Author Katherine Dewar will speak
Island studies lecture examines the making of a Canadian military nursing heroine
April’s edition in the Island Studies Lecture Series features author Katherine Dewar presenting “The Making of a Canadian Military Nursing Heroine.”
That heroine is P.E.I.’s Georgina Fane Pope (1862–1938), who is the subject of Dewar’s soon-to-be-released book from Island Studies Press titled “Called to Serve”.
The April Island Studies Lecture takes place on April 17 at 7 p.m. in the Faculty Lounge of UPEI’s SDU Main Building. Admission is free. All are welcome.
How does a young woman, born in 1862 into privileged circumstances in Prince Edward Island, rise to the top echelons of Canadian military nursing leadership? This presentation discusses Pope’s path to power through the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th. Among other things, it addresses the significance of her privileged and powerful lineage, the influence of her parents on her world view and the inspiration of Florence Nightingale — who invoked in Pope a “burning desire” to become an “army nurse” in a faraway land.
The story takes the reader from her rather sheltered life in Victorian Prince Edward Island to the “Boston States” and on to the dangerous and primitive conditions she experienced as superintendent of nurses in two South African Wars, to her work in the formation of the nursing component of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (PAMC) and then to the battlefields of Europe during the First World War.
Dewar is the author of the award-winning book, “Those Splendid Girls: The Heroic Service of Prince Edward Island Nurses in the Great War, 1914–1918”. She is retired from a career as a nursing instructor at the P.E.I. School of Nursing and is now committed to researching P.E.I.’s colourful nursing history.
“Those Splendid Girls” was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, won Publication of the Year from the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and the City of Summerside’s Heritage and Culture department. Dewar is the recipient of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation Award of Honour for her outstanding contribution to Prince Edward Island Heritage.
Watch for another lecture about islands—near near and far—May 15. For more information, contact Laurie at iis@ upei.ca or (902) 894-2881.