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During the First World War Clare Gass spent four years as a lieutenant and nursing sister in the medical corps of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The War Diary of Clare Gass documents her daily experiences, from the beginning of her military training in 1915 to her return from Europe in 1918. Gass records the sights and sounds and smells of war as well as quoting the then-unknown "In Flanders' Fields," written by her colleague Dr John McCrae. Well aware that her work was an exceptional experience for a woman, she made the most of her time, whether nursing, exploring the countryside around the hospital, or taking photographs. Her lively personality and passion for her work shine through the...
The diary of a nurse who served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in France during the First World War.
A multi-level and multi-faceted exploration of a century of remembering, forgetting, and rediscovering the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, arguably the greatest catastrophe in human history. Twenty-three researchers chart the worldwide historiographical neglect and silences, and trace vestiges of social and cultural memories of this pandemic.
World War I is regarded as the first modern war, driven by fearful new technologies of mechanized combat. The unprecedented carnage rapidly advanced military medicine, transforming the nature of wartime caregiving and paving the way for modern nursing practice. Drawing on firsthand accounts of American nurses, as well as their Canadian and British counterparts, historian Paul E. Stepansky describes nurses' encounters with devastating new forms of injury--wounds from high-explosive artillery shells, poison gas burns, "shell shock," the Spanish Flu. Comparing nursing practice on the western front with nursing care during the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the Anglo-Boer War, the author is especially attentive to the emergent technologies employed by nurses of the Great War.
An innovative study of the struggle for healthy children in early twentieth-century Canada.
In the Preface to his ground-breaking The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), Paul Fussell claimed that “the dynamics and iconography of the Great War have proved crucial political, rhetorical, and artistic determinants on subsequent life.” Forty years after the publication of Fussell’s study, the contributors to this volume reconsider whether the myth generated by World War I is still “part of the fiber of [people’s] lives” in English-speaking countries. What is the place of the First World War in cultural memory today? How have the literary means for remembering the war changed since the war? Can anything new be learned from the effort to re-imagine the First World War after ot...
A historian examines the letters written by three residents of Canada’s Maritime provinces during their service in World War I. What was the First World War really like for Maritimers overseas? This epistolary book, edited by historian Ross Hebb, contains the letters home of three Maritimers with distinct wartime experiences: a front-line soldier from Nova Scotia, a nurse from New Brunswick, and a conscripted fisherman from Prince Edward Island. Up until now, these complete sets of handwritten letters have remained with the families who agreed to share them in time for the one-hundredth anniversary of the Great War’s end in 2018. These letters not only give insight into the war, but also provide greater understanding of life in rural Maritime communities in the early 1900s. In Their Own Words includes a learned introduction and background information on letter writers Eugene A. Poole, Sister Pauline Balloch, and Harry Heckbert, enabling readers to appreciate the context of these letters and their importance. A welcome companion to Hebb’s earlier book, Letters Home: Maritimers and the Great War; 1914–1918.
Although the United States did not enter the First World War until April 1917, Canada enlisted the moment Great Britain engaged in the conflict in August 1914. The Canadian contribution was great, as more than 600,000 men and women served in the war effort--400,000 of them overseas--out of a population of 8 million. More than 150,000 were wounded and nearly 67,000 gave their lives. The war was a pivotal turning point in the history of the modern world, and its mindless slaughter shattered a generation and destroyed seemingly secure values. The literature that the First World War generated, and continues to generate so many years later, is enormous and addresses a multitude of cultural and so...
During an era of separate spheres for men and women, Margaret Macdonald used her nurse's training to gain access to the military and a life of work, travel, and adventure. In 1906, she was one of the first two nurses to receive a permanent appointment to the Canadian Army Medical Corps. She became matron-in-chief of Canada's overseas nursing service during World War I with the rank of major - the first such appointment for a woman in the British Empire. Macdonald also served as a nurse in the military during the Spanish-American and Boer Wars and in Panama during the construction of the canal. Margaret Macdonald traces the life and work of this extraordinary woman from rural Nova Scotia whose sense of duty and ambition found an outlet in the imperialism of Great Britain and the US. Susan Mann weaves the threads of character, ideology, and opportunity into a vivid portrait of Macdonald and her impact on the professionalization of military nursing.