THE SISTERHOOD

JOAN HILL (CLASS OF 1956)

After graduation, Hill worked as a neurosurgical nurse, assisting Dr. Charles Drake, the chief of neurosurgery at Victoria hospital in London, Ont. Brain surgery was a “new thing” in the 1950s, and many of the procedures were long and unpredictable, the result of boating accidents, shotgun injuries, aneurysms. “This might sound cold,” she says, “but you had to forget there was a person under there. You just couldn’t have feelings for them or that would affect you in your work, you had to detach yourself.”

Hill was comfortable with most procedures — but not toenail removal, even though she gave it her best effort. “I could feel that myself,” she says. “I could go through the brain surgery or anything else, but toenails no.”

When she moved back to Toronto in 1958 she worked at Toronto General Hospital, but didn’t tell them she was a neurosurgical nurse, hoping to have a more. “normal life.” One day, Dr. Drake came to town for a convention, stopped by the hospital and said, “Oh, you’ve got my nurse.” “I was transferred to neurosurgery the next day,” she says.

“I could go into work on a Thursday, I might get off on Sunday. I’d lay on a stretcher between cases,” she says. She met her husband at the hospital; his sister was the head nurse.

After she had children, she continued to volunteer, including a clinic at Women’s College Hospital in the 1960s. “We just called it the hippie clinic,” she says. She had never smelled marijuana before, and once walked into the waiting room and asked what smelled. “They all looked at me, and one girl drew a square meaning that was me,” she says with a laugh.

PEARL BELL (CLASS OF 1963)

Pearl Bell’s favourite ward was the medical surgical department on the seventh floor. Patients came in, often in distress, hoping that surgery or some form of medical intervention would help. Bell liked to watch the progression.

Her mother was a patient on the floor for 10 days when Pearl was in her second year. She had breast cancer and had a mastectomy. It was a traumatic procedure, and the prognosis wasn’t good, but both Pearl and her mother “adored” the head nurse on that floor, Jane Cusler (Class of 1946). Pearl’s mother gave Cusler a scarf as a thank-you. Every alumnae dinner, “She would say to me, Pearl, I have your mother’s scarf, and remind me of when my mother was a patient.”

Pearl’s mother died while Pearl was a student, and she left residence for her third year to move back with her father. She would borrow his “great big Oldsmobile” to drive down for her night shifts at the hospital in third year. “I never knew until years after that he took the subway down just to see that my car was in the parking lot, and I had arrived there safely.”

Bell raised a family and spent her career in occupational health nursing, in addition to running a camp with her husband.

DEBBY KAPLAN (CLASS OF 1966)

Debby Kaplan wanted to be a teacher, but in the 1960s, you had to attend the teachers college closest to your home. Her boyfriend was in Toronto, so she wanted to be close to him. “Nursing was the second choice, but I’m not sorry,” she says. (The relationship ended a month after she arrived.)

Kaplan loved the operating room. “It was interesting to see what went on inside the human body,” she says. The hospitals were not airconditioned then, and the cotton mask and gown felt “horrendous.” “The slough of the cotton, it would tickle your nose and you’d want to scratch and you couldn’t because you were sterile,” she says. “Oh, it was hard, but I loved it.”

After graduation, Kaplan was an operating-room nurse for an ophthalmologist. She had children, continued to work as a nurse, and then did some teaching. She spent the rest of her career at Centennial College, retiring as dean of continuing education and corporate training.

DONNA BRYCE (CLASS OF 1966)

Donna Bryce shared a bedroom with her sisters in Barrie, so having her own room in residence felt like she had “died and gone to heaven.” She always wanted to be a doctor, but medical school was expensive. Her parents told her she could be a nurse, secretary or a teacher.

She showed up in 1963, 18 years old. That November, U.S. president John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

“I know I was sitting in the library in Burton Hall, and that was a very depressive event for girls our age. You know we’re young, here’s this man, we’re sitting here, and it’s so final, and then we’re now into this nursing thing, where this is going to happen.”

She remembers walking into a deceased patient’s room when she was 19 to prepare the body for the morgue. While she worked, the last bit of air escaped from the lungs. “You grow up pretty fast in this career, and it’s not for everybody.” Bryce had her first male patient in second year. When she walked into the room, he dropped his gown, probably looking for some kind of reaction. She calmly told him he could put it back on. “That three years is tough, but we can sort of stand up to most anything.”

Before she started her family, Bryce worked as a delivery-room nurse, which meant a lot of nights at the Richmond Hill hospital. “I caught a lot of babies. I never had an unhappy time there,” she says.

Sometimes, the doctor wasn’t around, and it was up to her. Instincts kicked in.

“When a women has her seventh baby it comes out pretty fast.”