Description
Ms. Orford describes her first posting to the Oakville Casualty Retraining Center, where she provided physiotherapy to soldiers injured at neighboring training camps.
Elizabeth Orford
Elizabeth Orford was born on April 14, 1923 in Toronto, Ontario. She chose physiotherapy as a career and graduated from the University of Toronto in June, 1943. Ms. Orford interned at the Children's Memorial Hospital, dealing with victims of polio. When asked to join the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, she accepted, enlisting in Montreal. Ms. Orford first served in Canadian military hospitals, dealing with infantry and flight training injuries. She went overseas, and worked in #9 Canadian hospital, Horsham, then moved to #24 Canadian hospital, Horley. There, Ms. Orford treated many amputees and burn victims. After returning home, she worked at the Christie Street Veterans Hospital in Toronto.
Transcript
My first posting came along to Oakville, Ontario where they had a casualty retraining center. It was a wonderful place for a therapist to work because we had casualties. They weren’t at that point from overseas, the odd one was but this was before D-Day. So we had casualties from the different camps around the Air Force stations and Petawawa, Camp Borden, all the places where there were troops and after they had surgery or whatever they were sent to Oakville. So we had a continuous stream of fractures, dislocations, sprains, strains, skin conditions, you name it. Also, there were a lot of cases that had to have surgical repairs so we would get surgical repairs from well, Hamilton Military Hospital, Chorley Park, Camp Borden, all of which, most all of them went through physio in some form. So the Oakville casualty retraining center was really a wonderful place for me to start.