"HANDS THAT HEAL: NURSE IMMIGRATION INTO CANADA, 1950-1965"

Date: Friday, May 7
Presented by: Margaret Shkimba
MA Programme in History, York History
Women's Health Office, McMaster University

In the period after the second world war, the shortage of qualified nurses required to staff hospitals, public health units, private organizations and industrial positions had reached severe proportions in Canada. While Canadian training hospitals and schools worked to supply a growing number of graduate nurses, foreign-born nurses who were educated outside of Canada were recruited by hospitals and health care organizations to provide certified care for a population that was becoming increasingly concerned with issues of health and well-being.

This Lunchtime seminar presented two perspectives on this period. The first, the film Hands that Heal, was a co-production of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and the Canadian Nurses' Association. This film was one of a series of films sponsored under the aegis of DCI during the 1950s and was designed to encourage the immigration of European nurses to Canada. During the same period, minutes from the Canadian Nurses' Association revealed an increasing awareness, on the behalf of the CNA, of the need to influence public perceptions of the nursing profession. These two groups came together in the production of this film to present a positive picture of professional nursing in a progressive country. Shown are the benefits of living and working in Canada, a Canada growing by leaps and bounds. The opportunities for nurses appear seemingly endless, whether these be in the modern, technologically advanced hospital system, in remote Red Cross outpost hospitals, in the emerging industrial health clinics or in visiting nurses' associations. Educational opportunities were available to nurses who displayed the requisite dedication, enthusiasm and learning potential, while the opportunity to work in new, modern facilities alongside world-reknown medical experts (all male MDs) and with the latest in medical technology was clearly offered as tempting bait for nurses contemplating a move. The film presents us with the faces and forms of women from a variety of countries who have come to Canada during this period and who have subsequently found peace, security and professional opportunity.

The second component of the presentation is drawn from an oral history collection documenting the experiences of nurses who emigrated from Britain to Canada in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their voices provide another perspective on the welcoming hospitals and advanced opportunities described in the film, and document a working environment that contributed to feelings of isolation within the ward largely attributed to interpersonal and cultural differences. Contrary to the positive portrayal of professional opportunities presented by the film, de-skilling emerges as a fundamental problem for these British nurses, many of whom had midwifery training and were no longer able to work in this capacity. The nurses interviewed found their nursing practise curtailed in such care giving matters as changing dressings, removing sutures, utilizing non-medicinal practices and in dispensing certain kinds of medicines such as aspirin. These nurses found the institutional environment somewhat more relaxed than the rigid British structure they had trained under, however, occupational hierarchies continued to inform professional relationships between nurses in the Canadian hospitals. Cultural differences, although masked by a white, Anglo-ethnic homogeneity, exacerbated the initial settlement period and contributed to feelings of loneliness and isolation.

This research is part of a larger project which examines nursing migration in the post-war period. The film offers us a public view of a positive, professional occupational environment, while the histories provide us with private memories which recall the difficulties of adjustment for individual nurses.