On All Frontiers: Four Centuries of Canadian Nursing

As one might expect in such a comprehensive book, each subject is given only a certain amount of space. And the subjects are numerous: nursing in the home, hospital, community, on the frontier, and battlefield; and nursing education, professionalism and unionization. Each of these could be a stand-alone volume.

Nurses have long been put on a pedestal as caregivers and healers; families knew that often the nurse would have a better understanding of the patient’s long term prognosis than the treating doctor. They accompany us from the cradle to the grave. Nurses died in both World Wars, and, more recently, of SARS in the Toronto outbreak. On All Frontiers does an excellent job of encapsulating all the various aspects of nursing throughout Canada’s history. It also goes into some detail about the differences between the French Catholic system of nurse training and the “Nightingale” system used in English Canada.

Period photographs and pictures of memorabilia from the Canadian Nurses Association collection vividly illustrate On All Frontiers. mRb