Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada

District Nursing Continues After One Hundred Years

Aug 5, 2009 Kathleen Airdrie

The Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada was founded more than one hundred years ago in response to a desperate need for medical care.

Women and children who lived in remote areas such as the open prairies, where great distances had to be travelled, seldom received professional care. Many died while their husbands or fathers were attempting to find a doctor.

In the mining and logging districts, accidents and injuries were frequent, but help was seldom available. In growing towns and cities, where immigrant workers lived in crowded conditions, medical assistance was infrequent and unaffordable for many.

District Nursing Through Victorian Order of Nurses

A true visionary and concerned citizen, Lady Ishbel Aberdeen was the dynamic wife of Canada’s Governor General. During their travels in Canada, the couple witnessed the deprivation suffered by people who had little or no access to medical care.

Lady Aberdeen was urged by numerous people, particularly women who felt completely isolated and vulnerable, to find a way to help. Familiar with the program that provided district nursing in Great Britain, she developed a proposal to establish one in Canada. Immediately after acceptance of her proposal at the annual meeting of the National Council of Women, the work began.

On February 10, 1897, with a motion put forward by Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada (VON) was inaugurated at a public meeting in Rideau Hall, Ottawa. The organization’s name was selected to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The Royal Charter was granted by the Queen later in 1897.

Physicians Opposed the Nursing Plan

There was strong opposition in the province of Quebec. Members of the medical profession and the French-speaking people believed it was unnecessary. They firmly believed that the nuns in their Roman Catholic hospitals were quite capable of providing the care.

Physicians in Canada raised considerable opposition to the plan. In the order of things, nurses were subordinate to doctors. They were paid no more than half the amount given to doctors for their services. Physicians were concerned that nurses working independently in the ‘field’ would be less likely to confer with them, and would receive fees normally paid to the doctors.

A part of the counter-argument was that very often the nurses’ worked with poor people. They could not pay for services. As well, in many of the more remote areas, patients were seldom attended to by physicians.

Members of the middle class preferred to pay the fee to a doctor rather than a nurse. Wealthy and influential people would not support the idea when they saw the doctors’ strong opposition.

Lady Aberdeen received help from Dr. Alfred Worchester who established the Waltham School for District Nurses in Massachusetts. She knew that it would take a strong male physician to convince the doctors to convert. Her plan was quite successful as Dr. Worchester spoke to groups of physicians in several cities. Doctors in Toronto and Ottawa agreed by December 1897 that the visiting nurses program should proceed.

Canadian Nurse Charlotte MacLeod

Charlotte MacLeod was a Canadian nurse who studied with Florence Nightingale, and was superintendent of Dr. Worchester’s Waltham school. She became the first Chief Superintendent of the Victorian Order of Nurses. In Ottawa, Charlotte quickly established the first training program for VON nurses.

VON fees were based on the ability to pay. In the homes of people who spoke little or no English, the nurses devised a method to overcome the problem. The helpers they hired to do household chores for the sick were usually members of foreign families, and able to communicate with the patients.

During its first year of service, the Victorian Order of Nurses’ twenty-one district nurses provided more than eight thousand visits to 673 patients. It quickly became involved in nursing services in the Klondike as shown in “Victorian Order of Nurses during Yukon Gold Rush” . For more than one hundred years, with great changes in the medical profession, the non-profit VON continues to serve in Canada.

Sources:

Telling Tales: Essays in Western Women’s History, Catherine A. Cavanaugh and Randi R. Warne Editors, University of British Columbia Press, 2000

Victorian Order of Nurses History - A Century of Caring

The copyright of the article Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada in Canadian History is owned by Kathleen Airdrie. Permission to republish Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.