Marilyn Austin

War Memorial Hospital, Corner of South Street and Colborne

My name is Marilyn Austin. I’m a graduate of the Victoria Hospital School of Nursing, 1967.

My memory for the War Memorial Hospital was more when I was a grad, of bringing all the kids over for their tonsillectomy. And the all the, sort of, chain of stretchers coming from War Memorial through the tunnel and up to the operating room. You know, it wouldn’t be uncommon to have four or five stretchers being pulled along, one pushing one pulling. I think probably we were likely told that the most you should take would be four at once. And the kids would be crying and then they would be going off, and the tunnel was dark and the sort of the echoing through the tunnel. And you would have hospital staff coming to the cafeteria, some people going to work. And I probably remember more as a grad working in the recovery room because in those days it was very common for maybe ten to fifteen tonsillectomies in a day, so you’d be looking after them in the recovery room, and then you’d have to wheel them all the way back over to Children’s. Traveling time might have been half an hour by the time you get them back into their rooms. In that cold tunnel.