Bluenose Bluebirds

A comprehensive history of the Nova Scotian nurses who served in World War I, from a leading historian and author of Nova Scotia at War, 1914–1919.

Very little has been written about Canadian military nurses in the Great War largely because, more than a century later, historians still don't agree on how many Canadian military nurses served. What is generally agreed is that between a third and a half of all Canadian nurses served in uniform in the war.

Bluenose Bluebirds: Nova Scotia's Military Nurses in the Great War tells the stories of Nova Scotia's military nurses as revealed through their letters, diaries, memoirs, and biographies, which examine how they coped with the horrors of modern war and death on a scale that they could not have imagined. The narrative includes those who served in military and civilian hospitals in Nova Scotia and elsewhere, and who found themselves having to cope with the influenza pandemic, the greatest global epidemic in modern history, and the Halifax Explosion.

Bluenose Bluebirds also features an extensive database that profiles every single Nova Scotian nurse who served in the Great War, including both a brief biography of wartime experience as well as key information about their pre-war and postwar lives.

Through tenacious research, and with the help of twenty historical images, author and historian Brian Douglas Tennyson has created an essential resource that recognizes and honours the service of an overlooked cohort of Great War heroes: the Bluenose Bluebirds who put their lives on the line in service of others.