A last post for Ruby Gordon Peterkin

RUBY GORDON PETERKIN. (Sept. 1, 1887 – June 4, 1961).

After serving as a Nursing Sister during the Great War Ruby Peterkin was invalided home to Toronto, sailing from Liverpool on September 20, 1918. Her return was heralded in The Toronto World  (Oct. 8, 1918) in a story that notes her three years of military service in France, Malta, Salonika, Gallipoli and England.

Ruby in the garden of the house at 34 Oakmount ca. 1912

On Armistice Day in November,1918, she was told that she would be transferred to the Invalid Soldiers’ Commission for further treatment as a patient. Her ailment? The presiding doctor stated that she had gained weight, which was good, but “she has a slight active pulmonary tuberculosis with evidence of fibrosis at the right apex and chronic pleurisy.” He recommended that she be discharged to the I.S.C. for treatment at Calydor Sanatorium (in Gravenhurst).  Her recovery took a year’s time.

In 1920 Ruby married Hugh Alexander McKay (July 19, 1884 – Feb. 14, 1935).  He was a doctor, a psychiatric specialist.  He served throughout the First War in the Army Medical Corps and then was Medical Doctor at the Ontario Hospital in Hamilton. When he died in 1935 he was serving as Medical Superintendent of the Mimico Hospital.

Ruby and Hugh (right)

To go back to Ruby’s letters from Europe during the war years, we can be certain that we are given a carefully curated glimpse of her time spent  as a nursing sister.  The letters that survive were all written to her sister Irene. There would have been many others to family and friends, including to her future husband Dr. Hugh McKay. Before being mailed all letters were first read and then approved by the censor which meant that she could not share with her readers even an hint of the human suffering and horrors that she undoubtedly witnessed. Among numerous references to family members there is no mention of her father, Charles Robert Peterkin, sr. Was there a rift as a result of his remarriage to Annie Mollon in 1913? We know there were some Peterkins who strongly disapproved of the marriage and Ruby as one of his youngest children may well have been among them.

The Peterkins at 34 Oakmount in 1912. Ruby sits between her sister Irene (in hat) and her father Charles R. Also seen is her brother Ernest and her aunt Annie Peterkin.

Now a brief summary of Ruby’s life to round out this blog post. Ruby graduated from the Toronto General Hospital Nursing School in 1911 and then occupied herself with private nursing until 1915. After her husband died in 1935 Ruby lived in Toronto at various addresses: the Park Plaza Hotel at the corner of Bloor & Avenue Rd., and then in a four-plex at Mt. Pleasant and Blythwood avenues where her great-nieces and nephews remember being amazed by her budgerigar Timmy who could clearly recite his name and address. She is remembered also for having her own movie camera, and entertaining family  members with colour movies taken on special occasions and during her travels in Australia.

 

Ruby’s house at Bolton, Ontario. Irene standing in front.

In 1953 Ruby and Irene built houses side by side near Bolton, Ont. In Nov. 1954 Ruby was injured in a serious motor accident and after that was in and out of hospital, and then lived for nearly two years with Ernest and Irene in Georgetown, Ont. She was transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and from there to a nursing home at 80 Wychwood Park, Toronto, where she died in 1961..

Ruby Peterkin’s records in the Canadian Army Medical Corps collection in Library and Archives Canada give details of her service as a nursing sister. These include her Attestation Paper, Certificate of Service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (October 8, 1919), listings of her postings and transfers while on active service in Europe, her medical history as an invalid. and her record of assigned pay. For example her pay for service in 1915 was $60 a month and thereafter $50 a month. In 1920 she received a War Service Gratuity of $549.00.

Ruby is fondly remembered by her great-niece, Mary F. Williamson.

 

One of Ruby’s medals awarded for her service as a Nursing Sister in World War I.

 

 

 

“We had heaps of fun …”

Ruby with several of her soldier patients in Kalamaria, the suburb of Salonika where the Canadian hospital was located.

In an incomplete letter to her sister Irene Nursing Sister Ruby Peterkin looks back over her long but clearly fun-filled sea voyage from Salonika to England via Crete and Taranto, Italy, where they boarded a train.

Ruby has returned from tending patients at the Canadian Medical Hospital #4 in Salonika over a span of almost two years. It seems the ship departed Salonika just days before the city was almost totally destroyed by fire on August 18 and 19. Ruby’s letter, written in September 1917, lacks its first page  and presumably the name of the ship, and her thoughts on the departure. As always, Ruby shares details with her sister Irene about the Canadian officers with whom they had “heaps of fun.”  She doesn’t mention the pneumonia and impending TB which soon will send her to hospital as a patient.

c/o Matron-in-Chief, 133 Oxford, Cranston’s Kenilworth Hotel’

Great Russell Street, W.C. 1, [Sept.] 1917

… from Ruby’s album. Could this be the ship that takes her to England?

We left Salonique on the 17^th on a transport – the day before that hapless city was consumed by fire. The sisters from No. 5 & No. 1 Canadian and about 100 Br. officers on leave were also on board. Also the men of the three Can. Hosps. but only Maj. McVicar and Capt. Trump and two officers from 1^st & 5^th came. The remainder of the officers were to follow shortly. The boat was very comfortable and we had a great trip among the Isles of Greece, travelling only at night and stopping in harbour in the day time. In most of the harbour we could get ashore and go in swimming. We had three days at Crete and had a great time. There are some of the naval men there who have not been home since Gallipoli and have not seen English girls since then. The first afternoon they gave a picnic in a little cove for twelve of us. We went in swimming and then had tea on the rocks and went back to the boat at nine o’clock.

The next day, I and three other sisters went ashore with Maj. McVicar and up to the town which is about three miles in. We had lunch and then I just had time to dash back to the ship in time to meet two of the naval officers who were to call for Miss Austin and I at 2 o’cl. They took us in the town again – you went by sail-boat to the dock then took a carriage – we had ices and tea and then drove back in the island and saw the house where Venezelos was born. There is a gorge which goes right across the island and we drove a long way up this. It was beautiful. Then we came back to the club house – the naval officers have on and had dinner there. It was too funny for any thing because it is not at all like a club house at home. There are really no eats in it and they had gone to a tremendous lot of trouble to bring dishes and eats and everything from their ships over there then they made an omelette on a primus stove for a hot dish.

There were four other girls, Scottish women, and four other officers – at the dinner too. We had heaps of fun.

Then the next day we had another bathing picnic on shore but had to be on board at four so these two nice officers came on and had tea with us there and we sailed again at six.

We were on the transport eleven days, going from Salonique to Taranto. We left Taranto the same day – Monday and came up through Italy by the troop route and so missed Rome. The Italian journey was unspeakably hot, dusty and uncomfortable. We had no berths and no where to wash and travelled without a break from 3 o’clock Monday till twelve midnight Tuesday except two hours in Boulogria at noon, where we had lunch. Otherwise, we dashed out at every station where there was a buffet, grabbed all the food we could reach, threw them some money and scrambled back on the train flourishing our trophies. And if you could have seen us washing in a three minute stop under the drip from the pipe that fills the engine – Matron and all – with one eye on the train. It was really worth having a moving picture then.

We arrived in Torino at 12 and I think would have mentioned if we had to go on that night or next morning. However, they took us to a good hotel and we did not leave till 5 next day. Then we had dinner at Modane on the frontier and changed into a French train which was much more comfortable although we still did not have sleepers. We arrived in Paris at 10.a.m.

We had two days in Paris then crossed the channel Saturday night and arrived here at noon yesterday. Do you wonder that I thought of nothing but getting to bed? Capt. Trump came all the way with us and Maj. McVicar with the men. They were both supposed to go with the men so that we had to kind of smuggle Capt Trump along and what we should have done without him I do not know.

 We are all to go to Basingstoke on Thursday and have 3 weeks leave from there —

“The submarine is just full of machinery…”

Once again we are looking back precisely 100 years. With strict censorship still in force nursing sister Ruby Peterkin relies on stories of her off-duty amusements in Salonika, Greece, to brighten the life of her sister Irene back home in Toronto. An invitation to take a tour all over the British submarine HMS E11 was a genuine thrill. Last year the submarine had been involved at Gallipoli against Turkey, and before its mission was over E11 would sink 85 enemy vessels in the Sea of Marmara.

Picnics and tea were always something to look forward to, especially when suggested by Canadian officers. Ruby’s brother Charles, with his family which included her nieces Theresa and Marie who are close to her in age, had moved to 285 High Park Ave. in Toronto. The “kiddies” are Irene’s kindergarten pupils.

No. 4 Canadian Hosp
Greece, April 14-16

Dear Rene, —
I fear it is ages since I wrote you, but you know it was ages and ages before I got your letter since the one before.

You certainly had one awful time with those boxes. It is too bad you had to repack them. They have not come yet but parcels always take at least two weeks longer than letters. We have heard that they are not going to accept any more parcels in the mails for the Mediterranean forces. Is this true?
How did your dance come off? Your description of Minnie’s sounded good. Think of it, we have not danced since we joined the army, and such excellent opportunities going to waste.

Things are going along much the same here. We are busy the weeks we receive (every third week) and not at other times. We are still having one day a week off.

British submarine HMS E11

I must tell you the wonderful thing we did the other day. Last Saturday, Capt. Foster, (you know, the A.S.C. Off. with the hyphen in his name) sent me over a note asking four of us to go for a picnic. So he called in his car at one o’clock (on Sunday) and he had one of his own officers and a naval officer with him. This naval off., Lt. Brown, was from the submarine the E11 which was in the harbor at the time. You know it is the wonderful one which got up behind Heliogoland three times and has torpedoed 94 enemy craft in the sea of Marmora. Well, Capt. Fletcher went with us (that is the new rule that we have to be accompanied by one of our own officers wherever we go) and four went in the car and took the provisions and four of us walked. We went up to a ravine about four miles from here and had a great time. When we got back Col. Roberts seized the naval officer and made him stay to dinner. He had been down on the submarine the day before, it seemed. Now this made things very simple for Mr. Brown had asked us to come down and have tea there on Tuesday so, knowing Col. Roberts made this easily arranged for he got ambulances to take us down. We went all over the submarine and it [is] just full of machinery. They have really very little space to live in. But when they are in harbour they always anchor alongside a larger boat and live on it. We had tea on the “Prince George” which is the old battleship they were living on. It is worth coming to the war just to have been on the E11. You never pick up a magazine hardly but there is something about it and pictures and Commander Nasmith who got the V.C. or D’Oyley Hughes or Lt. Brown both of whom got the D.S.O. There are just three officers, thirty-six men altogether.

Give my best to everybody at High Park Ave. I do mean to write to them but it is so hard writing letters. I will try to write a little for Aunt Clara’s Red Cross, but if I can get the films and take some pictures it would make it more interesting for my powers of description are very limited. (I realize this on reading over my description of the submarine, but you read it up in any magazine. We saw it all.)

Nursing sisters and officers enjoying tea (?!)

I was in town with Capt. F. the Sunday before last and then for a long drive out towards the mountains – we have had various picnics. A very successful one with this same A.S.C. off. and one of his, and Capts. Wookey and Van Wyck. The four of us in our tent went. There is a glorious ravine about four miles away, the same one we went to Sunday, only this was farther down and it is green there (all rocks up farther). There is one real tree growing in it. I have been riding quite a bit but I fear they are going to put a stop to that because one sister at 29th Hosp. fell off her horse and was hurt. We are getting frightfully fed up here. I hope something happens soon.

Irene Peterkin posing in a Greek costume that her sister must have sent her from Salonika.

Are you busy now? How are the kiddies? Did you get your appointments and where is Theresa now? Minnie told me you were getting my dresser enamelled for your use at her house. That’s fine. I wish you were out here and seeing all these things that we are, but on the other hand it is a great relief to know that all the people I care about are safely at home.

Is Andy still counting on being married in June? I must send them a wedding present.

Best love, Ruby

Introducing Nursing Sister Ruby Gordon Peterkin

There was a close bond among Ernest, Irene and Ruby Gordon Peterkin, three of the four children of Charles and Theresa Peterkin who survived into adulthood.

Irene and Ruby in Europe in 1912.

In 1912 Ruby and Irene joined a two-month tour with the Rosedale Travel club to England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy Switzerland and France. There is no record of whether they had an opportunity to visit their father’s old haunts in Woodside, Aberdeen.

While Ruby was a Nursing Sister in the Great War she gave her permanent address as the home of her brother Ernest and his wife Minnie. Towards the end of the war when Ernest had moved to 161 Inglewood Drive her future husband Dr. Hugh Alexander McKay lived there briefly, as did Irene.

Ernest Peterkin and a friend proudly displaying a catch of fish.

Irene at her Georgian Bay cottage

Between the wars, Irene, a kindergarten teacher, spent the summers at her cottage which Ernest built on an island in Georgian Bay near Honey Harbour. Ernest loved to fish there. Ruby bought a property on Bone Island less than a mile away.

In their later years the three siblings joined forces to live in a new house at 14 Market St. in Georgetown. Ruby had earlier suffered a severe car accident and after a couple of years in Georgetown had to be transferred to a nursing home in Wychwood Park in Toronto where she died in 1961.

*         *         *

From now on the Peterkin blog will be devoted to Ruby and the close to four years she served as a Nursing Sister from 1915 to 1918 in France, Greece and England. Ruby wrote

An envelope with a censor’s stamp.

regularly to her relatives and friends, but was restrained by the censors to not disclose details of the undoubted horrors that she had witnessed inside and outside the hospital. Thus the reader is left with the impression that apart from having to be up for night duty and having her tent swept out by a British “Tommy”, life was a continuous happy round of tea and tennis and excursions with the officers and fellow nursing sisters.

A motoring incident during an excursion of the officers and nursing sisters to Salonika, Greece.

Ten of Ruby’s letters survive, nine of them addressed to “Rene” (her sister Irene) who would have shared them with other members of the family with the hope that they would be returned to her. Ruby sends greetings to her brothers, sister-in-law and nieces, many of whom have written to her. But oddly there is never a mention of her father Charles although all the early letters are addressed to Irene at their father’s house at 34 Oakmount. One letter is a “round robin”, intended to be widely circulated. That anyone would expect her to repeat to a long list of correspondents the details of the unfamiliar – even exotic — life she was leading was simply unthinkable.

As it was, Ruby survived the war but in 1918 was hospitalized in England, diagnosed as suffering from bronchitis, bronchial pneumonia and pleurisy, and finally pulmonary tuberculosis, but luckily free of dysentery and malaria. It was recorded that “The climate of the East was very hard on her.” The medical officers in Buxton, England, invalided her out back home in 1918 as “medically unfit”, and once home she was sent for the cure to Calydor Sanitarium near Gravenhurst, Ontario, until 1920.

Nursing Sister Ruby Peterkin seen writing in her tent in Greece.