Carving Out a Past: The Canadian Nurses' Association War Memorial

Abstract

Nurses are the one exception to the lack of female figures corresponding to the ‘‘ordinary man’’ in monuments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Canadian Nurses’ Association War Memorial, unveiled in 1926 in honour of the 49 Canadian nurses killed in World War I, was conceived by the artist as a tribute to generic feminine caregiving. A second more complex story is told in the symbolism of the monument, which reveals that nurses’ unique position lay not only in their distinctive uniform, their control over male bodies, their racial and ethnic privilege, and their contribution to the colonial, imperial, and national accomplishments of Canada, but also in the inclusion of nursing in masculine historical narratives.