So begins Katharine Dewar's biography of Georgina Pope: Called to Serve: Georgina Pope, Canadian military nursing heroine. Born into an upper-class family with significant political connections—her father, William, was a Father of Confederation and her father's brother, James, was the Premier of Prince Edward Island who led PEI into Confederation—Georgina was well educated and had access to a capital library, as her father was a bibliophile. Dewar writes of Georgina:

Her reading carried her off to a foreign land, to a war and to the story of a nurse inspired by God to save the lives of sick and injured soldiers. The year was 1854, the country Crimea, the Lady—Florence Nightingale, who would reform nursing. Then and there, Georgina decided that she, too, would be that nurse in a foreign land nursing the wounded soldiers.

Dewar notes that Georgina "broke the mould on how a young genteel lady of the upper class should behave," determined to become an army nurse, even though there were no Canadian army nurses at the time.

In 1885, at the age of 23, Georgina left her home in PEI, bound for New York City and the Bellevue Hospital, "the most prestigious hospital in North America; and the first to establish a training school for nurses in the Nightingale tradition." After her two-year training, Georgina graduated and went on to hold numerous positions, most of them leadership roles as a head nurse or hospital superintendent. As the Superintendent of the Columbia Hospital for Women and Lying-in Asylum in Washington, DC, Georgina established a school of nursing and modernized the hospital's obstetric and gynecological facilities.

She had completed the first half of her childhood dream—becoming a nurse. The second half—nursing wounded soldiers in a foreign land—would come to fruition in 1899, when Canada sent a volunteer contingent of 1,000 men, along with a small medical unit, to support the British Government in the South African War. Georgina was the first of eight nurses to be selected for the South African Nursing Contingent. Dewar notes that Georgina's political connections—her brother Joseph was the highest ranking civil servant in the country and a powerful man in government circles—and her nursing credentials in American hospitals positioned her well for the most senior nursing role.

Along with the 1100 members of the First Canadian Contingent, Georgina arrived in Cape Town on November 30, 1899. After a short assignment in Wynberg, Georgina proceeded to a hospital in Rondebosch, where she became the Acting Superintendent. By May, Georgina became the Acting Superintendent of an eight-nurse unit in a hospital at Kroondstad, "further up the line than any nurses have ever been." The unit included five British nurses, who resented "being under the command of a colonial whom—to make matters worse—had the rank of a lieutenant when they had no rank." At the end of her first deployment to South Africa, Georgina sailed to Canada; among her fellow passengers was John McCrae, who would become famous for his poem "In Flanders Field," penned during the First World War.

For her service in South Africa, the British Government awarded Georgina the Royal Red Cross 1st class medal, making her the first Canadian nurse to receive the honour—an award "instituted by Queen Victoria to mark Florence Nightingale's crusading efforts in Crimea." She also received the Queen's South African Medal, presented to her by the Prince of Wales during a ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Georgina's military career and, indeed, her service in wartime did not end with her decorated tour of duty in the South African War. In 1908, Georgina was appointed as the first matron of the Canadian Army Nursing Corps and promoted from lieutenant to captain. In addition to leading the 100-bed Cogswell Street Military Hospital in Halifax, the largest and oldest military hospital in Canada, Georgina was responsible for teaching nurses, including in army rules and regulations. She shared the teaching duties with her second-in-command, Nurse Margaret Macdonald.

In the ensuing years, Margaret's star ascended, while Georgina's seemed to fade. In 1914, as Great Britain gave Germany an ultimatum to pull its troops out of Belgium or go to war, Georgina awaited news. Dewar writes:

Matron Pope waited in Halifax for the declaration and probably wondered about her chances of leading the nursing contingent, as she had done in 1899 and 1902. She weighed both sides of the equation: she knew that she was considered a top-rate administrator, and an excellent nurse. At age fifty-two she realized she was over the age limit for overseas service, but so, too, were other nurses; she had seniority and administrative experience on her side; she was the only matron in the Corps; she was the only nurse in the PAMC [Permanent Army Medical Corps] who had led nurses into war; but, realistically, she knew that DGMS Jones [Director General of Medical Services Guy Carleton Jones] had groomed Nursing Sister Macdonald, younger by eleven years, for a leadership position, and Nursing Sister Macdonald had studied mobilization strategies. She also knew that her recent illnesses might be a negative factor. Clearly, DGMS Jones favoured Nursing Sister Macdonald. In the end Matron Pope knew that it was his call as to who would lead the nursing contingent overseas. Yet Matron Pope waited in hopeful anticipation. The British ultimatum to Germany went unheeded and Canada was at war.

In August 1914, Jones chose Macdonald to serve as Temporary Matron and subsequently Matron-in-Chief of the Canadian Army Medical Corps. And Macdonald chose the nurses for the overseas nursing contingent. Georgina was not one of them. Dewar writes:

Matron-in-Chief Macdonald spent the entire war at Canadian HQ in London, with the odd inspection tour in France. She was in a purely administrative role, with regular hours, and time off for socializing in the elite social circles. Matron Pope, on the other hand, had been left in charge of the inadequately staffed, overcrowded, and poorly appointed Cogswell Street Military Hospital in Halifax, and had the added responsibility of training the nursing sisters before they went overseas. She became overworked to the point that she was practically unable to take any time off in a three-year period.

In May 1917, Georgina went on sick leave. However, her leave was cut short when, in August 1917, she received a posting overseas. Over the next four months, she had five different postings in England. But on December 23, 1917, she was posted to a hospital in France. The relative calm of the Christmas period gave way to months of air raids and heavy bombing. Dewar writes:

Matron Pope became acutely aware that she was in a war zone, one very unlike what she had experienced in South Africa. At no time in South Africa were the hospitals under attack as were the Canadian hospitals in the First World War.

Despite the intensifying attacks, Georgina endeavoured to remain positive, recording in her official war diary "the pleasantries in her life and not the disturbing events such as air raids." With time, however, her denial of the harsh reality in which she and her fellow Canadians found themselves, started to slip, especially as she received word of casualties among Canadian nurses and medical personnel. In January, two days after experiencing her first air raid, Georgina received news of the death of Lt. Col John McCrae: "A pall descended over the hospital; all were grieved by his sudden death."

As air raids became more common, Georgina became increasingly ill. Dewar writes:

In June she admitted to feeling nervous, adding the complaint of diarrhoea to her already existing complaints of dizziness, hypertension, loss of sleep, and being constantly tired—all of which are signs of shell shock. While Matron Pope was showing evidence of a stress response as early as February, she had continued to function, using the coping strategies that worked for her. She kept a positive attitude and possibly kept her anxieties hidden with a good deal of emotional denial. She always balanced the telling of a stressful event with the recording of something positive and good.

By August 1918, air raid sirens were a daily occurrence, as were the corresponding barrage of anti-aircraft fire. Though it is not known precisely what happened to Georgina following an air raid on August 15, 1918, it was the day that ended her military career. She was sent to a military hospital in France, then quickly transferred to England via a hospital ship. She would eventually be returned to Canada. Dewar writes:

The winter of 1919 was a rough one for Matron Pope. She lived in Ottawa, and at some point became hospitalized in Montreal. By March she was invalided out of the Army as "unfit for service." Her discharge was hard—it was the end of a dream. She loved the army and "her lads." The army had been her life; her childhood dream of being an army nurse in a foreign land had come to fruition, not once but twice, only to end as a nightmare in a foreign battlefield.

As Georgina regained her strength, she spent much of the 1920s traveling, visiting with friends and relatives, corresponding with people all over the world, and giving generously of her money, especially to her nieces and nephews. Her health deteriorated in the 1930s. Between 1930 and 1938, she was hospitalized at least seven times. She died in Charlottetown on June 6, 1938, the last of the Pope family. Dewar writes:

She died a heroine to the people of her native province. She was waked at Government House, the residence of her cousin Lt. Governor George DesBrisay DeBlois. For two days, hundreds filed by her casket: the important, the influential, her friends, and many an old soldier who loved her dearly. Her full military funeral was a spectacle likely not seen before by the citizens, who turned out by the hundreds to watch the military parade from the Lt. Governor's home to St. Dunstan's Basilica.

In a letter to his brothers describing the funeral, Maurice Pope, one of Georgina's nephews, told a touching story of "a quavering old man" who had come to pay his respects. The man had asked the nurse in attendance to allow him to place a medal in the coffin to be buried with Georgina, who had—years before—nursed him back to health. The man had "wished to show his remembrance of her goodness."

In 2007, in recognition of Georgina's contributions to Canadian military nursing, including her founding of the Canadian Army Nursing Corps and her role at its first matron, the Government of Canada placed a bronze bust of Georgina among the 14 Canadian Valiants in Confederation Square in Ottawa.

Katherine Dewar's book Called to Serve: Georgina Pope, Canadian military nursing heroine is an excellent read. It's the first book in a long time that captured my attention and held it until the final page. It is beautifully illustrated with photos of and by Georgina and impeccably annotated. It contains so much more than my post reflects. I recommend it.

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