Ship Hector Passenger Descendents: Harriet Graham MacDonald
This distinguished career nurse and Matron Harriet Graham was a daughter of Harvey Graham and Anna (Hannah) Fraser and was born in New Glasgow in 1883, the youngest of four children.
Her early education began in Nova Scotia and she received her nursing training at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. Shortly after graduation in 1914, she enlisted and served in France and Belgium with the number 2 Stationary Hospital as Nurse Matron. She was appointed to the I.O.D.E. Hospital in London.
She was a career nurse, with much responsibility for the sick and wounded. For her exemplary military service, she received the Royal Red Cross medal.
The decoration is awarded to army nurses for exceptional service, devotion to duty and professional competence in British military nursing.
Her obituary noted; “She served with distinction during the whole period of the war and for the greater part of that time was matron of the number one Casualty Clearing Station.
After the armistice, she returned to Canada and for two years was matron of a large military hospital at Burlington, Ont., just outside of Hamilton.”
Casualty clearing stations (CCS) were medical military facilities, set up a few miles from the front lines and tended to the wounded before they could be transported to a hospital. A CCS were mobile units, treating hundreds of soldiers who were brought in from the front lines.
Her cousin Pearl Fraser also served as Matron and served on the RMS Llandovery Castle, a hospital ship that was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland in 1918.
She married James David (J.D.) MacDonald after the war, lived in Saskatoon and died in Victoria, B.C in 1932. She did not have any children.