(Lt. Florence Beatrice Graham, U.S. Army Nursing Corps. Photo courtesy of Huron County Museum)
Goderich’s Nursing Sisters In The Great War
David Yates, Huron History
In a ghastly war that devised new ways to mow men down in droves, blind them with gas, roast them alive and blow them apart, no figure emerged from Great War as revered as the Nursing Sister.
They were called “bluebirds” by their uniform colour but for the tens of thousands of wounded Canadians they were “Angels of Mercy.” Over 3,100 Canadian women served as Nursing sisters during the Great War. At least three of them were from Goderich.
Alma Naomi Dancey was born in Goderich on July 4, 1886. Her parents, Loftus and Lena Parsons Dancey were prominent citizens in town. Alma was educated at the Goderich Collegiate and went on to graduate from nursing at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City.
Dancey sailed for England as part of the second contingent of nurses to enlist in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps in May 1915. Before she left Goderich, Miss Dancey was honoured by her friends with a luncheon in April 1915.
The Huron Signal reported that the “young ladies” of the Reading and Knitting Club “presented her with a handsome pocketbook and piece of gold” among other farewell gifts. With pride, her Goderich “lady” friends hoped that “she will have abundant success in her ministrations to the Empire’s fighting men.”
At $2 per day, Dancey was commissioned a Nursing Sister (equivalent to an army lieutenant) and assigned to No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital. In August, her hospital unit was sent to the Isle of Lemnos in the eastern Mediterranean to treat the sick and wounded of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.
Conditions on Lemnos were harsh when Nursing Sister Dancey’s hospital unit arrived. The hospital staff and wounded were housed in flimsy tents. Swarms of flies added to the torments of the wounded. In a letter home, Dancey called Lemnos a “beastial hole.”
Homesick, Dancey wrote that “the day the weekly mail arrives is one of great excitement.” She “never before realized how delightful the Goderich papers are.” Indeed, Goderich’s green and pleasant tree lined streets must have seemed worlds away from her nightmarish surroundings. Eventually, the hospital went “into huts” and Dancey cheerily wrote that the future looked “not too bad.”
Dancey enjoyed lighter moments as well. She and other nursing sisters were often invited to tea by Royal Naval officers. She told her parents “it’s awfully interesting going over the ships and seeing how the big guns work.”
In April 1916, Dancey was transferred to NO. 1 Canadian General Hospital at Etaples, France to treat the western front’s casualties. Dancey met Captain Uberto Casgrain, an administrator with No. 3 Hospital and the son of Montreal Senator Joseph Casgrain. They married in October 1216. Yet, the army only allowed single women to serve as nursing sisters. Alma Casgrain resigned her commission in November 1916 and sailed home on the SS Missanabie. She made a brief visit to her parents’ home in Goderich before returning to England to be with Captain Casgrain who had been assigned a staff position at Canadian Headquarters in London.
The same ship that brought Alma Casgrain home, the SS Missanabie, carried Nursing Sister Helen Strang to Europe in November 1916 on the return voyage. Strang was one of a group 23 Canadian nursing sisters on their way to join Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. The QAIMNS was an elite unit made up of the most select nurses in the Empire. Their blue and white uniform was trimmed in red to distinguish them from other nurses.
Strang was born on January 14, 1876. Her father, Hugh Strang, was the former Goderich Collegiate principal. She received her nursing training at Mose Taylor Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Presbyterian Hospital in New York. She had extensive nursing experience in hospitals in New York and Massachussetts. When Strang volunteered for overseas service, she was engaged as a “private nurse” in an upscale Manhattan home.
In December 1916, she was sent to Malta and then to Italy to serve with no. 82 Royal Army Medical Hospital. A year later, when her hospital was transferred to France, her superiors praised her as “trustworthy and kind to her patients.” Her “very good” conduct earned her a promotion to Staff Nurse.
After having served in France and Italy, Strang was hospitalized for a painful sinus condition which required surgery in Glasgow, Scotland. Her health improved but, in March 1919, Strang asked to be sent home to tend to her ailing father in Goderich. She was honourably discharged and granted permission to find passage home at her own expense. Unfortunately, her father died before she arrived home.
Florence Beatrice Graham was born in Goderich on June 4, 1886. She was the oldest of three daughters of salesman George and Annie Graham. Although she “spent her girlhood” in Goderich, little is known of her family life. Her mother, Annie, died in 1895 at the age of 32.
Graham studied nursing at Presbyterian Hospital (the same hospital as Helen Strang). When her father died in September 1917, Graham enlisted in the U.S. Army Nursing Corps and went to France with the American Expeditionary Force.
Nurse Lieutenant Graham served with distinction at Army Base Hospital no. 2 in France. At war’s end, she was the head nurse Camp Hospital no. 4 at Chateau-Thierry. On May 25, 1919, Graham and three other nurses were touring in a Cadillac car. When their driver swerved to avoid a bicyclist, he lost control of the car and flipped it over. Nurse Ella Dalton of Toronto was killed instantly. Nurse Alice Hagadoorn died of a fractured skull within minutes. Graham and another nurse were pinned under the car until they were pulled free.
Graham suffered a broken collar bone, several cracked ribs but it was the punctured lung that proved fatal. Believing her injuries were minor, Graham tried to help the others. Yet, despite the best efforts of doctors from her own hospital, she died two days later. The Signal reported that she ‘kept up bravely to the end.’ As Graham’s father had died earlier in 1917, a sister who lived on East Street was notified of her death.
Nurse Lieutenant Florence Beatrice Graham and her two companions were buried with full military honours in the Suresnes American Cemetery in France. Fifty Three-Canadian nursing sisters were killed in the Great War but Graham is not counted among them as she died with the American forces.
Helen Strang died in Goderich in 1949 and is buried in the Maitland Cemetery alongside her parents. Alma Dancey Casgrain had at least one daughter with Captain Casgrain. They moved to Quebec after the war where she died in August 1962.
All three were brave women who answered their country’s call at its most dire hour and are honoured as such.
Source: The Goderich Signal Star
