Evolution at the St. John Ambulance

Pat Sullivan

doi:10.1503/cmaj.081650

The Maple Leaf and the White Cross Christopher McCreery; Dundurn Press; 2008 332 pp $50 ISBN 978-1-55002-740-2

The St. John Ambulance has been providing Canadians with first-aid training since 1883, but relatively little has been written about its work. This year, as it celebrates 125 years in Canada, the Order of St. John decided to change that by publishing The Maple Leaf and the White Cross, Christopher McCreery's well-structured history of an organization that came of age in the last century and is searching for new roles in this one.

Photo by: Dundurn Press

The Order's roots stretch back to a group of monks founded in 12th-century Jerusalem to treated pilgrims making the trek to the Holy Land. Almost 1000 years later, the Canadian “priory” of the St. John Ambulance provides everything from therapy dog services to emergency preparedness programs. However, its bread-and-butter work has always been first-aid training.

The St. John Ambulance — or at least the work it does — is well known to many of Canada's emergency physicians and first responders because its 6000 certified instructors train more than 550 000 Canadians in first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation every year.

The book recounts one physician's reaction a century ago when a railway employee's life was saved by a quick-thinking conductor who had received such training. “I have not the least doubt but that Sectionman Courchaine would have bled to death had it not been for the timely and efficient assistant of Mr. Leach…,” he said. “All railroad men should be so trained.”

The book devotes separate chapters to the organization's extensive involvement in both world wars. In the First World War, the St. John Ambulance in Canada sent more than 400 voluntary aid detachment personnel overseas. These mostly “Anglo-Protestant, middle class, unmarried women, ranging in age from mid-twenties to early thirties,” provided nursing, rehabilitation and other help.

The book also opens a window onto Canadian medical history, particularly horrific events such as the Halifax explosion of 1917, where St. John Ambulance staff treated patients whose faces had been “torn to tatters as if clawed by a tiger.” Eight staff members were given the unenviable task of searching for 140 missing children.

The St. John Ambulance has had some tough times recently, particularly early this century when the technology sector's flameout hit its investments “particularly hard” and led to the sale of its national headquarters in Ottawa. Today, it is trying to adapt to a changing world by searching for new markets. One example is the 72 Hour Emergency Ready Kit, which is designed to provide support during the first 3 days of a natural disaster or similar crisis. More than 30 000 kits were purchased in 2006.

This well-referenced history does justice to an organization that has served Canada well.