Local Markers: Canada’s First World War Military Nurse Casualties

Abstract

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.