I’m not going to anonymize this interview, because Muriel made most of this material public in a book of her own. “Thin Pink Lines: My Life as a Nurse & Beyond” (co-written with Mary Vandergoot and published in 2012 by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing.) It was during this interview that Muriel realized she had enough material stored in her memory to fill a book of her own.

Muriel Jarvis was one of Saskatoon’s most recognized citizens. She received many awards and lifetime memberships, including the Governor General’s Caring Canadian award. She died in 2018, at the age of 97 years.

We had heard that Muriel’s mother, Esther Jarvis, had opened a nursing home to support herself and her five children following the death of her husband. She ran it successfully throughout the depression years. We had only recently heard the term used to refer to a place women went to have their babies, and we were eager to learn more about them.

At the top of my notes for the interview, I wrote, “This might work better as a profile of Muriel’s mother.” I don’t know if it would have worked better as a profile of her mother, but it certainly also worked well as a profile of Muriel’s mother. I turned this interview into an article for Western People Magazine in 2000. Later, I turned it into an article for Herstory: The Canadian Women’s Calendar.

Muriel’s reputation was firmly established by the time we interviewed her in March 1997. Unfortunately, we were unaware of it. You’ll notice that it shows.

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MARYANNE: One thing that I find interesting is that “nursing homes” in the 1920s, were places where you went to give birth.

MURIEL: Most of them, yes.

MARYANNE: They weren’t the understanding we have.

MURIEL: Oh no, no.

MARYANNE: So was that the type of nursing home your mother had?

MURIEL: She had other patients in the village of Kenaston, but it started primarily as a maternity home.

MARYANNE: The lady that I spoke to about them….(unclear) it was a normal house and she would just take one lady at a time. The lady would come in from the farm and the lady would look after her and the doctor would come.

MURIEL: Yes, that was more like mum’s. But then being in a small community with no hospital, she would have people who were dying of cancer and various things. Some older people who were poorly, I remember a couple of really bad road accidents, where they brought the person there to clean them up and stabilize them before they sent them on to Saskatoon. Basically because of the doctor, other things happened at our place.

MARYANNE: This is a little different to our other stories….Maybe you can just tell us a little about your experiences with birth.

KAREN: What was your earliest memory? Did you used to travel with your mother?

MURIEL: No, not really. She started, first of all going with the doctor out to people’s homes, and then there were five of us children at home, not terribly old and that bothered her, being away from home. So then, we had a fairly big house and a nice big living room she put couple of single beds, so she started having them come to our place.

One of the earliest ones was a lady who was in her early forties, which at that time was considered pretty old, much older for having babies, and she’d had one baby about twenty years before which was a long drawn-out, very difficult birth and I remember it was a Saturday afternoon and I was upstairs reading when mum called and the doctor had said to her, “Well we have to have to have some help. Is there anyone around?” And mum said, “There’s no-one around but Muriel.” I was thirteen. “Well, she can help.” And I was really very naive, I didn’t have much of a clue what happened when babies came and it was very, very difficult, for the mother. It was also very difficult for me. And talk about a psychological bump, first of all I thought, “Mother went through this five times.” and just the whole thing was really a psychological struggle for me for a while.

KAREN: Would that have been your first indication of where babies came from?

MURIEL: Yeah, basically. Mum had tried to tell us, you know, but you see maybe because she was going out to where people were having babies. I guess I was about five when my youngest brother was born. See at that time, they didn’t tell us, “Oh mum’s going to have another baby, you’re going to have a new brother or sister.” But I guess I was old enough to begin to realize that something was going on and I can see her yet in the bathroom with a navy blue wool dress on, she was getting ready to go to the hospital and I said, “Mum, please don’t let those nurses send another crying baby home with you.”

So at five I didn’t know what the kids today know. And then I was about seven, it was after our father died when mum came home from the hospital and it was one of the biggest surprises of my life that she didn’t bring a baby home with her when she came. We weren’t told things very early.

KAREN: So did she go into business, to support the family?

MURIEL: It sort of happened accidentally. Her sister was having a baby and her sister insisted that mum could look after her, she wasn’t going to any hospital.

MARYANNE: Do you know about what time that was?

MURIEL: It was 1932. And she was seven years younger than mum and she really depended on mum, for many, many things. The doctor said, “Of course you can take care of her.” As long as they went to her home and it was after that the doctor suggested to mum, “Maybe you would come with me to some of these deliveries. He’d be there by himself, most of the time or there might be a neighbour lady and as I mentioned, it evolved that she didn’t like being away from home. She didn’t have a nursing background.

KAREN: Oh she didn’t?

MURIEL: No.

KAREN: Had she delivered many babies, then, before?

MURIEL: Mm-mm, just her own five. And it was after she started doing that she took a correspondence course, from the Chicago School of Nursing.

KAREN: Do you recall anything about the doctor? Was he a young man?

MURIEL: He was middle aged, he was older than mum.

KAREN: So he would have a fair amount of experience. I’m just wondering, was he feeling a little insecure about his own skills?

MURIEL: No, I think he needed someone.

KAREN: Did he pay her?

MURIEL: No, he didn’t. The individuals paid her. The big sum of two dollars a day. I think if I remember correctly, if she went to their home it was a dollar and a half, but it was two dollars a day if they were at our place.

KAREN: And what would they have got for that?

MURIEL: Everything.

KAREN: Board included?

MURIEL: Everything. For ten days. And several surrounding municipalities paid half.

KAREN: Oh did they? This was all government-sanctioned, government-approved. Your mother never got any hassle of any kind, from government officials.

MURIEL: I don’t recall there was ever any kind of inspection. There was no subsidy, there was nothing.

KAREN: No, I’m not… It’s just from background reading it was often the case that the medical establishment would complain about a lay-practitioner of any kind. They would see them as taking money out of their pockets.

MURIEL: Of course, see, she never went out on her own without the doctor.

KAREN: Oh I see the doctor came with her?

MURIEL: Oh yes, she never was on her own. There was only once that she was completely on her own and I think the doctor was drunk someplace. And this woman’s husband couldn’t find him. So no, no, she worked with the doctor. She didn’t usually see these people much ahead of time, they either phoned or wrote and made arrangements and came in, depending on the weather and the distance. I remember some being there a week or so, but usually just at the time of the delivery.

KAREN: I was just wondering where your home was located in Kenaston? In the town itself?

MURIEL: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

MARYANNE: Going back to that birth that you thought was difficult, do you have an understanding a bit about birth now? I’m not sure what your background was?

MURIEL: My background was nursing.

MARYANNE: Oh okay. So do you recall now what the problem was? You might say, “Oh that was a stuck shoulder or…”


MURIEL: I’m not sure what the problem was. I know that he used forceps, that was one thing that scared the life out of me. And then we had a time resuscitating the baby, but I’m not sure what…It was just very, very difficult. And I don’t remember, from the lady what her first delivery was like, even though it was twenty years previous.

MARYANNE: She had a twenty year difference between the two?

MURIEL: Mm-hmm. And she was over forty.

MARYANNE: And did the baby live?

MURIEL: Yes, the baby lived. At that time, looking back I often think, not today, but at that time, which was probably about 1933, if it had been in the hospital I doubt it would have lived. Because mum just wrapped it in cotton batting and we had the old kitchen cook stove of course, and we had an old kitchen chair and she had that all made into a nice little bed and warm hot water bottles in there and beside the kitchen range and she just kept rubbing that baby.

KAREN: What kind of methods did she use? When you say you had a hard time resuscitating the baby?

MURIEL: Well the baby didn’t breathe and was deathly white and the doctor tried the usual spanks on its bottom and so on. Then what we did was dip it–well, nurses today would have a fit–in warm and cold water. That was one thing they used to do to stimulate the circulation so I was sort of water brigade then. Running from kitchen to living room with first warm and then cold water. And eventually, we saw a little pink line come up and eventually the circulation started.

KAREN: Knowing what you know now, is there a scientific basis for what you were doing?

MURIEL: Well, the change in temperature would add some stimulation to the circulation.

KAREN and MARYANNE: Shock?

MURIEL (laughing): It wasn’t icy water and it wasn’t hot, hot, but definitely a difference in temperature. They hadn’t heard about mouth to mouth resuscitation in those days.

KAREN: They hadn’t?

MURIEL: No, no. You see we’re going back a fair distance.

KAREN: I know, I just thought that would have been known for centuries. (Meaning mouth to mouth resuscitation.)

MARYANNE: And that baby, what was the date again?

MURIEL: 1933. Do you how well that baby is today?

MURIEL: I don’t know if she is still living, but she did okay.

KAREN: And the mother?

MURIEL: The mother did fine.

MARYANNE: Another thing, do you recall, did the doctor use any anesthetics at all?

MURIEL: Oh, yes they used ether and or chloroform. And usually mother had to give that. But of course, with just the doctor there alone and mum giving it, it was never a deep anesthetic, it was just enough to numb their sensations and their alertness a bit. And they didn’t use a lot of the drugs, I remember from my time in the forties they drugged the mothers a lot more. It was very different from today of course.

MARYANNE: Are you an obstetrical nurse?

MURIEL: No. I always said that’s where I wanted to go back to. But I never got back there.

KAREN: Were you a nurse here in Saskatoon?

MURIEL: Oh yeah. But you know they didn’t have all the spinal blocks they use now, and of course its much more scientific today.

KAREN: So how long was your mother, I want to say running the business but if it wasn’t a business. How long would she have been operating the nursing home?

MURIEL: Well, roughly ten years.

KAREN: Oh really?

MURIEL: Because she moved to Saskatoon in ‘43.

KAREN: So that would have been a lot of babies. A baby a month? A baby a week?