Carving out a past: The Canadian nurses' association war memorial

Histoire Sociale

Volumn 29, Issue 58, 1996, Pages 415-429

  McPherson, Kathryn ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0042858190     PISSN: 00182257     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), pp. 17, 28.
2. Tori Smith, "'Almost Pathetic ... But Also Very Glorious': The Consumer Spectacle of the Diamond Jubilee", Histoire sociale/Social History, vol. 29, no. 57 (November 1996), pp. 333-356.
3. John R. Gillis, "Introduction, Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship" in John Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 10.
4. Alan Young, "'We throw the torch': Canadian Memorials of the Great War and the Mythology of Heroic Sacrifice", Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 24, no. 4 (Winter 1989-1990), pp. 5-28; Daniel J. Sherman, "Art, Commerce, and the Production of Memory in France after World War I", Gender and History, vol. 8. no. 1 (April 1996), pp. 82-107.
5. Alan Young, "'We throw the torch': Canadian Memorials of the Great War and the Mythology of Heroic Sacrifice", Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 24, no. 4 (Winter 1989-1990), pp. 5-28; Daniel J. Sherman, "Art, Commerce, and the Production of Memory in France after World War I", Gender and History, vol. 8. no. 1 (April 1996), pp. 82-107.
6. Gillis states: "As for the women who had contributed so much to the world's first total war effort, there would be no monuments. Their assigned role was still, as it was in the private cults of the dead in the nineteenth century, that of chief mourners and mediums." Gillis, Commemorations, p. 12.
7. Preserving the carved images was a gesture designed to win some public goodwill given the community outcry over the demolition of what some considered an historic building. Other images include the stained glass window in Vancouver's St. Paul's Church, the bust of Emily Edwards in the Vancouver City Archives, and the memorials to Jeanne Mance in Montreal.
8. Natalie Reigler, "The Work and Networks of Jean I. Gunn, Superintendent of Nurses, Toronto General Hospital 1913-1941: A Presentation of Some Issues in Nursing During Her Lifetime, 1882-1941" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1992), chap. 9, "A Memorial to the 'Service of Humanity'".
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Hill was well known for his statues of political figures such as George Brown (1913) and D'Arcy McGee (1922), but made his career from commissions for World War I memorials. By the end of his career he had designed nearly a dozen. Agnes Joynes, "Sculpture of G. W. Hill", Saturday Night, Mav 14, 1938, p. 2.
12. Warner, Monuments and Maidens, p. 28.
13. Serafina K. Bathrick, "The Female Colossus: The Body as Facade and Threshold" in Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog, eds., Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 79-99.
14. For a discussion of women and public space in nineteenth-century America, see Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
15. "Marble Memorial for Heroic Nurses" and "Memorial to Nurses Unveiled at Ottawa", The Globe, August 24 and 25, 1926. In 1938 Saturday Night author Agnes Joynes concluded that Humanity "dominates and unites" the statue. "She holds as a sceptre the caduceus. It is a fitting symbol in a work of this kind." Joynes, "Sculpture of G. W. Hill", p. 2.
16. "Marble Memorial for Heroic Nurses" and "Memorial to Nurses Unveiled at Ottawa", The Globe, August 24 and 25, 1926. In 1938 Saturday Night author Agnes Joynes concluded that Humanity "dominates and unites" the statue. "She holds as a sceptre the caduceus. It is a fitting symbol in a work of this kind." Joynes, "Sculpture of G. W. Hill", p. 2.
17. "Marble Memorial for Heroic Nurses" and "Memorial to Nurses Unveiled at Ottawa", The Globe, August 24 and 25, 1926. In 1938 Saturday Night author Agnes Joynes concluded that Humanity "dominates and unites" the statue. "She holds as a sceptre the caduceus. It is a fitting symbol in a work of this kind." Joynes, "Sculpture of G. W. Hill", p. 2.
18. On the CNA's opposition to the introduction of British-trained nurse-midwives in the years after World War I, see Suzann Buckley, "Ladies or Midwives?" in Linda Kealey, ed., A Not Unreasonable Claim: Women and Reform in Canada, 1880s-1920s (Toronto: The Women's Press, 1979).
19. This argument is made more fully in Kathryn McPherson and Meryn Stuart, "Writing Nursing History in Canada: Issues and Approaches", Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, vol. 11, no. 1 (1994), pp. 3-22.
20. For a description of the pace of work expected of military nurses, see Brandon General Hospital Archives, box 87, Wilhelmina Mowat Waugh, "White Veils, Brass Buttons and Me: Memoirs of a Nursing Sister in World War I in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, 1915-1920", unpublished manuscript, n.d.
21. For an analysis of potential sexual tensions at the bedside, see Kathryn McPherson, Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996), chap. 6.
22. A World War I promotional poster for the British Red Cross depicted a serene nurse holding a soldier on a stretcher. The image was so out of proportion that the soldier appeared doll-like rather than human. The poster's caption, "The greatest Mother in the World", underscored the non-sexual relation between nurse and patient and allowed the nurse to claim status simultaneously as female healer and, more than that, "greatest mother". Darracott, The First World War in Posters from the Imperial War Museum, London (New York: Dover Publications, 1974), p. 30. This image is analyzed in Sharon Ouditt, Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
23. A World War I promotional poster for the British Red Cross depicted a serene nurse holding a soldier on a stretcher. The image was so out of proportion that the soldier appeared doll-like rather than human. The poster's caption, "The greatest Mother in the World", underscored the non-sexual relation between nurse and patient and allowed the nurse to claim status simultaneously as female healer and, more than that, "greatest mother". Darracott, The First World War in Posters from the Imperial War Museum, London (New York: Dover Publications, 1974), p. 30. This image is analyzed in Sharon Ouditt, Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
24. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 176, 184.
25. Marilyn Lake, "Between Old World 'Barbarism' and Stone Age 'Primitivism': The Double Difference of the White Australian Feminists" in Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns, eds., Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought (London: Oxford University Press, 1984), and "Colonised and Colonising: The White Australian Feminist Subject", Women's History Review, vol. 2, no. 3 (1993), pp. 377-386.
26. Marilyn Lake, "Between Old World 'Barbarism' and Stone Age 'Primitivism': The Double Difference of the White Australian Feminists" in Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns, eds., Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought (London: Oxford University Press, 1984), and "Colonised and Colonising: The White Australian Feminist Subject", Women's History Review, vol. 2, no. 3 (1993), pp. 377-386.
27. One such public memorial - the 1915 statue of Samuel de Champlain with a First Nations scout crouching at his feet - recently has been the centre of artistic, historical, and political critique. "Statue Target of Native Ire", Globe and Mail, October 8, 1996, p. A8.
28. Richard Cavendish, Visions of Heaven and Hell (London: Harmony Books, 1977), p. 96. Thanks are extended to Gillian Poulter for her help with this analysis.
29. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Rox, 1980).
30. Cecilia Morgan, "'Of Slender Frame and Delicate Appearance': The Placing of Laura Secord in the Narratives of Canadian Loyalist History", Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, new series vol. 5 (1994), pp. 195-212.
31. M. Adelaide Nutting and Lavinia L. Dock, A History of Nursing: The Evolution of Nursing Systems from the Earliest Times to the Foundation of the First English and American Training Schools for Nurses (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907). See also Elizabeth Jamieson and Mary Sewall, Trends in Nursing History: Their Relationship to World Events (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1940).
32. M. Adelaide Nutting and Lavinia L. Dock, A History of Nursing: The Evolution of Nursing Systems from the Earliest Times to the Foundation of the First English and American Training Schools for Nurses (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907). See also Elizabeth Jamieson and Mary Sewall, Trends in Nursing History: Their Relationship to World Events (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1940).
33. The History of Nursing Society, McGill University, ed., Pioneers of Nursing in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Nurses' Association, 1929). This volume is organized similarly to the American collection edited by Meta Rutter Pennock, Makers of Nursing History: Portraits and Pen Sketches of Fifty-nine Prominent Women (New York: Lakeside Publishing Co., 1928).
34. The History of Nursing Society, McGill University, ed., Pioneers of Nursing in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Nurses' Association, 1929). This volume is organized similarly to the American collection edited by Meta Rutter Pennock, Makers of Nursing History: Portraits and Pen Sketches of Fifty-nine Prominent Women (New York: Lakeside Publishing Co., 1928).
35. John Murray Gibson in collaboration with Mary S. Mathewson, Three Centuries of Canadian Nursing (Toronto: MacMillan Company of Canada, 1947), p. v.
36. Canadian historians have begun to provide analyses of the historical and commemorative representation of such figures. See Morgan, "'Of Slender Frame and Delicate Appearance'"; Colin M. Coates "Commemorating the Woman Warrior of New France: Madeleine de Verchères, 1696-1930" in Joy Parr and Mark Rosenfeld, eds., Gender and History in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1996).
37. Canadian historians have begun to provide analyses of the historical and commemorative representation of such figures. See Morgan, "'Of Slender Frame and Delicate Appearance'"; Colin M. Coates "Commemorating the Woman Warrior of New France: Madeleine de Verchères, 1696-1930" in Joy Parr and Mark Rosenfeld, eds., Gender and History in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1996).