"Finding the 47" is dedicated to the Canadian military nursing sisters who lost their lives while serving their country during the First World War. The number 47 is not exact--historical sources give varying numbers for the women lost. One source, historian Dianne Dodd of Parks Canada puts the number at 61. Researcher Tighe McManus now places the number even higher at 76. (More about Tighe's research soon.) Part of the reason for the discrepancy is that many nurses died a few years after the war from illness caused by their service. Whatever the number, these women need to be remembered--they served their country with distinction and courage in a war from which Canada emerged a scarred but stronger nation.
I hope that many will learn from this site and use it as a basis to undertake their own research. If you want to use the information provided or quote from this blog, please cite this blog as your source. The writing here is copyright Debbie Marshall (except, of course for the materials I have quoted), but I am glad to share the knowledge and memory of these women.
I am a British Columbia writer and editor. My work has appeared in anthologies such as Dropped Threads II and in magazines such as The Beaver, United Church Observer, Legacy, Alberta Views, Exchange, Mandate, Compass, Our Canada, as well as other publications. My most recent book is Firing Lines: Three Canadian Women Write the First World War (Dundurn: 2017)
Ainslie St. Clair Dagg in an Imperial War Museum photograph.
2nd Birmingham War Hospital
The hospital in which Dagg worked.
Marion Overend's Grave
Photo provided courtesy Todd Tifft.
Canadian Nurses
From Carola Douglas' album
Mary "Frances" Munro
Mary "Frances" Munro, courtesy Bishop Strachan School
1915 Munro Letter
letter from NS Munro to Bishop Strachan School
1915 Munro Letter Page 2
Second page of Munro's Letter to her School
Nurse Emily Edwardes (Matthews)
A bust of NS Edwardes (Matthews) at the Vancouver City Archives
NS Cecile McKibben
Cecile McKibben in the CAMC nurse uniform
Nursing Sister Dress Uniform
This uniform belonged to NS Cecile McKibben.
NS Dorothy Mary Yarwood Baldwin
Dorothy Baldwin died in May 1918 during the bombing of her hospital in Doullens, France.
NS Katherine McDonald
courtesy Nelson Mercier
NS Margaret Jane Fortescue
Margaret Jane Fortescue
NS Carola Douglas
NS Carola Douglas
NS Gladys Wake
Etaples Cemetery
Visiting the Graves of Canadian Nursing Sisters
Books and Resources
That Damn Y: A Record of Overseas Service, by Katharine Mayo, (1920). A description of one woman's experience with the American Expeditionary Force and the YMCA.
The Women of Royaumont: A Scottish Women's Hospital on the Western Front by Eileen Crofton, East Lothian: Tuckwell Press Ltd., 1997.
Margaret Macdonald: Imperial Daughter by Susan Mann, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.
The Virago Book of Women and the Gereat War, Edited by Joyce Marlow, London: Virago Press, 1999.
Give Your Other Vote to the Sister: A Woman's Journey Into the Great War by Debbie Marshall, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007
Elsie and Mairie Go to War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front by Diane Atkinson, London: Random House, 2009. (This is available in both hardcover and paperback.)
Sister Heroines: The Roseate Glow of Wartime Nursing 1914-1918 by Marjorie Barron Norris, Calgary: Bunker to Bunker Publishing, 2002.
The War Diary of Clare Gass, Edited by Susan Mann, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000
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