know how you feel, Phyl. I’ve just been assigned two new patients in addition to my regulars.”
“How do you keep up, Nina? So many patients and you only have one pair of hands. Surely your fingers must feel like they’re falling off by the end of your shift.”
“It’s not so much my fingers, Phyl. Massage requires a tremendous amount of lifting and moving patients’ limbs, or what’s left of them in some cases. It’s my arms – and my back – that really ache after a busy day. But, oh, nursing is good work and so necessary. These soldier boys have done so much for us. And now it’s up to us to do what we can to help them back. For you and me, and all of us working here, it’s the least we can do.”
“I know,” sighed Phyl. “I wanted so desperately to go overseas myself, but things just didn’t work out.” She pushed the cart up against the hall wall and hugged her friend with a big squeeze around the shoulders.
“Let’s get that cup of tea. Maybe there will be biscuits left, but we had better hurry or those greedy-gusses will have eaten them and left not a nibble for us.”
In the staff room, ten women sat in chairs in a circle, each holding a mug. They were nursing sisters and also administrative workers like Phyl, who worked in the orderly room as a stenographer.
“Well, you two – we had almost given up on you. Thought perhaps your watches needed winding.”
“Phyl and I got to talking,” Nina explained. “But thoughts of tea and your company were never far from our minds!”
Everyone laughed. It was so important to keep a sense of humour. Working at New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital, the nursing sisters like Nina and even the administration staff like Phyl, saw – unshielded – the after-effects of trench warfare on the human body. The military annex of the hospital was dedicated to veteran rehabilitation. Here, the shattered bodies of Vancouver’s soldiers recuperated from grave injuries, illness, and psychological traumas inflicted by war. Many of the men had answered the call to arms in 1914 and headed overseas in October of that year as members of the 31,000-strong Canadian Expeditionary Force. Still others volunteered later; they left the West Coast and travelled via railway to Quebec City, then by troop ship across the Atlantic Ocean to Britain and the battlefields of France.
It was mid 1918 and the Great War was in its final months. In total, 55,750 British Columbians volunteered to fight. Some 6,225 never returned. Those that did return suffered greatly – from loss of limbs, loss of mobility or eyesight, the effects of privation and of poor nutrition, and exposure to mustard gas, the chemical weapon unleashed in the trenches on the Allied forces by the German army. Every man came home with memories and nightmares of unspeakable horror.
The hospital staff saw the veterans as they were, not putting on brave faces for their families, not masking the anguish as they tried to shut off the visions in their heads. The images of corpses rotting in the mud, of comrades crying out in pain and the relentless explosions of the guns and artillery were psychological horrors not easily treated by medicine. Rehabilitation of both body and soul was slow.
Phyl had a lot to offer. Her first aid and nurse’s aide certificates did not allow her to work directly with the patients, but gave her an understanding of hospital procedure. After completing her schooling, she trained as a stenographer, learned shorthand so she could record dictation and then transcribe the shorthand into typewritten text. Her typing was excellent. She had no difficulty getting office work, but she preferred a hospital setting and had worked at Shaughnessy Military Hospital before coming to Royal Columbian.
Now in her twenties, Phyl was occupied with her Guiding responsibilities after work a couple of evenings each week, and she had new duties with the Women’s Volunteer Reserve, a service club training women for wartime service. The corps drilled at the police station and practised first aid. As it turned out, no member of the corps ever went overseas, but there was plenty of work for them to do at home, beginning with visiting returning soldiers at the local hospitals and fundraising.
But Phyl also had a new passion – the B.C. Mountaineering Club (BCMC), a locally based organization that began in 1907 as the Vancouver Mountaineering Club. Elsie Carr was a member as was Phyl’s friend from the Volunteer Reserve, Margaret (Peggy) Worsley As soon as Phyl was twenty-one and old enough to apply for individual membership in the BCMC, she filled out the application form, which was then brought forward in October 1915 to a club executive meeting. Her sponsor and one other member vouched for Phyl’s worthiness and she was admitted as a general member, which gave her access to club events, but not full or active membership. To be considered for active membership required not just an interest in hiking and climbing, but proficiency. The applicant had to climb two mountains (with appropriate club witnesses to verify) and also attend three club hikes. After quickly fulfilling all these conditions, two months later Phyl applied for active membership.
Just before the War, the BCMC boasted an active ninety members, One of the presidents later recalled the breadth of members’ talents and variety of their backgrounds and occupations. He listed: “two lawyers, two land surveyors, three bankers, one botanist, two electricians, three salesmen, two railwaymen, two exporters, two nurses, seven stenographers, one meteorologist, three printers, one postman, one civil engineer, one cigar maker, one piano tuner, two real estate men – all gentlemen and gentlewomen.”
Phyl soon volunteered her services, and at the March 1917 annual general meeting she agreed to stand for nomination both as a director on the executive committee and also for the club cabin committee. She was elected to the latter position. The following year Phyl was elected club librarian, a position she held for two terms.
The club leased land on Grouse Mountain and built a large cabin on it. The cabin, which was big enough to provide shelter for a number of hikers and to accommodate gear, food supplies, and cooking needs, became a weekend haunt for many members. Members using the cabin were asked to sign a guest book recording their visit and the dates, along with the names of visitors they brought with them. Phyl was very familiar with the cabin. Her first recorded visit was in August 1915 when Phyl and her brother Dick signed their names alongside that of her friend Peggy Worsley, who as club member authorized their visit. A few months later, after Phyl herself became a member, she began to bring her own friends and family to the cabin.
The club was egalitarian in nature and because it was relatively small and local, members didn’t have to travel far afield as did those belonging to the Alpine Club of Canada, whose activities centred on the Rocky Mountains. The BCMC’s regular weekend trips were inexpensive because everyone pooled their resources and shared food, and it was very informal. Beginning the trips on Saturday afternoon (after most office workers finished their shift) instead of in the morning allowed the majority of the members to attend.
Climbers were an unusual breed, and they kept their activities mostly to themselves and fellow climbers because in their experience the urban population had no interest in the outdoors and could not believe others desired to escape from the modern city and go to the hills. What attraction could there be to “set out into the wilderness” for no particular reason – not to log, not to fish, not to clear land, not to build a road – but merely to enjoy the experience?
Hiking – the outdoors, the challenges, the wonderful variety and wonder in nature, the camaraderie of like-minded souls – was a tonic for Phyl. Fellow club member Neal Carter echoed Phyl’s own feelings of delight to discover “that there was a whole Club of People who Liked to Climb Mountains; that They had a Cabin on the slopes of Grouse and Their Own Trail.” Another club member penned a verse in the style of Robert Service and the closing lines summed up the feelings of those early climbers.
But say, comrade mine, isn’t it fine,
Dog tired and loaded for fair,
To struggle back with a twisted pack,
And think of the joys up there.
Climbers like Phyl felt they could not survive without frequent opportunities to get out of