Upcoming Events
BCHNS Meeting Dates: All meetings are by Zoom, 4 -6 pm Speaker first with general meeting following
- September 15, 2026: Zoom Meeting, Speakers: Kathy Murphy & Naomi Constant “VGH School of Nursing Alumnae Association and the Artifacts and Archives collection”
All members are welcome!
NOTE: If you are a paid-up member & wish to join the meeting please contact us on the Red button on top menu bar. We will add your name & send you the link to invite you before 4pm to this Zoom meeting.
PRESENTATION OPPORTUNITY: Share the History of Nursing
Are you researching, documenting, or creatively exploring the history of nursing? The British Columbia History of Nursing Society (BCHNS) warmly invites scholars, practitioners, students, and community historians to present their work at an upcoming Open Membership meetings or the BCHNS Annual General Meeting (AGM).
We welcome presentations on research, projects, or scholarship that illuminate nursing’s past in British Columbia — from archival studies and oral histories to practice-based reflections and innovative historical approaches.
How You Can Express Interest to Present:
- Visit the Contact Us [Red] tab on the Menu bar above
- Leave your contact information
- Include a brief description of your proposed presentation
A member of our team will be in touch with you shortly.
BCHNS History Booklets for Sale for $20.00
Please contact us through the Red “CONTACT” tab on top Right end of Menu Bar with your intent to purchase and we will pass along your notification to the Treasurer who will then make the necessary arrangements with you for purchasing.
Other Events of Importance
VISITING SCHOLAR SERIES & UBC NURSING HISTORY CONSORTIUM:
The Tale of Miss Chen’s Trunk: The Rockefeller Foundation’s global nursing intervention
Date: Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026 @ 12-1pm PST
Speaker: Dr. Sioban Nelson, RN, PhD, FCAHS, FCAN, FAAN, Professor Emeritus
Place: Gateway Health Building – Room 5228 (or via Zoom)
REGISTER to Attend in person or online
Like the sweeping Nightingale movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Rockefeller Foundation constituted a powerful influence on the shape and substance of twentieth century nursing. Through its fellowship program, the foundation supported some thousand nurses from around the world to undertake further training, mostly in the United States and Canada. In this lecture, the opportunities and costs for the honour of being selected for a fellowship are evoked through the melancholy tale of a trunk abandoned by Chi Chen, a Chinese fellowship holder in the 1940s.
This truly global program, active from the 1920s to the 1960s, shaped the development of university-based nursing education around the world, expanding graduate education and creating public health nursing as an extended role based upon graduate qualifications. Leaving a chequered legacy of successes and failures in the adoption of American-style nursing education and training, the Rockefeller Foundation’s intervention highlights the geopolitical importance of nursing in the mid-twentieth century and the vulnerability of universalizing solutions to local political agendas.