ºìÐÓÊÓƵ

Joan Anne Forsyth was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on July 6, 1936. She grew up in the beautiful and picturesque East Neuk of Fife, or in plain terms the east corner of the coast of Fife, a region comprised of small towns and quaint fishing villages.

Following the completion of high school, Joan ventured onto a path of nursing and caring for others. She enrolled in a four-year general nursing course at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and, in 1958, received her Registered General Nursing Certificate. She took her training one step further and, between 1959 and 1960, studied midwifery at the Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow.

Joan’s life-long nursing career, which would take her to different countries, finally began. Between 1961 and 1967, she nursed, first, at the British Petroleum Hospital in Aden and then at the Caltex Oil Company in Bahrain. She also joined the Queen Alexandra Royal Nursing Corps where she worked as a midwife at Woolich in England, Rinteln in Germany and Aldershot – “Home of the British Army.”

In 1968, Joan immigrated to Canada where she first worked in the case room, a hospital room where mothers give birth, at the Toronto General Hospital. In 1979, she moved across the country to work full-time for five years at the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Victoria, BC while attending the University of Victoria to obtain her Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Afterwards, she continued to work within the Greater Victoria Hospital Association until retiring from her nurse manager position in September of 1993.

Joan’s compassion and desire to care for and help others goes beyond the scope of her life. She decided to leave a lasting legacy in the form of an endowed fund called, the J. Anne Forsyth Bursary in Nursing. She established it to recognize a Canadian undergraduate and/or graduate First Nations student in the School of Nursing program at UVic whose goal is to improve the quality of health care provided to First Nations citizens.