ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Newfoundland and Labrador nursing pioneer Agnes Cowan won’t be forgotten, despite a hostel honouring her being torn down, says Eastern Health.
“Agnes Cowan has been described as the Florence Nightingale of Newfoundland,” said St. Andrew’s Presbyterian (The Kirk) minister emeritus Ian Wishart, who raised concerns about Cowan’s memorial disappearing.
The Agnes Cowan Hostel, a former facility at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, was torn down to make way for the new mental-health facility.
“In the process they are smashing the memorial to Agnes Cowan, the matron (head nurse) of the General Hospital from 1865 to 1893,” Wishart wrote in a Telegram letter to the editor.
“From the age of 15, Agnes worked with her sister, Janet, who was head nurse at the Riverhead hospital. Both sisters had learned their profession on the job at a time when nursing was a dangerous occupation. Janet died at the age of 46, Agnes at 53.”
“Nurses died young in the age before sterilization. … It’s still a hazardous occupation,” Wishart said.
But Eastern Health said in an email respone to The Telegram that Agnes Cowan will be memorialized in another way.
“Recognizing Agnes Cowan will be considered during the naming process for the new mental-health and addictions facility, which includes a 60-bed hostel floor. Eastern Health is also looking at other options to acknowledge Agnes Cowan at the new facility.”
That was good news for Wishart.
“Oh yes, that’s what I was hoping they were going to do,” he said Monday.
Wishart said he isn’t sure if younger people realize the Cowans’ significance to the province.
“Of course they don’t — that’s old stuff and the whole purpose of things nowadays is to forget the old stuff,” Wishart said.
According to a heritage buildings report on the General Hospital by Janet Story of the Lillian Stevenson Nursing Archive/Museum, Cowan was renowned for her dedication.
She had no formal training, but had been taught by her sister, whom she succeeded as matron of River Head Hospital, the facility in St. John’s predating the old General Hospital on Forest Road.
