AC Foundation grant helps document history of Canada’s military nurses

Friday, July 22, 2016

In April 2011, Dr. Cynthia Toman received the welcome news that she was the recipient of an Access Copyright Foundation research grant.

Dr. Toman applied to the Foundation for a grant in order to have the opportunity to continue her research into nurses who served the Canadian front lines during the First World War, a part of Canada’s historical record that has not been well-documented.

Nursing is Dr. Toman’s forte: she has worked as a professional nurse, is a historian with a PhD in history who has written extensively about nursing and military nursing in particular, and has taught at the University of Ottawa’s School of Nursing.

Through the Foundation grant, Dr. Toman was able to continue her research on the contributions of Canada’s military nurses and five years after receiving the grant, her work has borne fruit with the publication of the well-received Sister Soldiers of the Great War: The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (UBC Press). 

“The Access Copyright Foundation valued the research on this very special cohort of women who were missing from our history,” says Dr. Toman. “Please extend my thanks to the Foundation for its support of authors.”