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| Northern Nursing In the Fifties |
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by Bonny Remple |
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While looking through an old family photo album, I discovered a small, square black and white photo of two young women in white uniforms, one of whom was cuddling a baby. The other woman, who was the smaller of the two, was perched on a stool in front of what looked like a nurses’ station. Both had the short, wavy hair and dark lipstick of an earlier decade.
The caption on the back of the photo read: “Smithers, 1955.”
I knew the young woman on the stool was my mother, Alice (Allie) Berkeley, who’d been a nurses’ aide before she married but I’d forgotten that she’d worked in Smithers because her family now lives in the southern part of the Province. |
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The tall Nell (left) and "less tall" Allie with a young patient at the nurses’ station
(Photos courtesy of Alice Berkeley)
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When I asked her about the photo she laughed. “Nell (the other nurse’s aide) was five foot eleven,” she explained. “I wanted to be in the picture too, so I stood on the stool.” Allie, as she prefers to be called, is four-foot eleven. The baby that Nell was holding had been born in the Bulkley Valley Hospital and had a few health problems and needed to stay for several months. During that time, the nurses' aides grew fond of him.
Although she didn’t work in Smithers as long as she worked in other hospitals around the Province, Allie said she made friends quickly and enjoyed living in the community. Allie had started working in hospitals just shortly after leaving school. At the time, she lived in Summerland, where she worked thinning, picking and then canning fruit. Because the work was seasonal, she and a friend applied for work in a hospital in Kaslo.
Both girls were hired but after several months, the hospital decided to keep only one full time. Since neither girl wanted to remain in the community alone, they both returned to Summerland. |
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A school in Smithers in 1953
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After one more season in the orchards, Allie applied for another position in a hospital. This time she went to work in the tuberculosis sanitorium at Tranquille. It was located near Savona, in the Kamloops area.
From there, she moved to Vancouver and worked in another tuberculosis control hospital. Because she didn’t like dealing with TB, she accepted a new position in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.
She spent four years in the north and loved it. The only reason she left was because of a double tragedy in the family. She lost both her brother and brother-in-law within a three-week period so she returned home to help. Her parents had sold the dairy they’d owned in Summerland and bought a ranch near Rock Creek, located on the Canada/US border. The ranch had no electricity and no running water. Allie’s older sister, who’d just lost her husband, lived nearby.
When things were more settled at home, Allie looked for another job. She applied to Smithers since it was in the north but closer to home than Yellowknife.
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