WOMEN OVER THE WORLD

Southland Times, Issue 23740, 11 February 1939, Page 17

WOMEN OVER THE WORLD

Canadian Visitor On Tour Of N.Z.

In the course of a combined health and holiday trip Miss Margaret Meehan, Provincial Supervisor of Public Health Nurses, Manitoba, Canada, who was a passenger from Sydney by the Awatea, is learning what she can of nursing services and organization in each country she visits.

“I have heard so much about New Zealand’s excellent health services and about its reputation as the possessor of the lowest infant mortality rate in the world that I am anxious to see for myself some thing of the work being done here,” she said in an interview. She has letters of introduction' to Health Department officers and proposes to make use of them in Wellington before travelling through the North Island to visit some of the country's scenic attractions.

Miss Meehan said that the public health service in Manitoba provided nurses for municipalities that needed them, subject to payment of a proportion of the salaries. Bush nurses were provided and paid by the health service and residents of the district served were taxed to assist in the work. TRAINING IN CANADA In Australia she was surprised to hear a statement that Canadian nurses had been declared ineligible for appointment because their course of training lasted only two and a-half years, whereas in Australia registered nurses were required to do three years training. Miss Meehan said that was not true. No Canadian nurse could graduate until she had completed three years’ training as well as a short university course covering social science and certain other subjects. Miss Meehan saw service in France and England during the Great War and was pleasantly surprised to meet in Australia three of the men she had nursed in France. She recognized them at once, and they had not forgotten her. Canadians looked upon an Australian or a New Zealander as one of themselves and for that reason she could not feel, during her present trip, that she was among strangers.

Married Couple Never Agree

Annie Swan, the well-known writer, lecturing on marriage in London, said: “I was able to live happily for 44 years with a husband with whom I hardly ever agreed about anything. “Perhaps I had better add that this feat is only possible for a Scotswoman, in whom the impulse to argue is in the very blood. “Marriage, though harried and tormented and held-up to ridicule, will never be thrown on the scrap-heap, for, since the beginning of time, when the first couple were mated by divine ordinance, it has been the Mecca of the human dream. . .

“Happy marriages of this kind are not so rare as some of the cynics would have us believe.”