Amie Archibald-Varley
Sara Fung and Amie Archibald-Varley. Credit: Danielle Blancher Credit: Danielle Blancher

In 2022 my rabble.ca Nursing Week column was titled Don’t Mourn, Organize!

I decried the state of nursing:

Glowing electronic hearts in windows, the banging of pots at the dinner hour, pizzas and rotis delivered to hospital emergency room staff all demonstrated people’s appreciation of health care workers including nurses.

While the pandemic has highlighted nurses’ valuable work it has also further exposed our societal neglect towards them.

As the pandemic has shown us, the crisis is not new. The stage was set long ago for the diminishing of nursing, the abuse of nurses, the silencing of nurses.

In the 1980s and 90s I was part of a group called Nurses for Social Responsibility. We were a bit of a renegade group within the staid nursing profession taking on the ‘isms’ that impacted health and justice: militarism, sexism, classism, racism, and the ravages of neoliberalism such as homelessness, hunger, and poverty.

We marched, protested, organized, and engaged in intentional disruptions of our professional nursing association meetings to put, then radical (for nursing), resolutions on the floor such as ensuring access to abortion, endorsing multilateral nuclear disarmament and opposition to nurses’ involvement in torture.

Nursing has of course come a long way, primarily led by strong nursing union leaders such as Linda Silas of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and her provincial and territorial counterparts.

But the ‘isms’ continue, proliferating in the crisis and distractions of the pandemic: political decisions that aggressively promote the erosion of social programs, benefit the privatization of health care, and political decisions that I have equated to a war on nurses.

For a decade I have mourned the death of a grassroots nursing voice on political issues.

So, I enthusiastically took note of The Gritty Nurses when I first heard of them.

Meet Amie Archibald-Varley and Sara Fung, nurses who I noticed were articulating strong political opinions on social media on a range of issues. They were refreshingly bold, and they were saying things I hadn’t heard from nurses, especially nursing leaders in a long time.

Their self-descriptor as ‘gritty’ is fitting.

Merriam Webster dictionary defines gritty as:

  1. containing or resembling grit,
  2. courageously persistent: plucky,
  3. having strong qualities of tough uncompromising realism.

Yup, that’s them.

Sara and Amie both have a strong background in maternal-child health including education and policy development and clearly became friends as they provided mutual support for each other during challenges in the workplace that included rigid hierarchies, bullying, lateral violence, and racism.

They knew they had a lot to say so in 2019 they started The Gritty Nurse Podcast which has rocked the world of healthcare journalism inserting the voice and opinions of nurses.  For several years now they have offered a fresh voice on topics as far ranging as trans rights, intimate partner violence, gun violence, the rise of Ozempic use, and the American Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade.

It was only natural their next venture would be a book The Wisdom of Nurses (full disclosure I am a chapter in the book).

Publishing in Canada is hard for even seasoned authors. I have a file of rejection letters from dozens of publishers for my second book A Knapsack Full of Dreams. Memoirs of a Street Nurse.

But these gals did it and it is now a Canadian phenomenon! It is inspiring to see the enthusiasm for the book ranging from guest visits on The Social to making the Globe and Mail’s bestseller list.

The Wisdom of Nurses is both personal and political. While Sara and Amie recount the joy and privilege they experience as nurses they also share their personal ravages of unrealistic job expectations, gaslighting and rigid medical hierarchies. They do so while also recounting some pretty tough personal health experiences of their own as patients. To say these nurses have grit is an understatement.

But here is how they are “courageously persistent”. Amie and Sara believe we should know about strong, wise nurses both living and of the past. They ask the reader to name a famous nurse other than Florence Nightingale, recognizing the average Canadian cannot.

We are introduced to Natalie Stake-Doucet, a Quebec nurse who put her doctoral studies on hold mid-pandemic to work in the trenches of a long-term care home, where half of the residents died. She created a public diary on Facebook recounting the dystopia she was witnessing. Like the Gritty Nurses, Stake-Doucet speaks her mind and calls on nurses “to see their worth collectively, so we can collectively say F-you to the forces that try to keep us down.”

Then there is Lindsay Pentland, a travel nurse with less known experiences during the pandemic. One included working in a south-west Ontario community where both migrant workers and the Mennonite community were hit especially hard. Another experience included nursing in a northern Ontario First Nations community where she was so respected she was invited to take part in a full-moon ceremony.

In a chapter titled “Confronting The Past and Planting New Roots” the authors chronicle systemic and racist abuses in the health care system that have led to harm and death of Indigenous people. One of the most hopeful profiles is that of Rachel Radyk, a nurse who identifies as AnishinaabeKwe, who was able to reconnect with her Indigeneity while in nursing school. Her views on Indigenous topics in nursing school, given the opportunity of meeting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations, are vital reading.

Then there are the ‘grit vignettes’ between chapters where we meet nurses Mary Seacole, Harriet Tubman (that one I did not know), Agnes Chan, Cori Bush, and Leigh Chapman. These names and more remind us that there is more to nursing history (and future) than Florence Nightingale.

Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit comments about advocacy and power in dark times: “Changing the story isn’t enough in itself, but it has often been foundational to real changes. Making an injury visible and public is usually the first step in remedying it, and political change often follows culture, as what was long tolerated is seen to be intolerable, or what was overlooked becomes obvious.”

The Wisdom of Nurses is a tremendous contribution to changing the story, making the truth visible and changing the direction of nursing in Canada.

Make it your reading for Nursing Week.

In memory of Canadian nurses Jeanne Mance, Bernice Redmon, Jean Cuthand Goodwill, Marion Dewar, Peggy Ann Walpole, Barb Craig, Edith Anderson Monture, Sister June Dwyer, Clare Culhane, Ethel Johns, Dorothea Palmer, Kathleen Mary Jo Lutley, Anne Ross, Margaret MacDonald and the Bluebird.

Cathy Crowe

Cathy Crowe

Cathy Crowe is a street nurse (non-practising), author and filmmaker who works nationally and locally on health and social justice issues. Her work has included taking the pulse of health issues affecting...