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Save This Date (Feb 25, 2021 @12 PM)

Black (in)Visibility: Black Nurses in Canada Who Paved the Way

The Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry in the UBC School of Nursing is holding a panel discussion for Black History Month called: Black (in)Visibility: Black Nurses in Canada Who Paved the Way on Feb 25 from 12 – 1:30 PM PST. The panel is free and open to the public.

This panel will recognize the significant contributions of Black nurses to health care in British Columbia and Canada. The panel will feature a keynote address by historian Dr. Karen Flynn, an Associate Professor in the Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies and African-American Studies Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Flynn’s book Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora won the Lavinia L. Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing. The panel will also feature Dr. Lydia Wytenbroek, an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at UBC, who will discuss the importance of historical scholarship as a form of inquiry; Ismalia De Sousa, a doctoral student at UBC School of Nursing, who will be presenting initial findings of her project on the history of Black nurses and midwives in BC, and which offers a new perspective on Black women’s nursing work in the BC health care context; and Dr. Dzifa Dordunoo, President of the Coalition of African, Caribbean and Black Nurses in British Columbia and an Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of Victoria, who will provide a concluding commentary.

Register here.

Dr. Lydia Wytenbroek receives a Healthcare Project Grant

Photo credit: UBC School of Nursing

Thanks to BCHNS Honorary Member Glennis Zilm who sent in the following:

“BCHNS member Dr. Lydia Wytenbroek, who joined the UBC Nursing faculty this past fall, has been awarded a Healthcare Project Grant of almost $10,000 by AMS Healthcare, formerly the Hannah Foundation. The funds will be used for a project on Imperial Pathways of Mobility: Doctoring Women and the American Surgical Enterprise in Iran 1888-1940. Lydia is working on a book based on her doctoral thesis, and on projects related to “whiteness in Canadian nursing,” nursing’s voice and social justice, and the history of perioperative nursing. Congratulations!”

Virtual 52nd Annual Marion Woodward Lecture

Thanks to Sally Thorne and Glennis Zilm for the following information and links.

The 52nd Annual Marion Woodward Lecture took place on October 29th. The day involved a dynamic and informative panel symposium on “Navigating the Tempest: Nursing Practice During COVID-19.” Among the panelists were current faculty members Jennifer Baumbusch and Farinaz Havaei, as well as our BC Ministry of Health’s Chief Nursing Officer Natasha Prodhan-Bhalla, and an incredible Clinical Nurse Specialist in Intensive Care from St. Paul’s Hospital (and UBC alum) Vini Baines.

The Marion Woodward Lecture this year was delivered by Yvonne Coghill, [seen in the above photo] who is the Deputy President of the Royal College of Nurses in the UK. She spoke on “Nursing Leadership in the English National Health Service” and touched on a wide range of topics of high relevance to BC nurses, including diversity and coping with the pandemic.

You can watch the symposium and lecture here.

Fort St. John new elementary school named after pioneer nurse Anne Roberts Young

School District 60 received more than 70 public submissions about a name for Fort St. John’s new elementary school, and pioneer nurse Anne Roberts Young was top among the suggestions. Roberts was the first registered nurse stationed in the North Peace, arriving from England in 1930 to work at the Grand Haven Red Cross Outpost Hospital.

She married farmer and postmaster Jim Young of Rose Prairie and continued working as a nurse after her move to that community, often travelling by horseback and through severe weather to see patients. She delivered more than 300 babies during her 25-year career in the region.

To celebrate the opening of the School the Fort St. John North Peace Museum mounted a display of items from Young’s nursing bag and a brief biography. Here are pictures of the display

Larry Evans, a northern historian, and columnist has written an interesting article about Anne Young and other nurses that served in the Peace River district. Go here to learn more.

Old Hastings Mill Store Museum Opens

 

Survivors of Vancouver’s great fire of 1886 took refuge in Hasting’s Mill Store. The building survived the fire and exists today as the Old Hasting’s Mill Store Museum, Vancouver’s oldest building.

Emily Patterson, Vancouver’s pioneer first nurse, is believed to have shopped in the store when it was located on the waterfront. Although not formally trained, Emily took it upon herself to provide medical treatment to her family and community out of sheer necessity.  She became so adept at her skills that she was thought of as a nurse and was widely respected among Indigenous and pioneer residents up and down Burrard Inlet.

Noted author Lisa Anne Smith’s book: Emily Patterson the Heroic Life of a Milltown Nurse, chronicles the life of this remarkable woman and can be purchased at the Museum. The author kindly donates some of the royalties to the BCHN Society.

A recent successful Go Fund Me campaign raised the needed money to complete essential building updates and repairs. Donations will always be greatly appreciated as work on preserving this heritage building continues.

The Museum will open July 1 for a shortened summer season.