VIRTUAL LECTURE | A Woman's Touch: Supporting Canadian Servicemen's Resilience in Europe, 1943–47

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In this talk, Sarah Glassford (Mobilizing Mercy: A History of the Canadian Red Cross) will explore the emotional dimensions of the Canadian presence in Europe during the later years of the Second World War. The event is part of the Laurier Military History Webinar Series.

As Canadian servicemen amassed in Britain, then advanced through Italy, Normandy, and the Low Countries, 641 women of the Canadian Red Cross Corps Overseas Detachment followed close behind. Through food parcels, hospital visits, occupational therapy, ambulance-driving, canteen service, and the provision of comforts ranging from hometown newspapers and cigarettes to conversation and a listening ear, their job was to care for Canadian servicemen, shoring up the troops' psychological resilience with a proverbial "woman's touch." Corps members' letters, diaries, and oral histories provide a fascinating glimpse of how friendship, kinship, and romance helped both servicemen and Red Cross women cope with the physical and emotional traumas of wartime.

Sarah Glassford is a social historian of Canada who earned her PhD at York University.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From its origins in battlefield medicine to the creation of Canada’s first nationwide free blood transfusion service during the Cold War, Mobilizing Mercy charts crucial organizational changes, the influence of key leaders, and the impact of social, cultural, political, economic, and international trends over time. Glassford shows that the key to the Red Cross's longevity lies in its ability to reinvent itself by tapping into the concerns and ambitions of diverse groups including militia doctors, government officials, middle-class women, and schoolchildren. Through periods of war and peace, the Canadian Red Cross pioneered new services and filled gaps in government aid to become a ubiquitous agency on the wartime home front, a major domestic public health organization, and a respected provider of international humanitarian aid.