Yarmouth, Nova Scotia: the rise and fall of Miss Watson

In this paper, we discuss the rise to power of Miss Mary Watson, first superintendent of a small hospital and school of nursing at the beginning of the century in a town in southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada. The data were retrieved from first-hand documents still preserved in the hospital. They consisted of student records written in her own hand, minutes of medical meetings which she attended, newspaper clippings and oral histories of nurses who worked in the Yarmouth Hospital in the 1920s and 1930s. We trace her professional career in that town and document how she lost control and eventually left the province of Nova Scotia.