(26 Jan. 1872-20 or 21 Dec. 1950), nurse. (Edith Rayside) Born at Lancaster or Martintown, GC. Parents: James Rayside and his wife Margaret McDougall. She attended public school at Lancaster and high school at Williamstown, and Queen’s University, with B.A. 1896. She was not GC’s first woman graduate of Queen’s (see, e.g., for at least one earlier graduate, Wilhelmina Stait) but she was one of the earliest. After Queen’s she attended the Training School for Nurses at St. Luke’s Hospital, Ottawa, graduating in 1901. (Glengarry News 7 June 1901) Thereafter, she worked as a nurse in Sask. and Mexico, being in the latter when WWI began. In the war, she went overseas as a nurse in Jan. 1915, as matron-in-charge of the 2nd contingent of Canadian nurses. She served as matron-in-charge of No. 2 Canadian Hospital at Le Tréport, France, and served also at Moore Barracks Hospital at Shorncliffe, England. In mid-1917 she returned to Canada to take over responsibilities in Ottawa as matron-in-chief of nurses in Canadian military hospitals. After the war she took a course in hospital administration at Columbia University. She was a teacher in the training school for nurses at Montreal General Hospital before becoming, in 1924, superintendent of nurses in the Hamilton General Hospital. (GN 29 Aug.1924) On retiring from this position in 1934 she settled in GC. She lived in her last years at South Lancaster, with her sister Isabella, Mrs James C. McGillis (1876-1960), and died in the home they shared there. Charlotte Whitton, the celebrated mayor of Ottawa, and herself one of Canada’s best-known women in her time, admired Edith Rayside. Charlotte Whitton wrote that, “It was a glorious autumn day that I last saw her, as I made an early morning run out from Cornwall to pay my warm respects to one of the finest women whom this country ever bred. Unusually tall, of massive, noble build, Miss Rayside was cast in the mould of a Boadicea or a strong and understanding Britannia. Every inch the Matron-in-Chief, she was a gentle woman, quiet and soft-spoken.”
Edith Rayside received many honours. In 1917 she received the Royal Red Cross, 1st class, from King George V at Buckingham Palace. In 1919 she was given an honorary degree by the University of Toronto. The University officials could not face the prospect of giving a woman an LL.D. and so a special degree of Master of Household Science was created for her. Both she and Charlotte Whitton considered this compromise ridiculous. She was also the first woman to serve on the board of trustees of Queen’s University. In the New Year’s Honours list of Jan. 1934 she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Glengarry News 22 & 29 Dec. 1950 * A.L. Dunlop, “Many High Honours Accorded Edith Rayside, of Lancaster,” Standard Freeholder 13 March 1948 (biog. detail, with fine portrait) * Charlotte Whitton, “An Appreciation of Edith Rayside,” QAR, 25:1 (Jan. 1951), with portrait and obituary (Whitton article appeared first in Ottawa Evening Citizen) * MacGillivray & Ross: index * Fraser, Gravestones, II, 56-57 (Edith Rayside and Mrs McGillis) * Ross, Lancaster, 347-348 * G.W.L. Nicholson, Canada’s Nursing Sisters (1975), various refs. * Ann Gordon Gibbs and Una Ross Thain, Bless ‘Em All (1996) [on Charlottenburgh-Lancaster women serving in WWI & II] * honours: GN 2 March 1917, 14 Nov. 1919, & GN & SFH both 5 Jan. 1934