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Abstract. Until the mid-1940s, young Black women who wanted to train as nurses in Canada were prohibited from doing so. The first cohort of Black Canadian registered nurses integrated Canadian nursing schools beginning in the early 1950s. I argue that despite entering an occupation that defined itself around Victorian ideals of "true womanhood," an archetype that excluded Black women, these nurses were able to negotiate and secure a place in the profession. This research not only contributes to Canadian nursing, it also situates Canada, with respect to scholarly discussions about the Black Diaspora.
Back in the 1950s, they were not really accepting Black girls in nursing. I got into nursing because one of the principals was so kind and nice to me, and I had very good marks. When I got into nursing, I had no idea who my roommate would be, but there she was, another Black girl. I just felt that they didn't ask us who we wanted to room with. They just put us together because we were two Black girls. And I think that kind of set the tone for our whole three years. My roommate-her mother was White and her father was Black, so she had issues coming into nursing-but we got along fantastic. But she was always favored. She was fair, [had] long beautiful hair and you know my colour (laughs). It didn't matter to me. In the last year of nursing, they put another Black girl with us. The other Black girl definitely did not want to be there with us. She would dress in the closet . . . she didn't want to be with us. Other girls would have faded away, but I wasn't of that caliber. Nursing wasn't hard . . . there was some amount of segregation but nothing held me back.
Agnes (Scott) Ellesworth 1
In 1953, Agnes Scott and her roommate Dorothy Richards graduated from St. Joseph's School of Nursing at the Hotel Dieu in Windsor, Ontario. Prior to Scott and Campbell , only six Black nurses had graduated from the school. The fact that Dorothy (Richards) Scott was only the seventh Black nurse in the history of the hospital was not coincidental. Canadian nursing schools had a history of excluding...