When Canadians think of military nursing during the twentieth century, they usually picture the Nursing Sisters of the First and Second World Wars. For more than sixty years, commissioned Nursing Officers in Canada’s military were exclusively women.

That changed in November 1967, when the Canadian Armed Forces commissioned Lieutenant Roy D. Field as the first male Nursing Officer. Field had served for eighteen years as an Army X-Ray Technician, although he was a qualified registered nurse, and became the first man to receive a commission as a Nursing Officer. Roy grew up in Parrsboro, NS and graduated from the Nova Scotia Hospital nursing program where he met his future wife Alice Crowell. He joined the Canadian Armed Forces and served for 25 years across Canada before retiring to Diligent River where he and Alice ran greenhouses. He was also Hospital Administrator at South Cumberland memorial Hospital. Roy died in 2023.

Shortly after his own commissioning, Roy was soon joined by Lieutenant Donald Nafziger and Lieutenant Lionel Joseph Muise, forming the nucleus of a new generation men in Canadian military nursing whose biograpical footprints are scant. By 1965, Lionel Joseph Muise was employed as a nurse at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax and resided in the hospital’s male residence before joining the Canadian Armed Forces. By early 1970, the Canadian Armed Forces had established four positions for male Nursing Officers, all of which had been filled, marking the successful integration of men into the commissioned nursing profession. Two were employed at Canadian Forces Hospital Halifax, two in Esquimalt, BC, and one at the 1 Air Division Medical centre in Lahr, Germany who was also an aeromedical evacuation flight nurse.

The decision to commission men as nursing officers followed years of advocacy by the Canadian Nurses Association and the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario. It reflected changing attitudes toward nursing as a profession. Until 1967, men could serve in military medical occupations, but were not eligible to receive commissions as Nursing Officers. The commissioning of these four pioneers ended a long-standing barrier and demonstrated that professional nursing in the Canadian Armed Forces would be based on qualifications rather than gender. 

Today, male Nursing Officers serve throughout the Canadian Armed Forces in clinical, leadership, education, operational, and deployed roles. Their service traces directly to the determination of these first four officers, whose commissioning marked a significant step in the evolution of Canadian military nursing.

Did you Know?

• 1967 marked the first commissioning of a male to the Nursing Officer occupation
• Lieutenant Roy D. Field, was the first male commissioned to the Nursing Officer Occupation
• By 1970, four of four authorized positions for men in the Nursing Occupation had been filled
• The identity of the fourth member of this pioneering cohort remains the subject of ongoing historical research by the MNAC-AIIMC

Do you know more about any of the original cohort? Let us know: info@mnac-aiimc.ca.