Categories: I-J-K

A native of Calgary, Marilyn obtained her RN from Toronto’s Wellesley Hospital, her BScN from the University of Manitoba, and her Masters in Education from the University of Toronto.  She began her teaching career at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg and continued at North York General Hospital.

In 1977 she joined the faculty of the University of Victoria, where she is best known for her contributions in the fields of Neurology and Gerontology.  She received a World Health Fellowship and Honourary Life Memberships in both the Vancouver Island Multiple Sclerosis and the Canadian Gerontological Nursing Association.  She was active on many boards, committees and charitable organizations.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Letters from John Jackson to Sheila Zerr, nd and January 26, 2000.
2. Curriculum Vitae
3. Nomination to CNA Memorial Book
4. Obituary
5. Letter from Mary Ellen Purkis, Director of University of Victoria’s School of Nursing, July 14, 2003.

Kavanagh (nee Jones), Gwendolynne (Gwen) Eyton (1945-2001)

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

Gwen was born in Saskatoon but took her nurses training at the Royal Columbian School of Nursing in New Westminster.  She was one of the first nurses in the Intensive Care Nursery at VGH.  In 1972 she moved to Kelowna General Hospital and subsequently to Kamloops, where she worked for 22 years at the Royal Inland Hospital.  She completed her nursing degree at the University College of the Cariboo in 1992.  Active in her profession, she served as RNABC Member-at-Large and Director .Gwen battled multiple sclerosis for the last ten years of her life, using her illness as a tool for influencing change in the ways that people with this disability were treated.  Her interests included photography, camping, and skiing.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Nomination for the RNABC Memorial Book
2. Scanned newspaper photograph
3. Newspaper obituary
4. Letter from Stella Black, Executive Director, Acute Care Services, Royal Inland Hospital, to Karen Abbot re Gwen’s employment history.
5. Letter from Sharon Simpson
6. Unsigned testimonial

Keays (nee Wheeler), Ellen Jean (1916- 2009)

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

Ellen Wheeler was born in Sedley, Sask. and took her nursing training at St. Boniface School of Nursing in Manitoba.  She later received a Public Health Nursing certificate from UBC in 1946, and an advanced certificate from UofT in 1966.  She served in the South African military from 1941 to 1944, spending some time with them in the Middle East.  Most of her later career, from 1959 until her retirement in 1980, was spent in a senior level position with the Boundary Health Unit, where she championed community nursing programs.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Biography
3. Newspaper photograph, South Delta Today, June 20, 1993, p. 8.
4. Obituary

Keith, Catharine W. (1919-1993)

Catharine graduated from the Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital in Campbelton, New Brunswick, later receiving a Bachelor of Nursing from McGill University and a Master of Science and Certificate in nurse-midwifery from Columbia University.  After a number of nursing positions in Eastern Canada, she worked for the federal Indian Health Service from 1950 to 1976, mostly in isolated northern regions.  She describes her Quebec postings in Barochois and Fort George as most significant “in terms of my own professional growth, confidence and spirituality”.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Photograph

Kelly, Shirley C. (1928-

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

Shirley Kelly took her nursing training at Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital in Orillia and did post-graduate training in operating room techniques and management at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.  She was a military nurse from 1951 to 1961 and an Operating Room supervisor from 1967 to 1973; she worked as an operating room staff nurse and supervisor at South Muskoka Memorial Hospital in Bracebridge, Ontario from 1973 until her retirement in 1988.  She describes the highlight of her career as ten years as a military nurse, with ten months in Japan and Korea.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Letter to Nina Rumen from Shirley Kelly, Christmas 1992.
3. Four photographs

Kennedy, Fanny Annette (Nan) (1914-1996)

Nan received her RN from VGH in 1933, and spent the next nine years as a general and private duty nurse.  After receiving a diploma in public health from UBC, she spent the next eight years as a public health nurse in Rossland, the Upper Fraser Valley and the Lower Mainland.  She received her BSN  from UBC in 1954 and spent four years with WHO as a public health nursing consultant in East Pakistan and Iran.

She returned to study for her Masters’ in Nursing at the University of Washington in Seattle.  In 1959 she joined the RNABC as Director of Education services and became Executive Director in 1970.    For the next eight years she managed the dramatic change that growth and changing concepts in nursing education brought to the profession.  Her work was recognized in 1978 with her being awarded the RNABC Award of Merit and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Victoria.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Nomination for the CNA Memorial Book.
2. Biographical information
3. “UVic Honours Nan Kennedy,” RNABC News, June-July 1978, p. 22.
4. “B.C. Leader Takes a Retirement Look at Nursing Profession’s Past and Future,” RNABC News, August-September 1978, pp. 4-6.
5. “VGH Provides Object Lesson on Theme,” RNABC News, June-July 1978, p. 8.
6. Ten photographs with accompanying correspondence
7. Negative (b&w) of her photograph, also on file at RNABC
8. Letter from Jean Robertson (Nan’s sister) to Esther Paulson with a poem “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere” and the program from her funeral service.
9. “Profile”, RNABC News, Oct./Nov. 1970, p. 5
10. “Former RNABC Executive Director Remembered”, Nursing BC, 28, No. 4 (August- September 1996), p. 29.

Kergin, Dorothy Jean (1928-1989)

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

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

A well-known educator with a varied career, Dorothy Kergin graduated from the VGH School of Nursing in 1951 and with a BSN from UBC in 1952. She became a public health nurse with the BC government from  1952 – 1963.   She received both her MPH and PhD from Ann Arbor Michigan.  She was Associate Dean of Health Sciences at McMaster University from 1970-1979, and Director of the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria from 1980-1988. During her tenure there, distance education programs for registered nurses expanded using the newly established Knowledge Network.

Dr. Kergin showed leadership in developing the following:  joint appointments between nursing faculty and heath care agencies; the nurse practitioner program; and a collaborative arrangement between the university and the Aga Khan foundation for the establishment of a school of nursing in Pakistan.  She received the RNABC Award of Merit in 1986, the Jeanne Mance Award, and the Ethel johns Award.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Oral history contact form
2. Curriculum Vitae, July 11, 1988
3. Letters from Mary Nicol, dated January 28, 1988 and 25 August 1988.
4. “News”, The Canadian Nurse (September 1972), p. 7.
5. “Nurse Practitioners-the National Picture”, The Canadian Nurse, April 1978, pp. 13-18.
6. Candidate for Member at Large, Nursing Education, The Canadian Nurse (1982), p. 6.
7. Award of Merit: Dorothy Jean Kergin, Victoria, RNABC Member Recognition Awards (1986).
8. RNABC Awards, RNABC News, May-June 1986, Cover and pp. 14-16.
9. “UVic Director Honoured by RNABC,” May 16, 1986, RNABC.
10. Mary Richmond, Biographical notes
11. Obituary
12. Brochure for the Dorothy J. Kergin Endowment Fund
13. Citation for posthumous award, with attachments

Kerr, Margaret (1900-1976)

Margaret Kerr was born in Amherst, Ontario; after qualifying as a teacher in Vancouver she taught two years in Kaslo.  She graduated from VGH in 1925 was one of the early graduates (in 1926) from the UBC nursing program. She was a school nurse for 2 years and with the support of a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship she graduated with a Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1929.  Subsequently she taught public health nursing for fourteen years at UBC.  During these years, she was active in professional organizations.

In 1944 she was elected President of the RNABC, and in the same year joined the staff of The Canadian Nurse.  In her more than twenty years as editor she made this journal a leader in its field; by the time of her retirement it reached 113 countries outside Canada.  Margaret’s objective was to further the cause of her profession, to develop a body of well-informed nurses and to encourage them to write so that others might benefit from their experiences.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Nomination to the RNABC Memorial Book.
2. Nomination to the CNA Memorial Book.
3. Ethel Johns, “Introducing Margaret Kerr,” The Canadian Nurse (1939) 35 (4), pp.201-202.
4. Kerr, Margaret E. “Public Health Nursing:  Some Pertinent Facts,” The Canadian Nurse (June 1941), 37 (6), 413-415.
5. Kerr, Margaret, “Teaching Material for First Aid Instruction,” The Canadian Nurse (September 1942), 36 (9), 661-663.
6. Lindeburgh, Marion, “The New Editor of the Journal,” The Canadian Nurse (1944), 40 (5), 310.
7. Kerr, Margaret, “Brief History of the Registered Nurses’ Association of British Columbia”, (1944).
8. [Kerr, Margaret?], The Canadian Nurse: Historical Data, February 1959.
9. Kerr, Margaret, “Fifty Years Young,” The Canadian Nurse, (March 1955), 51 (3), 175-177.
10. Obituary, The Canadian Nurse, August 1976, p. 10.
11. Application for registration as a nurse. -1925
12. Support for Canadian Nurses’ Association honorary membership. -1966
13. From American Nursing, Vol.3, ed. Vern L. Bullough and Lili Sentz, pp. 162-164
14. Photograph

Kersey (nee Parkinson), Mary B. (1908-August 10, 2007)

Mary Parkinson was born in Blackburn, England, and migrated to Canada in 1911, where her family settled in Esquimalt.  She entered nursing school at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Victoria in 1927, initially receiving $5 a month.  On graduation she worked privately for various people, marrying in 1935.  After marriage she remained active in nursing organizations, and when her children left home, a refresher course in 1965 helped her resume active nursing.  She worked in the offices of various doctors and also at the Royal Jubilee Hospital on private duty and at private homes.

Contents of Biographical File

• Biographical Information Profile with supplementary biographical notes

Kilpatrick (nee Thomson), Dolores (1938-January 7,2020)

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

Dolores’ education included an RN from Marymount School of Nursing in Sudbury in 1960, followed in 1973 by a BA in Sociology from Laurentian University in the same city.  She received her MA in Adult Education from Central Michigan University in 1980, and a further MA from the University of Calgary in 1988.  From 1974 she raised her three children as a single parent.

After working as a staff nurse in different hospitals, she became a nurse educator at Oilfields Hospital in Black Diamond, Alberta.  From 1990 until her retirement in 2002 she was the Director of the Wellness Hospital at the Peace Arch Hospital.  Her many achievements here include the Diabetes Education Program, osteoporosis and breast cancer groups, and a seniors’ substance awareness group.  She was nominated for the YWCA Woman of Distinction award.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Handwritten notes
3. Holmes, Tracy, “Kilpatrick Retires to Dance with Horses,” Peace Arch News, December 29, 2001, p. 4.
4. Two photographs