1950s Canadian Paranurses

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 ]

at first glance it looke like she was taking a picture with a phone...

Sounds like she was a tough, smart, independent, and amazing person.

She reminds me of someone-my mother who was a Navy WAVE and pilot in WWII. She didn't do SAR, but did do the Berlin Air Lift. She had lots of great stories.

Very interesting. I had no idea they had para-belles back then. I am going to add the web site link to my history collection. Thank-you dearly for the link!

In the article, it talks about them undergoing 11-wk survival training in Canada (assuming the area around Jarvis Lake / Hinton). It may have been someone like Tom Roycroft (Mors Kochanski's mentor and inventor of the Roycroft pack frame) who taught them bush skills. I'm not sure about the timeline but Roycroft started out as a trainer for the Canadian airforce. EDIT: The video says he had been a DND Survival School instructor for 18 years when Mors met him so that means since the late 40's/early '50s. Who is Tom Roycroft?

My connections are to the nurses slim - I had one great-grandfather GSW wounded in WW1 and nursed back to health circa 1915. And one of my uncles served at CFB Edmonton during the '50s (Korean War) as an aero-engine tech.