- AARN
- Pessoa
- 1909-1987
Laura Attrux graduated from St Paul's Hospital School of Nursing in Saskatoon in 1930. Her post-graduate education was taken at Vancouver General Hospital (obstetrics), the New York Maternity Centre, and the Kentucky Frontier Centre. The University of Alberta granted her a certificate in Advanced Obstetrics for Nurses, and the University of Toronto a diploma in Public Health Nursing. In 1933 she became Supervisor of Obstetrics at Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, and in 1939 began her career in Public Health Nursing serving in the northern Alberta communities of Valleyview, Slave Lake, Swan Hills, Whitecourt, Smith, High Level, Rainbow Lake and Wabasca/Desmarais. She provided medical and obstetrical care; on occasion she acted as dentist and veterinarian. The district nurse was also looked on as the community's doctor, counselor, social worker and community leader. Miss Attrux was particularly concerned for the Indian and Metis residents of these northern communities and extended her care to their social as well as their medical needs. At age 58 she became a licensed pilot, owing her own airplane. She received recognition for her work: the Queen Elizabeth Coronation Medal in 1953, the Pope John XXIII Bene Merenti Medal in 1960, and in 1970, an honourary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alberta. Much of her personal record of her work no longer exists: she was an accomplished photographer, but her prints and negatives were destroyed in a flood in High Level; her diaries and notebooks of her field visits were destroyed on the orders of the Department of Health when the Public Health Nursing Service was disbanded. Miss Attrux retired to Edmonton in 1972, where she became an active volunteer with senior citizens and in church activities. She died in Edmonton in 1987 and was buried in Hafford, Saskatchewan, near her childhood home.