Healing Honan: Canadian nurses at the North China Mission, 1888--1947

The purpose of this study was to examine the professional lives of Canadian nurses in China during the sixty-year Missionary Era, from 1888 to 1947. It focuses on Canadian missionary nursing at the Presbyterian (later United Church of Canada) North China Mission (NCM) in the province of Honan. In 1888 Harriet Sutherland became the first Canadian nurse in China, and the first trained nurse to be sent from Canada to a foreign mission field. Over the next six decades, while China underwent a tumultuous transition from a dynastic kingdom to an independent republic, thirty Canadian nurses participated in the development of hospitals, nursing schools and public health programs in Honan. They endured revolution, warlord rule, Japanese invasion and civil war. The mission permanently closed after Communist troops occupied the NCM stations in 1947. The major theme threading through and emerging from this study is the "cloistered" nature of missionary nursing in North Honan. Physically and socially constructed walls formed a protected, creative space within which missionaries envisioned and developed a unique and progressive culture of medicine and health care. Using a rare and extremely rich data collection of public and private documents and photographs gathered from various Canadian archives and private family collections (including eighty-five photos presented here), this study offers an in-depth look at rich and subtle issues within Canadian missionary nursing during an unprecedented period of socio-political upheaval.