Lyle Creelman

Book excerpt: This intriguing scholarly biography examines the important contributions of Canada’s foremost international nurse, Lyle Creelman. Creelman parlayed her experience as a community health nurse in British Columbia into significant international appointments with two organizations undertaking massive responsibility for health tasks in the post-war period – first, as chief nurse of the British Zone of Occupied Germany with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and, from 1954 to 1968, the Chief Nursing Officer of the World Health Organization (WHO). In telling Creelman’s fascinating story, Susan Armstrong-Reid helps readers learn about the transformation of the nursing profession and global health governance in the twentieth century. This story challenges the prevailing portrait of expatriate nurses during this period as agents of Western cultural imperialism. Lyle Creelman: The Frontiers of Global Nursing not only recasts the broader historical narrative of nursing’s legacy to global health, but contextualizes its continuing importance for approaching health care in the twenty-first-century.