How one woman’s journey of courage and healing shaped generations to come.
Photos: Left: Florence’s family photo taken in their home community in Saskatchewan. Florence McKay is on the left, her mother Ida McKay on the right, and Florence’s daughter (also Corinna, the story author’s mother) as a child standing in front. Right: Florence McKay graduating at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, B.C., 1939.
Tan'si (Hello).
My name is Corinna Hamilton and I am grateful to live and work on the unceded territories of the Qayqayt First Nation. Health care runs in my family.
My great-grandmother was a traditional Métis healer in her community in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Our common ancestors were Peter Erasmus, the official interpreter who helped negotiate the Medicine Chest Clause into Treaty Six, and Joseph William McKay, a Métis business leader, politician and Hudson Bay Company employee who acted as a surgical assistant to Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken.
And I'm a rehabilitation assistant at Fraser Health.
This is the story of my Kookum (Grandmother), Florence McKay, and her experience as a Métis registered nurse during a time when it was unusual for Indigenous people to have acquired Western medical training.
I preserved her story through a voice-recorded interview from April 1997. I was in my early twenties and she was 81— cognitively sharp and full of memories.
It was September 9, 1936, during the Great Depression, when Florence went into training at Royal Jubilee Hospital on the unceded territories of the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations in Victoria, B.C. There, she became one of the earliest Indigenous women to graduate as a registered nurse.
The youngest of seven, Florence grew up on her Métis family's scrip farm in the Duck Lake area of Saskatchewan. When her father died and her family lost their farm, her extended family and community rallied behind her to pool resources for her tuition and to pay for her train ticket to Victoria, B.C. She believed she was accepted to nursing school without being questioned because she answered "Scottish" as her ancestry.
The women in her community bought fabrics and sewed all the pieces needed for her uniforms, then she was on her way to becoming a nurse.
Growing up as a farm girl in her Métis community, she found herself unaware of social protocols and unprepared for the appropriate attire required for dormitory life. This didn't last long, as she made friends quickly with her classmates, who came to her rescue lending her the necessary clothing. These classmates became Florence's lifelong friends.
After graduation, Florence had nowhere to live. Luckily, one of her classmate’s parents in New Westminster took her in while she tried to find a place to rent with some of her friends on Vancouver Island.
One of her earliest nursing jobs was in a rural community during the war, where there was no doctor or dentist for miles. Her nursing duties included delivering babies and pulling teeth.
Florence built a long and respected nursing career, working predominantly in pediatrics and later in geriatrics, often serving as a charge nurse. Ironically, during the time she worked in pediatrics, her son was taken away to foster care when her husband became ill.
In many Métis families and communities, the aunties, uncles or grandparents would step in to raise children who needed them. She tried to convince social services that her older sisters in Saskatchewan agreed to take care of her son, but it was discovered that her family was Métis and, consequently, her son ended up in foster care for most of his childhood.
Despite her son being taken, among other barriers, she persevered to build a brighter future. Her legacy carried on through her daughter, who became a licensed practical nurse and a niece who followed her path as a registered nurse.
Today, I carry my Kookum’s story with me, knowing that every step I take as a rehabilitation assistant continues the path she built many generations ago.
Thursday, April 10, is B.C. Indigenous Nurses Day, which celebrates the contributions of Indigenous nurses to health and wellness. April 10 was chosen to celebrate Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture, who was born on that day in 1890 and was the first Indigenous woman in Canada to become a registered nurse.
At the time, most Canadian nursing programs excluded Indigenous women and the Indian Act was a significant barrier faced by Indigenous Peoples who wanted higher education. Edith graduated first in her nursing class at New York’s New Rochelle Nursing School and was one of only a few Indigenous women to serve overseas during World War I with the United States Army Nurse Corps. She was also the first Indigenous woman to gain the right to vote in a Canadian federal election.
