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Object Description

Object Name

Oral History

Object ID

SR-272

Title

Interview of Doris Riedweg conducted by Warren Sommer in June 2014.

Date

13 Jun., 30 Jun. 2014.

Description

SR - 272 is an interview of Doris Riedweg conducted by Warren Sommer.

SR 272.1
Track 1 – Interview gives introduction. Doris gives her full name, birthday and tells about where she was born and grew up. Doris also gives her father’s background.
Track 2 – Doris gives her mother’s background and how her parents met and tells a little bit about her siblings. Doris also tells about why her family moved from Saskatchewan to the Fraser Valley.
Track 3 – Doris talks about how she felt about moving out to B.C. Doris also talks about doing grade 13 in BC and then her first job working in the hospital for the mentally ill, Essendale.
Track 4 – Doris talks about jobs available to women when she graduated from high school and how women were treated in the workplace compared to men.
Track 5 – Doris describes her first day working in Essendale and some of the different treatments they used on the patients. Doris describes her time working in the Shock Treatment Ward and the Ward of the Aged (Dementia and Alzheimer’s patients).
Track 6 – Doris goes into more detail about the Shock Treatment patients. Doris also talks about working with Down Syndrome patients and the lack of treatment they received. Doris also talks about her own mental state while working there.
Track 7 – Doris talks about how people with Down Syndrome were viewed in the 1950s. Doris also talks about working in the Tuberculosis Ward.
Track 8 – Doris talks about male attendants being the equivalent of a modern day male nurse. Doris also discusses quitting before the end of her registered psychiatric nurse training. Doris also talks about starting work as a dental assistant instead of registered psychiatric nurse.
Track 9 – Doris talks about why she went into nursing school and discusses her training.
Track 10 – Doris discusses beginning at Langley Hospital in 1956 and having Miss Allen in Vancouver General Hospital during her training. Doris also discusses living in residence during her training.
Track 11 – Doris goes into detail about her formal training.
Track 12 – Doris describes the hierarchy of their nursing school uniforms. Doris also talks about the hospital being a very sexist environment.
Track 13 – Doris talks about her social life while she was in school.
Track 14 – Doris talks about what their nursing graduation ceremony entailed, then the interview cuts off.
Track 15 – Interviewer recaps the previous interview. Doris discusses different aspects of her nursing training and different routes to become a nurse that some of her friends did.
Track 16 – Doris talks about getting paid during her training as opposed to paying tuition during her schooling. Doris also talks about living in residence once she started work at Langley Hospital.
Track 17 – Doris talks about the three wings in the hospital: maternity, operating and emergency. Doris also discusses the specialists who would come in from New Westminster.
Track 18 – Doris discusses the limited number of long term patients. Doris also discusses facilities for the elderly.
Track 19 – Doris discusses having unwed mothers come in during the 50s and 60s to give birth and the stigma around their situations.
Track 20 – Doris gives the number of beds in the cottage hospital and as it grew over time. Doris also tells a story about the lack of a morgue in the hospital.
Track 21 – Doris gives the numbers of how many nurses would work during a shift in each ward. Doris also tells more about the doctors who were affiliated with the hospital.
Track 22 – Doris discusses some of the specialists in Langley, specifically Doctor Key.

SR. 272.2
Track 1 – Interviewer gives an introduction. Doris talks about Marian Ward, who was the supervisor at the Langley Hospital.
Track 2 – Doris discusses the three different shift types at the Langley Hospital and some of the daily duties for the different shifts.
Track 3 – Doris tells about the Mounties always coming to the hospital at night to drink coffee with the nurses, which then ties into how she came to work at Langley Hospital.
Track 4 – Doris talks more about living in residence during her time at Langley Hospital. Doris also discusses the formality of addressing co-workers when she worked at Langley Hospital.
Track 5 – Doris discusses how General Practitioners would often perform surgeries on their patients.
Track 6 – Doris talks about coping with patients who didn’t survive and tells a couple of stories that stand out in her mind on the subject.
Track 7 – Doris discusses the overcrowding of the hospital and how they would deal with that issue.
Track 8 – Doris talks about her further education and some of the other hospitals she worked at, as well as her travelling experience. Doris also discusses the hospital Christmas party and the skits she would write for them.
Track 9 – Doris discusses coming back to Langley Hospital in 1964 and taking over as Head Nurse for Peggy Young. Doris also talks about the Hospital being run by a society – Langley Memorial Hospital Society.
Track 10 – Doris talks about becoming Head Nurse of the Operating Room and how she handled that role. Doris also talks about having windows in the operating rooms.
Track 11 – Doris talks about the cottage hospital and how its functioned changed over the years.
Track 12 – Doris talks about polio, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, small pox, and typhoid patients during her training and also during her career.
Track 13 – Doris discusses a year in her nursing career when most of the hospital staff became sick with the flu. Doris also talks about female doctors slowly coming into the hospitals.
Track 14 – Doris talks about male nurses coming into the hospitals as well as the decrease in formality as the years went on. Doris also discusses what prompted her to resign.
Track 15 – Doris talks about meeting her husband and him being a Roman Catholic and her being a Protestant and the issue her mother had with this.

SR. 272.3
Track 1 – Doris talks about living on a farm in Langley compared to their farm in Saskatchewan. Doris talks about the haying and having neighbours and friends helping.
Track 2 – Doris talks about fighting against the demolition of the cottage hospital against the Fraser Health Board.
Track 3 – Doris continues talking about the demolition of the cottage hospital and the end result of their efforts.
Track 4 – Doris discusses her writing, beginning when she was a child and then her days working with the Province.
Track 5 – Doris discusses ‘The Hospital on the Hill’ and how that book came into being.
Track 6 – Doris discusses the four novels she wrote and how she goes about writing her novels.
Track 7 – Doris talks about her trilogy and the themes within each book. Doris also talks about her own personal reading preferences.
Track 8 – Doris continues talking about her personal reading preferences.
Track 9 – Doris talks about the Langley Writer’s Guild, some of the members and her own participation in it.
Track 10 – Doris continues to discuss the Langley Writer’s Guild and more of its members. Doris concludes with talking about her desire to return to England and her home town in Saskatchewan.

People/Subject

Chapman, Stewart

Stewart Chapman was born in roughly 1915. In 1962, Chapman was the administrator of the Galt Rehabilitation hospital in Lethbridge, Alberta. In the same year, he was appointed the new administrator for the Langley Memorial Hospital. He was married and had four children (in 1962).

Christmas

haying

Hospitals

Key, Dr. Chapin

Dr. Chapin Key was a very gifted and popular surgeon at the Langley Memorial Hospital. He contracted hepatitis from one of his patients. He was told by the hospital he could no longer be a surgeon so he retrained in the United States for two years to become a hospital administrator. He returned to the Langley Memorial Hospital where he worked as an administrator for a number of years. Eventually, he moved on to work as an administrator for Vancouver General Hospital.

Langley Heritage Society

Langley Memorial Hospital

Maple Ridge High School

mental illnesses

Mooney, Iris (nee Gorey)

Iris Gorey was born in 1925 to Yelda and Alba Gorey in Saskatchewan. She became a nurse. In 1947 her family moved to Langley, and Iris worked at the first Langley Hospital when it opened in 1948. She married Douglas Mooney, from Quebec, in 1950, and they had a son, Charles, in 1955. She served as the first woman Alderman in Langley City, sworn in January 1970.

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