Nora Livingston

Nora Gertrude Elizabeth Livingston (1848-1927) arrived to The Montreal General Hospital (MGH) in 1890. She had been hired for one specific mandate: to establish a reputable School of Nursing—a daunting task that the MGH Board had tried to accomplish without success, for years. 

Livingston, who trained at the New York Hospital Training School for Nurses, accepted the job, although the hospital at the time was in a sorry state. Her only two conditions were that her duties not include any domestic tasks and that she be allowed to hire two experienced nurses of her own choosing to work with her. The board accepted and Nora Livingston quickly got to work. She took on this challenge for an annual salary of $800.

After promptly cleaning up the wards at The MGH and rearranging staff duties, Livingston welcomed her first students on April 1, 1890. She established a two-year program and students who passed the three-month probation, could stay on to finish their schooling. 

“Livingston, by all accounts, was a strong, no-nonsense woman. She established a curriculum for nurses, introduced the nurse uniform and hired the first nurse instructor in Canada,” says Margaret Suttie, an MGH graduate and retired MGH Nursing Director turned volunteer nursing historian. 

In 1919, 29 years after she arrived, Livingston retired, but her school of nursing remained open until 1972, when the government changed the educational program for nurses in Quebec. 

“It’s an attestation to her importance in MGH, MUHC and nursing history that Livingston Hall was named after her,” says Suttie. “She established a standard of excellence that she expected everyone to live up to—a standard that I believe our nurses still live up to today.”