They worked all the time while training, staying at the nurses’ residence at the old Brandon Hospital. The pay was not high – five dollars a month by the third year, but there was plenty of experience. They worked eight or 12 hour shifts, with the rest of the time studying or going to classes.
“You just worked, because you were studying all the time. They worked us, but we were young and you should be able to work hard. At 18, 19 you should be able to handle it. They kept us busy.”
The equipment they worked on was older, and Noble remembers having to use gas heaters to boil water for sterilizing instruments. They could not watch it all the time, as they had other work to do, but if they did not pay attention and it boiled down, the catheters or other rubber equipment would get wrecked and the whole hospital would smell of the burned rubber. If nurses broke anything, it was taken out of their pay cheque.
Nothing was disposable in those days, including diapers. Noble said she would be alone at nights working in the nursery with eight to 10 babies. She learned quickly about weighing, feeding and changing their diapers. Soiled nappies were cloth and had to be washed for the laundry before she went off duty.
They had to work in the operating room, assisting the doctor, as there were no interns. They studied some psychiatric nursing, spending time at the old mental hospital on the north hill. When they did dietary and pharmacy, they lost their instructors, as it was wartime and people moved around a bit. That made the learning challenging. Noble remembered filling the drug baskets, and if they could not read the doctor’s writing, they had to send the note down to the head nurse for deciphering.
As there was no hospital in Shilo at the time, and soldiers were training for service in the Second World War, they came to Brandon when they had medical issues. One of these problems was Scarlet Fever, which hit them during Noble’s training. This meant isolation for both the patients and the nurses. One nurse would look after a few patients, and had to stay in isolation for a whole month, getting meals left for them outside the door of the room. This is much like a COVID quarantine, only longer.
“We had to soak and disinfect the linen before we could send it out to the laundry,” she explained. “We didn’t go anywhere for that month. In one room.”
It was a different time, for sure. The residence was closed at 10pm and unless you had a leave to stay out to 11 or 12, you had to be in as the door was locked. Noble said she and her roommate had a room at the end of a hall and they sometimes had to sneak people back in. The assistant matron checked the rooms to make sure there beds were made. Some also got kicked out for smoking.
“They tried to bring us up right.”
In fact, they only allowed single girls. One did get married, and they would only let her back in when she could prove she was not pregnant.
She said a couple of students left school and joined the army, but not too many. As for her, her boyfriend and later husband Ernie Noble was in the army and was not in favour of her doing so, and she feels her parents would not have appreciated it either. By the time she finished her training and spent time in Regina, Ernie was home.
At the end of training she said they felt they knew quite a bit, but once they were out in the world and responsible it felt a little different. When they were in larger hospitals, they were not on their own so much, but when they were in rural settings and working nights, they were all there was.
Noble’s roommate’s parents had moved to Regina, and she was going there to work. Noble followed her to work in hospitals there, until Ernie came back from overseas. They were married in March of 1946. She moved on to the old hospital in Boissevain and nursed there until the children came. She returned to work as the kids got older, and ended up working at Westview Lodge from 1972 to 1984, including eight years of working nights.
From her class of 19, only she, Workman and her old roommate Evelyn Norris, who is now in Kamloops,  BC are still living. Noble said they had a nice two-person reunion, going over old memories. She keeps in touch with her old roomie as best she can, and sent a picture of the reunion to her foster daughter. As they are all in their late 90’s, this will be the last reunion for the Class of ‘45. The memories will survive.
“It is something I am really glad I did. I really enjoyed the reunions over the years, just catching up.”

by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff