This Small Army of Women: Canadian Volunteer Nurses and the First World War

This monograph draws on letters, diaries, and interviews to tell the forgotten story of the nearly two thousand women from Canada and Newfoundland who volunteered overseas and at home. Well-educated and middle-class but largely untrained, VADs were excluded from Canadian military hospitals overseas (the realm of the professional nurse) but helped solve Britain’s nursing deficit and filled gaps in Canada’s domestic nursing ranks. Although their willingness to take up unpaid work for the sake of home and country challenged the professional aspirations of qualified nurses and conformed with traditional notions of women as caregivers, Linda Quiney argues that their dedication and service also broadened the debate about who could be a nurse. [Project Muse]