The close association between nurses and hospitals obscures the diversity and complexity of nursing work in other contexts. This collection looks at nurses and nursing in a wide range of settings from the mid-1800s to the 1970s, including indigenous women on the Canadian prairies; First World War nurses posted overseas; outpost nurses in rural and remote areas of Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec; public health nurses in Winnipeg; and religious congregations in nursing education in New Brunswick.

The contributors use feminist and historical perspectives to illustrate how place, understood as both social context and geographic setting, shaped nursing identities and practices. Many nurses found place both liberating and constraining – often simultaneously. Paying attention to place also situates these nurses and their work within larger historical themes of nation-building, war, and political change.

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Meryn Stuart is a nurse historian who writes and teaches in the areas of the social history of nursing, healthcare and women as healthcare professionals at the University of Ottawa. She was the Associate Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies from 2001-2003, managing its collaborative graduate program and facilitating interdisciplinary feminist research links. She was co-author of Nurses of all Nations: A History of the International Council of Nurses, 1899-1999 (1999) and is working on a book exploring the history of military nursing in the First World War.

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Dr. Cynthia Toman, historian and retired professor from the University of Ottawa, taught in the School of Nursing with cross appointment to the Department of History. She was associate director and then director of the endowed Associated Medical Services Nursing History Research Unit. Her research focuses on the history of nursing and, specifically, the history of Canadian military nursing. Her major books, published by UBC Press, include Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (2016) and An Officer and a Lady: Canadian Military Nursing and the Second World War (2007). Awards include the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Governor General’s Gold Medal, the American Association for the History of Nursing’s Teresa E. Christy Distinguished Writing Award, and the Canadian Historical Association’s Hilda B. Neatby Prize. Toman was a guest curator for the 2005 “History of Canadian Nursing Exhibit” at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Museum of History) and consultant to Historica Canada for a “Historical Minute” on First World War Canadian Nursing Sisters.

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This work is highly entertaining, diverse, and comprehensible. It is an important and refreshing contribution not only to women's and gender history, but also to medical history.

H-Canada