2020 is International Year of the Nurse and Midwife

Photo: Greater Vernon Museum and Archives

Vernon Jubilee Hospital nurses in 1915.

With nurses, and other health care workers, putting their health on the line during the COVID-19 crisis, it is fitting that 2020 be the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife.

And World Health Day on April 7, provides the chance to celebrate their work.

The stories of three remarkable Vernon women — Dorothy D’Arcy, Lillian Thom, and Sharon Dawe — demonstrate just how much health care workers around the world sacrifice on a daily basis to serve others.

D’Arcy trained to be a nurse at the Vernon Jubilee Hospital during the First World War. Working in the hospital was quite a different experience during this time. The sound of a ringing bell would send nurses running down the hall to assist patients. Elevators had to be hauled up and down by hand, and 12-hour shifts were spent constantly on one’s feet. At the time, the hospital was serving the army stationed at Camp Vernon.

In 1918, D’Arcy moved to the Gulf Islands to work at the Lady Minto Hospital. She recalled holding oil lamps for doctors who were performing operations at night because the hospital did not yet have electric lighting.

Later that year, an earthquake struck close to the hospital and D’Arcy crawled through the dark to check on her four maternity patients, who were startled but otherwise unharmed.

D’Arcy retired in 1926 when she married, but returned to nursing during the Second World War, when St. Vincent’s Hospital in Vancouver was in great need of nurses. D’Arcy nursed patients through some of the worst health crises the world has seen, including influenza, tuberculosis and typhoid epidemics. 

Thom moved to Oyama with her family in 1917, and started training to be a nurse at the Vernon Jubilee Hospital at the age of 18.

As a junior nurse, Thom recalled stuffing pillows beneath fitted sheets to make the beds a little bit more comfortable for the patients and carrying heavy trays of food up long flights of stairs.

She spent six weeks in a women’s isolation ward, caring for a woman, a teenager and a baby with communicable diseases. She delivered her first child in 1927, and was shocked to think that she, “a country girl,” had brought a new life into the world.

In 1948, Thom was promoted to Matron and Director of Nursing, a position she maintained until 1961. She finished her nursing career at the Kaslo Hospital.

Dawe was born and raised in Vernon. During her nurse’s training in New Westminster, she developed a particular interest in operating room nursing and post-op care. In 1965, Dawe contacted C.A.R.E. International, a humanitarian agency delivering emergency relief and long-term international development projects.

After an interview in New York, she was posted to a two-year term in Malaysia. The hospital had only a single operating room, where Dawe was assigned. She cared for men and women in the hospital with a variety of diseases, including malaria, as hospitals were still considered with some suspicion by locals. At one point, she helped care for seven victims that had been involved in a head-on collision. Dawe was 24 years old at the time.

From 1968-70, Dawe again worked with C.A.R.E., this time in Afghanistan. She was stationed in an 80-bed hospital and helped to train Afghani doctors. Later, when turmoil broke out in the region, many of these doctors were able to escape to the United States. 

Sharon also worked in Indonesia, Algers, and South America, spending 10 years working abroad, caring for people in developing countries.