Canada’s Nursing Sisters
As we take the time to remember all those individuals who sacrificed their lives during the war, we can’t forget those who rushed to the front lines to tend to their fellow wounded soldiers. They are known as Canada’s Nursing Sisters and they are all heroes in their own right; including Irene Beckler, mother of Lennoxville resident Lesley Connor.
Before the North West Rebellion broke of 1885 women nurses had no military recognition. It wasn’t until the rebellion broke out that this began to change. This was the first time Canada’s nursing sisters reported for duty to provide care to the Canadian soldiers fighting in the rebellion.
From that point on, the nursing sisters joined every military force sent overseas. They became the first women in the commonwealth to be designated as officers and they were given the same pay as an army lieutenant.
In order to enlist in the army, the nurses needed to be trained, they needed to have British citizenship, high moral character and physical fitness. They also needed to be single and between the ages of 21 and 38 years old.
In 1899, the Canadian Army Medical Department and the Canadian Army Nursing Service was formed due to a realization that if proper medical care was to be provided by the military, there was a need for more nurses to participate directly in the war and not just volunteer back at home.
By the First World War, the Canadian Army Nursing Service had 2,030 nurses with 1,886 overseas and 203 on reserve. In total, 3,141 Canadian nurses volunteered in the Great War; a battle with much sacrifice.
When we think of Canadian nurses going overseas, we think of them going to work in the hospitals or facilities that were set up to provide medical care. However, this was not always the case.
Many nurses worked in what were called “causality clearing stations,” which were located at the front line and allowed the soldiers to be tended to more quickly. These women sacrificed their lives every day by putting themselves in the line of enemy fire to carry out their duties. During this battle, some Canadian nurses even took it upon themselves to help captured soldiers escape.
These nurses wore blue dresses and white veils, which gained them the nickname “the bluebirds.”
As the doors closed on one great battle, another quickly began and the Canadian nursing sisters were once again called to duty. During the Second World War, the nursing sisters worked in all three branches of the military; the navy, the air force, and the army. They never failed to live up to their duties with some even staying behind at the end of the war to provide medical care to those soldiers emerging from the war camps. By the end of the war, 4,480 nurses had enlisted in total.
Leslie Connor’s mother Irene Beckler was one of the nurses sent overseas during the Second World War.
Irene was from a small town called Lucky Lake in Saskatchewan and she trained as a nurse at the St-paul’s Hospital in the city of Saskatoon.
When the Second World War began, Irene enlisted. “She was in a profession where she could help and she wasn’t married. I think she felt that she had a job to help and it would be right to go.”
On Jan. 12, 1944, she received a letter from the Department of National Defence calling on her to report for duty. “The letter is dated January 1944 so I’m assuming she must have gone over in February because she was there for D-day,” explained Lesley. “She came on the Lady Nelson ship. She was a leftenant and had the rank of an officer.”
She arrived in England where she worked at a hospital in Hemel Hempstead near Watford. “She would assist in the surgery room. That was something that she always found interesting was
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