Northern nursing careers legacy of loss

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/09/2011 (5153 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ten years after the terror attacks of 9/11, more people in the Arctic are becoming nurses thanks to the legacy of the only Manitoban whom terrorists killed that day.

The Dr. Christine Egan Memorial Scholarship fund is helping Inuit nursing students in the North — people and a place the nursing instructor loved.

“It meant a lot… it helped,” said scholarship recipient Pallulaaq Ford, who finished nursing school at Arctic College.

“When I first started, I had two boys,” said Ford. “In my third year, I had my daughter.” The $2,500 scholarship helped feed her family, she said. It allowed a family on a budget a rare luxury in Nunavut.

“We went out for supper with some of that money,” said Ford. “We were never able to go to a restaurant in Iqaluit because it is so expensive.”

The scholarship, which was established in 2004, helped but so did the acknowledgment, said Ford who’d heard about Egan’s good nature and reputation as a nurse.

“I was so happy. It made me feel recognized as a nursing student.”

Egan, 55, was in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 because she’d offered to look after her disabled nephew while her brother and his wife took a trip to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary.

It’s believed she visited her younger brother’s 105th-floor insurance office in the south tower the morning of Sept. 11 when it was destroyed.

“When all this transpired, we felt we needed to do something in her memory,” said Sharon Moffatt, a nurse who’s worked in the North. She was a good friend of Egan’s and has been on the scholarship selection committee from the start.

So far, 21 awards have been given to 17 people, she said.

“It certainly feels good,” said Moffatt. “Chris was a wonderful character and visionary and involved in education,” she said. There’s a plaque dedicated to Egan at the University of Manitoba’s Bannatyne campus on the second floor of Basic Medical Sciences.

“She did excellent work in several regions of the Northwest Territories, as it was known at the time,” said Moffatt. At home in Winnipeg, Egan stayed connected to her Inuit friends.

“She was always at the Inuit Centre visiting friends, taking them magazines and taking them shopping,” said Moffatt.

“She was always totally passionate about being involved in the North,” she said.

“This is something she would’ve been approving or appreciative of,” said Moffatt. The scholarships are given to people with deep roots in Nunavut — mainly the Inuit.

“We’re looking for people who live in the North and will stay in the North,” she said.

“We’re trying to bring medicine and nursing closer to home where people will stay put. Having a nursing program in Iqaluit works better than bringing people South,” she said.

Egan’s partner, Ellen Judd, said the scholarship is a fitting tribute that offers some solace.

“Chris’ scholarship is a comfort to all of us involved in it because it is so close to what she cared about and the way she lived,” Judd said.

Ford, who graduated from nursing school in 2006, is now Nunavut’s manager of clinical nursing education for the Kivalliq region.

“I think, like everywhere else, it’s hard to find nurses for all positions,” said Ford. “It’s even harder here when there are so few. We try to encourage students to go into nursing school,” she said.

“With this scholarship, it’s attracted students to go into nursing school from the North,” said Ford. “It’s also encouraged students to stay in the nursing program.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca