Making a Difference: The History of Canada's Nurses

The history of nurses is changing both women's history and the history of Canada itself. This article offers some reflections on this subject, beginning with an examination of the insights offered in three traditional accounts of Canadian nurses and nursing, moving next to a brief overview of the contribution of recent revisionist nursing history, and finishing with a discussion of how nursing and nursing history might be integrated into a broad survey of Canadian history from the period of New France to the present. Traditional histories, most written by practitioners themselves, have regularly testified to the significance of women's contribution and the value of a women's community. More recently, revisionist historians have illuminated the class and racial/ethnic character of nursing's past and pointed to the ways that patriarchy restricted nurses' options. The results of the investigations of both traditionalists and revisionists can illuminate not only nursing history, but Canada's past as a whole.