Category Archives: Upcoming Lectures

Bluenose Bluebirds: Nova Scotia’s Military Nurses in the Great War

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Wednesday, October 16th, 2024, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Halifax Public Library and online through Zoom. Here is the Zoom link.

Born and raised in Toronto, Brian Tennyson studied history at the University of Toronto (Hons BA and MA) and the Commonwealth Institute, University of London (PhD). In 1966 he made the wise decision to move to Nova Scotia to teach history at what was then Xavier Junior College in Sydney, now Cape Breton University. He has never regretted that decision. He is the author or editor of eighteen books and is presently working on the nineteenth and has published forty scholarly journal articles and forty-seven book reviews, mostly on aspects of Nova Scotian history. He was also the founder of the Centre for International Studies, which introduced international student recruitment, international exchange agreements, and managed a number of overseas development projects, all funded by $5 million by the federal government. He retired in 2023, having completed fifty-seven years of service.

Abstract: 
In 2017, Tennyson published a book entitled Nova Scotia at War, 1914-1919, the first attempt to tell the story of the province’s experience of the First World War. This led him to determine how many Nova Scotian soldiers served in the war. Tennyson included military nurses, of course, but didn’t give them the attention that he came to realize they deserved. Somewhat to his surprise, only one book, Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, has been written, by Cynthia Toman and published in 2016 but she only included nurses who served in the Canadian Army Medical Nursing Service (CAMCNS). The result was that 250 of Canada’s 2,845 military nurses were Nova Scotians. Because Tennyson includes nurses who served in other military organizations such as Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), the nursing service of the British army and other similar organizations, his number is 303 and there may have been more. Tennyson’s study of Nova Scotia’s military nurses not only identifies all Nova Scotian nurses who served in the war, it includes brief biographies including as much as possible about their prewar and postwar lives.

 






Life and Work on Sable Island: The Early Federal Record of Island Operations.

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Wednesday, November 20th, 2024, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Halifax Public Library. The Zoom link will be updated soon.

Anne Marie Lane Jonah, Parks Canada

Abstract: 
With the BNA Act, the new government of Canada took responsibility for Sable Island. A study of the federal record of the island from the time of Confederation to the 1960s provides insight into the evolution of services on the island, the changing public perceptions of the place and its importance, and how these shaped people’s lives and work. These records document administrative struggles, labour disputes, strange and ambitious projects, moments of tragedy, and deliberations that would shape the island’s fate. Parks Canada is undertaking to better understand the island’s history and the value it represents to Canadians to guide future planning for the island. This presentation will explore the records, including photos, hand-drawn sketches, and news clippings, giving a new perspective on this well-loved, yet always mysterious island.

The Painter, His Muse and Their Marriage: George Harvey and Priscilla Wells in Late Victorian Halifax

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Wednesday, December 11th, 2024, 7:00 pm (Atlantic), in-person at the Former Art Bar, Barrington Place, 1873 Granville St., Halifax. The Zoom link will be updated soon.

A graduate of Dalhousie University, Lois Yorke is the former Provincial Archivist and Director of the Nova Scotia Archives. She has spent over forty years as an archivist, editor, researcher and consultant in cultural heritage. Her long-standing involvement in women’s history has produced various articles on ‘interesting’ women from Nova Scotia’s past. Priscilla Wells is the most recent, and was discovered by accident while working on a much larger project – the first biography to explore fully the life and times of Anna Harriette Leonowens, ‘The English Governess at the Siamese Court’ – possibly the most interesting woman of them all.

Abstract: 
George Harvey lingers in our cultural history today only as a footnote, faintly remembered as the first headmaster of Halifax’s new Victoria School of Art and Design (now NSCAD University) in 1887. His wife Priscilla is remembered not at all. Their lives were lived at the intersections of Victorian art, literature and music in bohemian London, while in Halifax they were well-known and liked – but afterwards, the erasure of their memory was complete and deliberate. This illustrated presentation will revisit their world, reclaim their lives, and give them the voices they so richly deserve