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PETERKIN, Ruby Gordon

Born
Toronto, Ontario, 1887
Died
Georgetown, Ontario, 1961
Biography synopsis
Peterkin was an amateur photographer who enlisted as a nurse with the Canadian army during World War 1; she served in Canada, Britain, France, and Macedonia. She was assigned to the No. 4 Canadian General Hospital in Salonica, Greece from 1915-1917 and was also stationed at the No. 5 Canadian General Hospital in Britain. While Canada did not send military troops to the Mediterranean, it provided five medical units. Peterkin's photographs, held by Library and Archives Canada, provide information about the medical stations, the professional role of nurses as well as social activities in the camps which were far from the battlefields. Additionally, they included tourist views of local peoples and their daily activities. In addition to taking photographs, she printed them while in the camp, and organized them into albums.
Media used
Photography
File & Archive locations
Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, ON
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writings about
Close, Susan. Framing Identity: Social Practices of Photography in Canada (1880 - 1920). Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2007
Close, Susan. Framing Identity: Social Practices of Photography in Canada (1880-1920). Amsterdam: Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (PhD dissertation), 2005
http://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.243568
Mann, Susan. "Where have all the Bluebirds Gone? On the Trail of Canada's Military Nurses: 1915-1918." Atlantis 26.1 (Fall-Winter 2001): 35-44
McKenzie, Andrea. "Picturing War: Canadian Nurses’ First World War Photography." Journal of War and Culture Studies 11.4 (October 2018): 1-17
Nicholson, G.W.L. Seventy Years of Service: A History of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1977
Toman, Cynthia. Sister Soldiers of the Great War The Nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Vancouver, B.C.: UBC Press, 2016
Wagner, Suzanna. Many Places, Many Problems: Canadian First World War Military Nursing Sisters in the Mediterranean. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta (M.A. thesis), 2020
http://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/d1643eb3-99a5-4e2f-b458-73ac932942a8

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