Breeze, Elizabeth G. (1881-1938)

elizabethbreeze0012Breeze graduated from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto; she received additional training in affiliated schools and Roosevelt Hospital in New York. In 1910 she initiated the school nursing service in Vancouver and in 1923 became Director of Nursing for the Metropolitan Health Committee of Greater Vancouver, a position she held until her death.

She was a charter member of the Graduate Nurses’ Association of BC, becoming elected president in 1921, and president of RNABC from 1921 to 1925. In 1923 she was elected president of the Public Health Nursing Section of the Canadian National Association of Trained Nurses. In 1936, when the Metropolitan Heath Committee of Greater Vancouver was formed, she was named Director of Public Health Nursing.

With J. Mace Andress she was co-author of Health Care for Canadian Schools, which was in use for more than twenty years after her death. In 1925 she introduced a course on health for school children at UBC’s summer school for teachers.

Contents of Biographical File

  1. Elizabeth Breeze, “The Metropolitan Health Committee of Greater Vancouver”, The Canadian Nurse, May 1938, pp. 233-238.
  2. Appointment [to the Metropolitan Health Board], The Canadian Nurse (February 1937), p. 71.
  3. Miscellaneous personal information, with some accompanying e-mails, on an article on Breeze by Glennis Zilm and Ethel Warbinek for the Canadian Journal of Nursing (2002).
  4.  Ethel Warbinek and Glennis Zilm, “Profile of a Leader: Elizabeth Breeze”, Canadian Journal of Nursing, Sept./Oct. 2002, pp. 28-29.
  5. CV
  6. Biography from the “Biographical Dictionary”
  7. Biographical information
  8. Death certificate
  9. “Elizabeth Gertrude Breeze” from Glennis Zilm and Ethel Warbinek, “TB Nurses in BC 1895-1960: A Biographical Dictionary”: White Rock, 2006.
  10. Obituaries
  11. Photograph