Accepted in Bella Bella: A historical exemplar of a missionary nursing education, in British Columbia from 1921-1925

This study explores the largely-unknown history of missionary nursing on British Columbia’s Northwest Coast between 1901 and 1925, built around the experience of nurse Doris Nichols. From 1903 until 1935 in the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) village of Wáglísla (Bella Bella) there existed a small but persistent school of nursing within a Methodist mission hospital. The hospital was built with the intention to bring spiritual and physical healing to local Indigenous people, however the medical missionaries served all in need along the central coast, and the nursing school sustained this mission. Nichols arrived at Bella Bella in 1921, where she began her training to become a nurse at the R.W. Large Memorial Hospital Training School for Nurses; she was likely one of two (possibly three) student at that time. The educational journey for a student at Bella Bella started with introductions into a tight missionary family and then included a wide range of nursing duties in-hospital, in the community, and even nursing on the water in the medical mission boat. In the 1920s the school was affiliated with the Vancouver General School of Nursing and all student wishing to obtain a Registered Nurse designation competed their third and final year in Vancouver, which was the case with Nichols. This study used the methods of historical research, specifically guided by a social history framework, to critically examine a variety of primary sources to related to the experience of a missionary nursing student—who lived, learned, worked, and worshiped as a part of the Methodist medical mission in Bella Bella and beyond, while giving voice to the under acknowledged presence of nursing. The study reflected on those experiences from the historical intersections of ethnicity, class, region and religion. The exploration concludes that Doris Nichols’ unique opportunity and experience as a missionary student and nurse was interconnected with—and an extension of—the profound experiences of change that occurred for the Heiltsuk, the Methodist missions, nursing education, and Doris herself. The research also found that the Heiltsuk in-specific, and Indigenous people in-general were excluded from the nurses training program in Bella Bella. This is of significant historical relevance to educators and schools of nursing today, in the development of culturally sensitive curricula that acknowledges the historical impact nursing training has had on Indigenous/ settler relations and the role it still has in ensuring inclusive education.