Canadian Front-Line Medicine during the First World War, 1914--1918
(/isis/citation/CBB001561197/)
Thesis
Quiney, Linda J.;
(2002)
“Assistant Angels”: Canadian Women as Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurses during and after the Great War, 1914--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001562484/)
Thesis
Evan P. Sullivan;
(2020)
Making Good: World War I, Disability, and the Senses in American Rehabilitation
(/isis/citation/CBB655397421/)
Book
Rebecca Ayako Bennette;
(2020)
Diagnosing Dissent: Hysterics, Deserters, and Conscientious Objectors in Germany During World War One
(/isis/citation/CBB592428650/)
Chapter
Jane Potter;
(2013)
"I Begin to Feel as a Normal Being Should, in Spite of the Blood and Anguish in Which I Move": American Women's First World War Nursing Memoirs
(/isis/citation/CBB929313635/)
Chapter
Margaret R. Higonnet;
(2013)
Cubist Vision in Nursing Accounts
(/isis/citation/CBB892194700/)
Chapter
Alison S. Fell;
Christine E. Hallett;
(2013)
Introduction: New perspectives on First World War nursing
(/isis/citation/CBB336615302/)
Article
Hallett, Christine E.;
(2014)
“A Very Valuable Fusion of Classes”: British Professional and Volunteer Nurses of the First World War
(/isis/citation/CBB001451194/)
Article
Harris, Kirsty;
(2014)
New Horizons: Australian Nurses at Work in World War I
(/isis/citation/CBB001451195/)
Chapter
Margaret H. Harrow;
(2013)
Making Sister Julie: the origin of First World War French nursing heroines in Franco-Prussian war stories
(/isis/citation/CBB013403808/)
Chapter
Christine E. Hallett;
(2013)
"Emotional Nursing": Involvement, Engagement and Detachment in the Writings of First World War Nurses and Vads
(/isis/citation/CBB223943975/)
Chapter
Kirsty Harris;
(2013)
"All for the Boys": The Nurse-Patient Relationship of Australian Army Nurses in the First World War
(/isis/citation/CBB003854474/)
Chapter
Hazel Hutchison;
(2013)
The Theater of Pain: Observing Mary Borden in the Forbidden Zone
(/isis/citation/CBB476344999/)
Book
Alison S. Fell;
Christine E. Hallett;
(2013)
First World War Nursing: New Perspectives
(/isis/citation/CBB196980408/)
Chapter
Carol Acton;
(2013)
Negotiating Injury and Masculinity in First World War Nurses' Writing
(/isis/citation/CBB414228201/)
Chapter
Angela K. Smith;
(2013)
"Beacons of Britishness": British Nurses and Female Doctors as Prisoners of War
(/isis/citation/CBB618962403/)
Chapter
Alison S. Fell;
(2013)
Afterword: Remembering the First World War Nurse in Britain and France
(/isis/citation/CBB129022953/)
Chapter
Janet S. K. Watson;
(2013)
A Sister's War: The Diaries of Alice Slythe
(/isis/citation/CBB512739377/)
Article
Armstrong-Reid, Susan;
(2010)
Soldiers of Peace: Canadians in UNRRA's German Nursing Brigade, 1945--1947
(/isis/citation/CBB001024904/)
Be the first to comment!