Remembering our nursing pioneers

An item from the Legion Magazine.

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Nursing pioneer

Story by Sharon Adams

When the First World War started, Major Margaret MacDonald of Bailey’s Brook, N.S., was already seasoned from serving overseas.

While working as a nurse during the construction of the Panama Canal in 1896, MacDonald contracted malaria. She served aboard a U.S. military ship during the Spanish-American War in 1898. And she was one of eight nurses, dressed in uniforms provided by the army, who cared for Canadian troops during the Boer War.

In 1906, she was appointed to the Canadian Army Medical Corps along with Lieutenant Georgina Pope. In 1911, she petitioned for a six-month leave to study the new British nursing service. On her return, she began working to reform the Canadian service.

Space, deep-sea tourism coming
in 2021—if you’ve got the bucks

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

With a pandemic raging, governments urged wishful travellers to stay close to home in 2020. In 2021, new travel options are on the menu that promise to take a privileged few vacationers away from home and far beyond the surging COVID crowds.

Two companies—Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Canadian Elon Musk’s SpaceX—plan to fly paying passengers into space next year, while OceanGate Expeditions of Everett, Wa., will sail out of St. John’s, N.L., on six trips to the Titanic.

The space options vary. Promoting it as an “out-of-home luxury experience,” Virgin Galactic is offering suborbital trips (about 100 kilometres up) that last a few minutes in space. SpaceX plans orbital tours (more than 400 kilometres up) that will last days.