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Please be advised that Memory Project primary sources may deal with personal testimony that reflect the speaker’s recollections and interpretations of events. Individual testimony does not necessarily reflect the views of the Memory Project and Historica Canada.
![The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.]({"id":"236c4b33-f152-456b-92ce-fe2745beb8ed","disk":"s3","directory":"MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan","filename":"14920_538","extension":"jpg","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","aggregate_type":"image","size":13892,"variant_name":null,"original_media_id":null,"created_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:48.000000Z","updated_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:48.000000Z","title":"The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.","alt":"The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","conversion_urls":{"original":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14920_538.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14920_538.jpg","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","pivot":{"mediable_id":"e3dfa1ad-42f3-485b-bcab-8c536c90df09","media_id":"236c4b33-f152-456b-92ce-fe2745beb8ed","mediable_type":"App\\Models\\Article","tag":"gallery","order":1},"translations":[{"id":"3313aae4-0e1e-453b-895c-fb05219f45f2","media_id":"236c4b33-f152-456b-92ce-fe2745beb8ed","title":"The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.","alt":"The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","locale":"en","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan"},{"id":"fc0f1767-8673-4606-9331-8bfbd6db9840","media_id":"236c4b33-f152-456b-92ce-fe2745beb8ed","title":"The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.","alt":"The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","locale":"fr","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan"}]} "The Nursing Sisters' of Canada 34th bi-centennial convention in P.E.I., 1998. This was the second last convention of the association.")
![Stained glass window at the Deer Lodge Centre Chapel, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This piece was dedicated to the Nursing Sisters of Winnipeg, November 10, 1991.]({"id":"a480cb01-20b7-46b3-b3b4-ac072a7f3cfa","disk":"s3","directory":"MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan","filename":"14922_538","extension":"jpg","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","aggregate_type":"image","size":7416,"variant_name":null,"original_media_id":null,"created_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:49.000000Z","updated_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:49.000000Z","title":"Stained glass window at the Deer Lodge Centre Chapel, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This piece was dedicated to the Nursing Sisters of Winnipeg, November 10, 1991.","alt":"Stained glass window at the Deer Lodge Centre Chapel, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This piece was dedicated to the Nursing Sisters of Winnipeg, November 10, 1991.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","conversion_urls":{"original":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14922_538.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14922_538.jpg","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","pivot":{"mediable_id":"e3dfa1ad-42f3-485b-bcab-8c536c90df09","media_id":"a480cb01-20b7-46b3-b3b4-ac072a7f3cfa","mediable_type":"App\\Models\\Article","tag":"gallery","order":2},"translations":[{"id":"c822e5ed-5827-419b-9aef-bea4b0da5c2a","media_id":"a480cb01-20b7-46b3-b3b4-ac072a7f3cfa","title":"Stained glass window at the Deer Lodge Centre Chapel, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This piece was dedicated to the Nursing Sisters of Winnipeg, November 10, 1991.","alt":"Stained glass window at the Deer Lodge Centre Chapel, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This piece was dedicated to the Nursing Sisters of Winnipeg, November 10, 1991.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","locale":"en","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan"}]} "Stained glass window at the Deer Lodge Centre Chapel, Winnipeg, Manitoba. This piece was dedicated to the Nursing Sisters of Winnipeg, November 10, 1991.")
![Copy of the menu from the Overseas Nurses' Re-Union Dinner at the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa. August 24, 1926.]({"id":"ab8226c8-58ea-4960-8a98-1cfd618682d7","disk":"s3","directory":"MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan","filename":"14923_538","extension":"jpg","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","aggregate_type":"image","size":7001,"variant_name":null,"original_media_id":null,"created_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:49.000000Z","updated_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:49.000000Z","title":"Copy of the menu from the Overseas Nurses' Re-Union Dinner at the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa. August 24, 1926.","alt":"Copy of the menu from the Overseas Nurses' Re-Union Dinner at the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa. August 24, 1926.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","conversion_urls":{"original":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14923_538.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14923_538.jpg","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","pivot":{"mediable_id":"e3dfa1ad-42f3-485b-bcab-8c536c90df09","media_id":"ab8226c8-58ea-4960-8a98-1cfd618682d7","mediable_type":"App\\Models\\Article","tag":"gallery","order":3},"translations":[{"id":"49b36e7f-2e5d-478b-bef0-2d9868bc3a4c","media_id":"ab8226c8-58ea-4960-8a98-1cfd618682d7","title":"Copy of the menu from the Overseas Nurses' Re-Union Dinner at the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa. August 24, 1926.","alt":"Copy of the menu from the Overseas Nurses' Re-Union Dinner at the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa. August 24, 1926.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","locale":"en","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan"}]} "Copy of the menu from the Overseas Nurses' Re-Union Dinner at the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa. August 24, 1926.")
![Over eight thousand Canadian women have served with the Nursing Sisters' Association through the conflicts of the last century. No. 10 General Hospital, RCAMC are shown here landing at Arromanches, France, July 1944.]({"id":"e8437416-06aa-47ad-8d8b-f9e3a13d6524","disk":"s3","directory":"MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan","filename":"14921_538","extension":"jpg","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","aggregate_type":"image","size":11970,"variant_name":null,"original_media_id":null,"created_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:48.000000Z","updated_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:48.000000Z","title":"Over eight thousand Canadian women have served with the Nursing Sisters' Association through the conflicts of the last century. No. 10 General Hospital, RCAMC are shown here landing at Arromanches, France, July 1944.","alt":"Over eight thousand Canadian women have served with the Nursing Sisters' Association through the conflicts of the last century. No. 10 General Hospital, RCAMC are shown here landing at Arromanches, France, July 1944.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","conversion_urls":{"original":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14921_538.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14921_538.jpg","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","pivot":{"mediable_id":"e3dfa1ad-42f3-485b-bcab-8c536c90df09","media_id":"e8437416-06aa-47ad-8d8b-f9e3a13d6524","mediable_type":"App\\Models\\Article","tag":"gallery","order":4},"translations":[{"id":"005b8357-fc6a-4dba-a225-5cfa7b7ec837","media_id":"e8437416-06aa-47ad-8d8b-f9e3a13d6524","title":"Over eight thousand Canadian women have served with the Nursing Sisters' Association through the conflicts of the last century. No. 10 General Hospital, RCAMC are shown here landing at Arromanches, France, July 1944.","alt":"Over eight thousand Canadian women have served with the Nursing Sisters' Association through the conflicts of the last century. No. 10 General Hospital, RCAMC are shown here landing at Arromanches, France, July 1944.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","locale":"en","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan"}]} "Over eight thousand Canadian women have served with the Nursing Sisters' Association through the conflicts of the last century. No. 10 General Hospital, RCAMC are shown here landing at Arromanches, France, July 1944.")
![In 1928, nurses who had served in WWI conducted a campaign to raise $350 for a nurse's window as part of the Canadian Memorial Church's "Memorial to Peace". This uniform became obsolete with the unification of the three branches of military service.]({"id":"fda3632e-3a2f-433d-83a6-817b35130731","disk":"s3","directory":"MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan","filename":"14919_538","extension":"jpg","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","aggregate_type":"image","size":5551,"variant_name":null,"original_media_id":null,"created_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:48.000000Z","updated_at":"2021-08-24T20:51:48.000000Z","title":"In 1928, nurses who had served in WWI conducted a campaign to raise $350 for a nurse's window as part of the Canadian Memorial Church's \"Memorial to Peace\". This uniform became obsolete with the unification of the three branches of military service.","alt":"In 1928, nurses who had served in WWI conducted a campaign to raise $350 for a nurse's window as part of the Canadian Memorial Church's \"Memorial to Peace\". This uniform became obsolete with the unification of the three branches of military service.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","conversion_urls":{"original":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14919_538.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/MemoryProject\/DorothyGogan\/14919_538.jpg","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","pivot":{"mediable_id":"e3dfa1ad-42f3-485b-bcab-8c536c90df09","media_id":"fda3632e-3a2f-433d-83a6-817b35130731","mediable_type":"App\\Models\\Article","tag":"gallery","order":5},"translations":[{"id":"43417ec7-b839-427d-8f6b-1662bedc2066","media_id":"fda3632e-3a2f-433d-83a6-817b35130731","title":"In 1928, nurses who had served in WWI conducted a campaign to raise $350 for a nurse's window as part of the Canadian Memorial Church's \"Memorial to Peace\". This uniform became obsolete with the unification of the three branches of military service.","alt":"In 1928, nurses who had served in WWI conducted a campaign to raise $350 for a nurse's window as part of the Canadian Memorial Church's \"Memorial to Peace\". This uniform became obsolete with the unification of the three branches of military service.","caption":null,"creator":null,"source":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan","locale":"en","credit":"Courtesy of Dorothy Gogan"}]} "In 1928, nurses who had served in WWI conducted a campaign to raise $350 for a nurse's window as part of the Canadian Memorial Church's \"Memorial to Peace\". This uniform became obsolete with the unification of the three branches of military service.")
Transcript
My name is Dorothy Jean Gogan. I joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1953 and had a 28-year career 'til 1981.
I spent a lot of my career as a Nurse Educator and some of that time it was at the Canadian Forces Medical Service School, which is in what was originally called Camp Borden, but now units are referred to as CFB - Canadian Forces Bases. So Canadian Force Base Borden. And while there I taught the orientation course for the newly enlisted nursing sisters. And I use the emphasis of the word "sisters" because during my early years of the military we started to take men as nursing applicants to the military. We did that as a result of Lester Pearson, the then Prime Minister, appointing Mrs. Beryl Plumtree to head up the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. And she wagged her finger at the military saying we were reverse discrimination in action because so many trades and occupations in the military were restricted to men only. So, of course, we had to change. And therefore, men were enlisted - enrolled, the better term - enlisted is used in wartime - into the medical services as male nursing assistants, something we'd never had but probably should have had, for years.
I spent several years at the hospital in Borden, teaching on the side, and then had an official appointment to the medical school. While I was teaching there, I had an interesting sideline, in that a retired military nursing sister set up a course for the provincial government to give ambulance drivers some training. Ex-military doctors, and ex-military personnel in general, who are employed anyplace around Borden, often come there for advice and for consultations. And these doctors decided that it was a crime in the Province of Ontario, that any person who wanted to go to a junkyard and buy a beat-up old vehicle, could put a red cross on the side of it and call themself an ambulance driver and go pick up badly injured people at accident sites, knowing nothing about what damage they could do if they improperly handled casualties like that. So a special course was set up and most of the ambulance drivers in the province who had been employed for years were compelled to come to this course to learn the professional side of handling patients. And I became involved in part of the teaching of that, and really liked it.
My positions in the military involved a lot of teaching, but I also have been the Director of Nursing at several hospitals. And I served at an interesting hospital in Fort Churchill on the Hudson Bay, which at that time was a base for the Joint Canadian and Military in Arctic warfare and a lot of testing was done for equipment and things of that nature. And we also had the responsibility of doing the air evacs, which meant that when the C.D. Howe went up the waters of the Hudson Bay, they did that to find TB patients and they examined Eskimo communities, and those who were identified as having tuberculosis were handled only by the military. Civilian aircraft flying into Whitehorse would not take, of course, anybody with open TB. So we had to take people who had never seen an aircraft before, take them on a flight, which they didn't want to do on their back - they don't like to sleep on their back - but that's of course, how you have to travel on a stretcher, down to Winnipeg where they were sent for their initial treatment. And then we had to go down and pick them up and fly them back to their communities when they were ready.
