Categories: L-M

McLean (nee Gunderson), Marlyn (1933-

See also oral history files Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 8, AU0H29, CDOH38

After attending the Saskatoon City Hospital School of Nursing, Marlyn McLean spent most of her career (1963-1965 and 1969-1993) as a flight nurse for the Saskatchewan Government Air Ambulance Service.  She was required to be ready 24 hours a day to fly from the Saskatoon base to any point in Saskatchewan, and even further afield, to transport patients to medical care in a larger urban centre.  Her many adventures included four successful baby deliveries en route.    On one occasion they survived an encounter with a flock of geese, one of which went through the windshield.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Four newspaper articles and brochure regarding the Saskatchewan Air Ambulance.
3. Photograph

MacLean (nee Butling), Sally Anne (1937-

Sally Butling grew up in the West Kootenays, a member of a cultured and socially active family.  She received a Nursing Diploma from St. Paul’s Hospital, then attended UBC, from which she obtained a Diploma in Public Health Nursing (1968), a BSc (1975) and an MSc (1981).  She subsequently worked in a variety of positions, including as a lecturer at UBC and an Instructor at BCIT.  She was active with the CRNBC, becoming Education Consultant (1981-1987), Executive Officer, Corporate Services (1988-1992) and Director of Member Development (1992-2000).  She recalls being fired after the birth of her first child as a seminal moment in her development.

Her international work began with consultancies in Uganda and Ethiopia for the Canadian Nurses Association.   She continued with developing nursing and midwifery services in Kosovo and Rwanda and worked to build responsive and accountable health care systems in the Balkans.  She also provided assistance to the Providence Hospitals in Vancouver and the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, and re-established the VON in BC.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Signed consent form
3. Resume
4. Two colour photographs
5. Article with photograph in RNABC News, October 1981, p. 14.

MacLean, Margaret A. “Marnie” (1919-2001)

When Marnie left her hometown of Spring Valley, south of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, her community presented her with a watch, which she says inspired in her lasting feelings of responsibility.  She received her RN from Providence Hospital in Moose Jaw in 1941, and her BSN from McGill University in 1951.

She served in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps as a lieutenant in both Canada and England during WW II and subsequently remained active in the militia, retiring with the rank of major in 1965.  She instructed in gynecology at Toronto Western Hospital and VGH, where she was Senior Instructor and CPR Coordinator. She also served in administrative positions at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Biographical release form
3. Obituary
4. Funeral program
5. Photograph with retirement notice, VGH News in General, September 1982, p. 8.
6. Photograph

MacKenzie, Mary Ardcronie “Ard” (ca.1870-1948)

“Ard” was born in Toronto, where she received her BA and a teaching certificate from the University of Toronto.  After some years as a Visiting Nurse in Washington and Chicago, she returned to Canada in 1908 to become Chief Superintendent of the Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada.  She was also President of the Canadian National Association for Trained Nurses from 1912 to 1914.

After two years in consultant positions in the US, she returned to Canada in 1920 to become Public Health Instructor in the new Public Health Program at UBC, teaching in the first university nursing degree program in Canada until her retirement in 1923.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Nomination to the CNA Memorial Book with photocopied photograph
2. Glennis Zilm, notes for speech on MacKenzie, April 9, 1991.
3. Entry prepared by Glennis Zilm for American Nursing: A Biographical Dictionary, July 1, 1998.
4. Biographical and research materials.
5. President’s Address” by MacKenzie, The Canadian Nurse 11 (1914), 561-563.

MacKenzie, Jessie Ferguson  (1880-1963)

Jessie MacKenzie was a tireless advocate for the improvement of hospitals and nursing education, and an ardent advocate of women’s suffrage.  After obtaining her teaching certificate from the University of Toronto, and a period of study and work in California, she moved to Victoria in 1914 where she became superintendent and head of the training school at the Royal Jubilee Hospital.  Her many improvements enhanced the school’s ability to attract students.

She was the third president of the GNABC – 1919-1921, the precursor of the RNABC, and worked on many committees to improve standards for nursing education.  When the hospital became mired in debt, she was made the scapegoat and dismissed from her post in 1927.  She remained active with the RJH alumnae.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Nomination for RNABC Memorial Book
2. Curriculum Vitae

McIntyre (nee Taylor), Shirley J. (1927-

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

When Shirley McIntyre retired from nursing at the age of 74, she was the oldest working OR nurse in BC, perhaps in Canada, having spent her last twelve years at the Gulf Islands Lady Minto Hospital.  She had graduated from the Toronto Western Hospital Training School in 1950, and in 1977 completed her BSc at the University of Toronto.

She describes six months in mission hospitals in India with her surgeon husband, and learning new techniques in laparoscopic  surgery and endoscopy at Lady Minto Hospital as among the highlights in her career.  After divorce from her husband in 1979, she worked at two full time positions to raise and educate her five children.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Letters from Ethel Warbinek May 16, July 3, 2002.
3. One page handwritten notes
4. “Shirley McIntyre retires . . . sort of”, Gulf Islands Driftwood, November 14, 2001.
5. Two photographs with covering letter.

McIlraith (nee Littlejohn), Ruth Echo (1913-2001)

See Fonds 19
See Oral History files, Fonds 18, Series 3, Subseries 8

Ruth McIlraith (nee Littlejohn) was born June 2, 1913 on a farm in Arcola, Saskatchewan.  After the family lost their farm in the Depression, the Littlejohns moved to Winnipeg, where Ruth attended the nursing program at Winnipeg General Hospital, graduating in 1936.

Her initial attempts to enlist after the outbreak of World War II were unsuccessful, as her position at the hospital had been frozen.  After her move to take a job at Vancouver General Hospital, she successfully enlisted with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps on June 1, 1942, and was recruited to serve aboard hospital ship no. 46, the Lady Nelson, Canada’s first hospital ship.  She was appointed lieutenant November 5, 1943, and transferred from the ship in December 1943 to Nanaimo Military Hospital until June 1944.  After D-Day she served with No. 1 Canadian General Hospital at Nijmegen, Holland.

Her experiences in the war shaped much of the remainder of her life.  From 1947 to 1976, she worked at Shaughnessy Hospital, becoming Director in 1961.  She became president of the Nursing Sisters’ Association and on the board of the Veterans’ Memorial Housing Society.  After retirement in 1976, she remained active with a number of organizations, including the DVA pilot project for the Veterans Independence Program, the Veterans Memorial Manor Society and the George Derby Long Term Society.  She received the Canada 125th Anniversary Commemorative Medal in 1992.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Nomination for the RNABC Memorial Book.
2. Military History
3. Biographical information
4. “Remembering Yesterday”, RNABC News, September-October, 1990 22 (5), 28.
5. Letter from Joan Moore to Glennis Zilm, November 15, 2001.
6. Memorial service program
7. Memorial recollections
8. Hawthorn, Tom, “Florence Nightingale Inspired Nurse,” The Globe and Mail, November 10, 2001.
9. Obituary, The Vancouver Sun, September 15, 2001, p. G6.
10. Article from Greensboro Daily News (June 6, 1918) and graduation photo with accompanying letter from great granddaughter Christine Switzer, May 11, 2011.
11. Photograph
12. Documentation in support of McIlraith’s nomination for the RNABC Memorial Book.
13. Information on design of Long Service Award pin (in artifact collection).
14. E-mails, photocopied photographs and other information related to donation of Ruth McIlraith’s material.

McDonald, Isabel Mary (1891-1970)

Isabel was born in Nova Scotia but moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where she completed her nursing at St. Leo’s Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1918.  In 1920 she became a registered nurse in British Columbia, and in 1922 in California.  She appears to have stopped nursing to raise her family when she married Charles Mooney ca. 1925, but after her husband’s death in 1949 she worked as a nurse in various positions, mostly at the Pearson Tuberculosis Hospital in Vancouver.

The photograph shows Mary McDonald with her fellow graduates on the steps of St. Leo’s Hospital, Greensboro, North Carolina.  Mary is the second person from the left on the upper row.

1. Archives Deed of Gift form with letter and e-mails, 2011.
2. Letter from Kathy Murphy to Christine Switzer re her great-grandmother, December 13, 2010. Response from Switzer, January 2, 2012.
3. Package prepared by Christine Switzer including timeline; thirteen photographs; Certificate of Graduation from St. Leo’s Training School for Nurses, November 29, 1918 (photocopy); Certificate for Board of Examiners of Trained Nurses of North Carolina, December 10, 1918; Canadian Nurses Association of British Columbia Certificate of Registration, November 23, 1920; California State Board of Health RN certificate, March 4, 1922; RNABC registration certificate.
4. Greensboro Daily News article with a photograph of eight graduates From St. Leo’s Training School for Nurses, June 6, 1918 (photocopied) with accompanying letter.

MacDonald (nee Lineham), Calvina Elsie Irene (1916-2004)

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

Elsie was born in Downley, Buckinghamshire on February 29.  After emigrating to Canada in 1943, she worked in a variety of nursing positions, including in the maternity ward at Clinton.  She was night supervisor there and at the Goderich Hospital.  After operating a private nursing home, she moved briefly to Slave Lake, Alberta in 1962, then to BC with her five children, where she took up farming in the East Kootenays.  She ran a nursing home in Viking, Alberta and then became a nursing supervisor at Consort Hospital.  She continued volunteer work until well into her 80s.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical Information Profile
2. Photograph
3. Memorial Service program
4. Obituaries

McCann, Elizabeth (Beth) Kenny (1917-1986)

See also UBC Archives for other records
See School of Nursing Fonds 31

Beth McCann was an outstanding nurse educator.  She was born in Vancouver and graduated from VGH School of Nursing in 1939 and  received a BA and a BSc (Nursing) from UBC in 1940. Following graduation, she taught nursing at Royal Columbian and Vancouver General Hospitals.  She joined the faculty of the School of Nursing at UBC in 1947, becoming the first nursing instructor to work on and off campus with UBC’s nursing students while they were at VGH.  She enrolled in the Wayne State University Master of Science program as a W.K. Kellogg Fellow in 1952-53.  She returned to teach at UBC until her retirement in 1982, and was acting director from 1968 to 1971.  She states “I am a nurse first, and a teacher a close second”.

Beth was President of the Nurse Administrators’ Association of BC, Chair of many RNABC Committees, a founding member and president of what is now the Canadian Association of University Schools of Nursing, and served on the UBC Senate.  The Beth McCann Memorial Scholarship was established following her death.  She was posthumously awarded the RNABC Award of Excellence in Nursing Education. Beth was an exceptional ambassador for the School and was very active in the Nursing Division of the UBC Alumni. Her home was a warm and welcoming place for numerous nursing events. Her dream was to write the history of the School, but her untimely death put a stop to this project, however, her research materials were a valuable resource, used later, in the writing of the School’s history in 1994.

Contents of Biographical File

1. Biographical notes and eulogy
2. Biography
3. Biography from “1940’s Amazing Alumni Stories” on Internet
4. Transcript of oral history interview, 1993.
5. Curriculum Vitae
6. Nursing graduating essay, Spring 1940.
7. Elizabeth K. McCann, “A Nurse’s Home or Anybody’s Home?” The Canadian Nurse, February 1946 (42), No. 2 pp. 123-126.
8. Elizabeth K. McCann, “The Camp Nurse”, The Canadian Nurse (42), No. 7, pp. 557- 560.
9. Certificate for Elizabeth McCann as International Fellow in Nursing Education of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, September 1952 to August 1953.
10. Letter to “Dear Alums,” February 24, 1969.
11. Letter from Jannetta MacPhail, September 13, 1971.
12. Letter from Dorothy Arneson, March 7, 1961.
13. Letter to “Dear Alum.” Includes questionnaire.
14. Elizabeth K McCann, “Team Work,” The Slipstick, Vol. 5, 1954-55, p. 95.
15. “More Interest Shown in Degree Programs”, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, February 24, 1968, p. 19.
16. Letter from Alice Baumgart, April 21, 1982.
17. “Tomorrow.” Address to 1969 graduating class at Richmond Senior Secondary, June 6, 1969.
18. Photograph of RNABC Award of Excellence plaque.
19. Two photographs