Capelle, Pauline “Polly” (1906-1991)

Following her graduation from UBC with a BA and BASC(N),  Pauline became a nursing supervisor with the BC Division of Venereal Disease Control.  In 1944 she was appointed an instructor and supervisor of public health nursing field work at UBC.  She took her Masters, majoring in pediatrics.

She writes in 1955-56:  “Nursing students and educators recognize that the nurse of today needs knowledge and skills that will prepare her for nursing in a world where the key words are change and adjustment.”

Contents of Biographical File

1. Letter from niece, Pauline Hodgos, to Rose Murikami, August 9, 1993 with biographical information

2. Biographical information
3. Transcript of conversation with Rose Murakami, July 12, 1993.
4. Three articles by Capelle:

a. “Why I Chose Nursing”, The Canadian Nurse, October 1947, pp. 777-778

b. “The Nurse and Venereal Disease Control,”  The Canadian Nurse, July 1944, pp. 487-489.

c. “Nursing for our Times”, The Slipstick (Engineering Undergraduate Society of UBC), 1956, p. 86.

4.  “Interesting people.”  Pauline Capelle, The Canadian Nurse, October 1944, p. 793.

Carroll, Barbara Louise (1943-   )

See Oral History files, Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 8, AUOH42, CDOH34

Barbara Carroll worked in a number of hospitals throughout BC and Ontario.  Her ten years in the Hospital Information Systems Department Kelowna General Hospital led to her designing training programs for every department.  She felt inefficiency was causing a lot of wastage, especially because of the lack of shared, integrated health information networks between care-providers between health regions and provincial/federal agencies.  “The challenge today is to have the automation and tools available to them to reduce duplication, improve timely communication, and documentation”.

Contents of Biographical File

1.  Biographical Information Profile

2.  Transcript of Oral History interview, October 21, 2005.

3.  Paper on Health Care Issues presented to BC’s Health Ministry, January 27, 2007.

Carruthers (nee Cummer), Joan M.  (1924-  

Joan Carruthers grew up in Ontario and British Columbia, taking her nursing at the Royal Columbian Hospital from 1943 to 1947.  She worked in Grand Forks, at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, the Powell River General Hospital, and Weekend Home Nursing for Public Health.  She was also involved with Meals on Wheels for thirty years.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile.  Release not signed.

Cavers, Anne S. (1889-1971)

See also Pages of History, Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 9, File 2

After graduating from Normal School in Calgary, Anne spent many of her early years teaching, becoming acting principal of the Armstrong school in 1914.  She entered Vancouver General Hospital’s School of Nursing in 1924, graduating in 1927 and receiving the Alison Cummings medal for the highest standard in medical nursing.  She became a teacher in the school immediately on graduation, known for her “devotion to duty and unflagging energy”.  In 1931 a scholarship allowed her to attend McGill University.  After her retirement in 1947 she wrote a history of the VGH School of Nursing, and continued to work part-time at the RNABC office.

Students recall her tremendous sense of humour, the kindly twinkle in her eyes.   The Anne Cavers Memorial Scholarship was created in her name.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biography of Anne S. Cavers (1889-1971).
2. Cavers, Anne S.  “Theory and Practice,” The Canadian Nurse, September 1938, pp. 492-494.
3. From Cavers, Anne S.  Our School of Nursing, 1889 to 1949, p. 75.  Produced to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the School of Nursing, Vancouver General Hospital.
4. Gaudreault, Patricia, “Anne Sutherland Cavers (1888-1971):  From School Teacher to Nurse Teacher”, 2012.
5. Miller, Naomi, “In Memory of Anne S. Cavers”
6. Profile on Ann S. Cavers, pp. 3-4 (probably from VGH SON Alumnae newsletter)
7. Death registration
8. Photographs

Cawston, Elizabeth “Betty” H.  (1917- 2003)

See Oral History files, Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 8 and Pages of History, Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 9, File 2

Cawston graduated from Vancouver General Hospital School of Nursing in 1939 and took a diploma course in Clinical Supervision at UBC in 1954-55, receiving her BSN from UBC in 1960.  In 1965 she received her Masters in Nursing from the University of Washington in Seattle.

From 1940 she worked in various positions at VGH—staff nurse, assistant head nurse, assistant night supervisor, head nurse, building supervisor and special service nurse in the division of VD control.  She became a nursing instructor at UBC from 1953, and was appointed to the UBC faculty in 1960, becoming Assistant Professor in 1966.

Contents of Biographical File

1.  Biographical notes

2.  Employment reviews, 1960-1979

3.  Dinner for Cawston on the occasion of her retirement.

4.  2 photographs, one original, one photocopied.

Celestine, Sister Mary
(Anna Knapp) (1918-1995)

Anna Krapp grew up on a farm in northern Alberta’s Peace country.  She received her RN from the St. Eugene School of Nursing in Cranbrook, her BSN from Seattle University in Seattle, and her MSW from St. Patrick’s College at the University of Ottawa.  She worked as a nurse at St. Paul’s Hospital, and was administrator of the Father Lacombe Nursing Home in Calgary, Superior of Providence Creche in Calgary, and Director of Catholic Social Services in Edmonton.

The highlight of her career was six months as a pediatric nurse in the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Deschapelles in Haiti.  She was a member of the Sisters of Providence of Montreal throughout her adult life, being Provincial Superior in the Canadian West from 1976 to 1982.

Contents of Biographical File

1.  Biographical Information Profile.

2.  Letter to Helen Shore, March 7, 1994.

3.  In Memoriam.  From B.C. Catholic, November 19, 1995.

4.  Obituary

Charter, Christine (1913-2012)

See Oral History files, Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 8

Christine Charter obtained her academic education in England and New Brunswick. Graduated from the Saint John General Hospital School of Nursing. Took a post graduate course in obstetrics at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal and received a diploma in public health nursing at the School of Nursing, Toronto University. She moved to Vancouver and was director of the Vancouver branch of the Victorian Order of Nurses.  During World War II in Nova Scotia she helped set up emergency treatment in the basement of a school for injured crew attacked by German U-boats.  She was transferred to Toronto in 1942 and Vancouver in 1944.

She introduced many innovative home nursing programs, hiring the Order’s first male nurse to enable eleven male quadriplegic patients to move from hospital to a home setting.   She added physio and occupational therapy services, and also set up Vancouver’s Meals on Wheels program.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Article on Charter in Health & Home Care newsletter, Fall 2008.
2. “A Legacy with the Victorian Order of Nurses:  Charting a Path Towards Better Community Care,”  VON at Work, Spring 2004, pp. 1,4.
3. Obituary from the Vancouver Sun, August 25, 2012, p. E14.
4. Page from CRNBC Memorial Book
5. Christine Charter:  Photograph and photocopy, b & w
6. The transcript of a 1988 interview with Christine Charter is located in Fonds 18.

Clarke (nee Huber), Carmen Elizabeth (1911-1960)

Elizabeth trained as a nurse at the Swift Current Hospital, moving with her husband John Clark to Vancouver in the 1940s where she worked at the Hospital for Sick and Crippled Children.   In 1948 she wrote the song that made her famous, “There’s a Bluebird on Your Windowsill” for a young patient who noticed a sparrow hopping on the windowsill by his bed.

The song was recorded by CKNW’s Rhythm Pals, Don Murphy and then by Wilf Carter, Doris Day, Tex Williams, Bing Crosby and numerous others.  It became the first Canadian song to sell a million copies, with all royalties donated to children’s hospitals.  In 1950 it was used as the theme song for the March of Dimes national fund-raising campaign, and in 1986 in the Canadian feature My American Cousin.  She died of a stroke in 1960 when only 49.

Contents of Biographical File

1. “Chasing the Bluebird.”  Biographical information.
2. “The Story of Bluebird on my Windowsill,”  History of Nursing News, June 2004, p. 9.
3. “There’s a Bluebird . . . “ published in “Those were the Days” in Swift Current by Jim Greenblat, ca. 1971, pp. 96-97.
4.  “Bluebird on Your Windowsill.”  The History of Metropolitan Vancouver, www.vancouverhistory.ca,  2006
5.  “Bluebird on Your Windowsill”, Part 3.  The Last Word, Chapter 26.
6.  “Bluebird on Your Windowsill,”  The Canadian Encyclopaedia.
7. Registration of death, Province of British Columbia—Elizabeth Clarke, July 23, 1960.
8. B.C. Archives, Vital Death Registration.  John Wanstall Clark—husband.
9. Registration of death, Province of British Columbia, John Wanstall Clark, July 29, 1958.
10.  “Chasing the Bluebird” By Beth Fitzpatrick, BC History of Nursing Society News, December 2010, pp. 9-10.
11. Music score:  “There’s a Bluebird on Your Windowsill.”
12. Correspondence, 2005, 2010.
13. Obituary notices for Elizabeth Clarke, n.d. and John Wanstall Clarke, July 29, 1958.
14. Two photographs

Elizabeth Clarke wrote the song “There’s  Bluebird on My Windowsill” while working as a nurse at the Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.  She generously gave royalties to the hospital.

Columkille, Sister (Alice Lane Hamer) (1890-1973)

Alice Hamer was born in England.  Though an Anglican, in 1911 she converted to Catholicism and entered the Sisters of Providence at the Novitiate in Vancouver.  She graduated from the St. Paul’s Hospital School of Nursing in 1919 and also received a Diploma as a Laboratory Technician in 1925 and a Bachelor of Science degree from Seattle University in 1937.  She served as Director of St. Paul’s Hospital School of Nursing for fifteen years, and President of RNABC from 1949 to 1951.

In 1953 she left to take up various administrative positions at hospitals in Saskatchewan and Alberta, retiring in 1962.  She was known for her “kindness and sensitivity, her ability to overlook faults and failings, and her adeptness at stressing the finer points in people’s characters and personalities”

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biography by Sister Therese Carnigan, March 1, 1993.
2. Chronology (1890-1973)
3. Photograph with note
4. Nomination, RNABC Memorial Book
5. Sister Columkille, S.P.  Author unknown

Crane, Lavinia (1923-2017)

See Oral History files,
Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 8

A member of the Victorian Order of Nurses, Crane graduated from the Vancouver General Hospital School of Nursing in 1950 and with a BSN from UBC in 1951.  She received her Masters degree in public health from the University of Michigan and in 1961 was appointed consultant with the division in Victoria, given special responsibility for developing the BC home care program.  She became director of nursing for the BC Health Department in 1975, initiating many research projects.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical note
2. Newspaper photograph, 1950.
3. Obituary, May 6, 2017.