Nursing Residence

Heroes Remember

Nursing Residence

Transcript

The nurses - we lived in a residence and it had been an old person’s home that had been condemned by the British, so you know what shape it is if the British condemned it. They had closed up all the fireplaces but the rats were still scrambling around. Five of us in a room, we put our cots and we had a nail to hang our stuff on. And then there were three bathrooms in that big place so that meant, oh about almost 15 or so shared the one bathroom. And there was a red ring painted on the tub and that’s all the water that you could have so you had to dash in wash your hair, have a bath and wash your clothes and by that time somebody was pounding on the door.

Description

Mrs. Flynn describes the living conditions for the nursing sisters and how they adjusted to their surroundings.

Pauline Flynn

Mrs. Pauline Flynn was born in Port Elgin, Ontario January 23, 1920. Her father was a Canadian Railway Station Master and her mother a school teacher. There are three brothers in her family, she being the only girl. She attended nursing school and in 1938 graduated from Toronto Western. Mrs. Flynn, always having a sense of adventure, decided to join the military. She served as a nursing sister and held the rank of officer. To this day, she holds great pride for the history of the nursing sisters and pride of the blue uniform. After discharge from the service, Mrs. Flynn married and continued to nurse while raising a family in Ottawa. Today, she spends a great deal of her free time volunteering and is very proud of her military connections with other local nursing sisters who served during the same period of time. She is a great spokesperson for the Nursing Sister Association and represents her comrades during many of the Remembrance Day Events in our capital city, Ottawa, Canada.

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