The nursing staff was a community of women who risked their lives while building strong relationships with patients and colleagues. Nursing careers allowed women to enter the workforce; these women gained knowledge, independence, and financial freedom. At Ninette Sanatorium, the nurses held parties for patients and staff members. Yet, their profession brought risks. 

The Sanitorium became a destination for Manitoba nurses that had contracted tuberculosis. Most of these women had worked in general medical facilities and not the Sanitorium.  Their particular health risks were described in a late-1920s five-year study on “Tuberculosis and Nurses” by Edward Ross. Dr. Ross began working at the Sanatorium in 1926, becoming the medical superintendent from 1937 to 1946. Ross’s study focused on sixty nurses that had been admitted to or examined by the Sanitorium. On one occasion, seventeen nurses were admitted to the Sanatorium, making up 12% of female patients during the study period. Some of these Manitoba-resident nurses received their training outside of the province. All of the study participants contracted the disease before graduating, or shortly after.  Ross noted in his conclusions that few of the nurses that were actually working at Ninette contracted the disease.

Ross’s study highlighted how a generation of Manitoba nurses were confronted with the risks of this infectious diseases. The nurses were institutionalized at the Sanitorium for varying periods from three months (or less) to two years. At the end of the five-year-study, 31 were considered healthy and had returned to nursing, while 24 were still successfully receiving treatment, and five had passed away from TB at the Sanitorium. In his report, Ross noted that nurses who became Sanitorium patients were “far beyond the proportion in which women of the Province in general, or any other class of women in the Province, have been admitted, and more than the proportion of girls of their average age also.”

At this time, none of these photographs of nurses are associated with names. We invite anyone with information about the people in the photographs to contact the Lakehead University Archives.