I was unaware of the existence of Canadian Paranurses in SAR in the 1950s until this evening.

I found two articles online tonight - this one from March 2017:

An Air Force pioneer: Grace MacEachern, para-belle

And this other one (about 85% of the way down this page on nursing sisters in Canada):

Remembering ... The Para-Belles

There's also this illustrated newspaper article from 1951, but a bit hard to read if you don't sign up for the service: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/7044002/

What led me to these was my signal mirror obsession - one of my searches led to this photo, probably during her training in 1951:

"Pilot Officer Isabelle Thomson, a nursing sister from North Bay, Ontario, and a student of the third peacetime para rescue course in Jasper, Alberta, uses a signal mirror. (DND Archives Photo PL-52552)"

[ The signal mirror appears to be an American ESM/I "cross-in-glass" double-sided tempered glass signal mirror, first issued in 1943, and used by Canadian forces in WW2 ]

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A signal mirror should backup a radio distress signal, like a 406 MHz PLB (ACR PLB) (Ocean Signal PLB)